766
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
766 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
58898 readers
3575 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I’ll play devil’s advocate. The machine recorded estimated age and gender. Assuming it tracked statistics and didn’t store images, what is the real harm? Future candy will have different designs after they found most users were 70yr old grandpas?
It is anonymized PII data collected without explicit consent, sure, but don’t blow it out of proportion. There is no big surveillance state plot here (yet), just an overzealous marketing team.
Not everybody who approaches the machine or walks past it is really consenting to their appearance being logged and analysed though - not to mention that "we don't store data" is only true if the security is effective and no exploits manage to weaponise the camera now staring back at you as you try to make a purchase.
Ultimately vending machines are completely passive sales anyway, the collection of demographic data about who is buying from the machine are a little useless because it's not like the machine can work on its closing techniques for coin based candy sales.