Surveillance Pricing at the Grocery Store? #DynamicPricing #FacialRecognition #GroceryPrivacy
The short version: Mading Thok's video shows how facial recognition and loyalty data let grocery chains charge different people different prices, another piece of the surveillance economy.
Our Take
Creator Mading Thok lays out something that should alarm anyone who still thinks grocery shopping is a private, mundane errand: your face, your purchase history, and an algorithm's guess about your income can now determine the price on the shelf. Kroger's "income predictor" being wrong half the time isn't a bug worth shrugging off — it's a preview of what happens when corporations treat every American as a data point to be priced, sorted, and squeezed.
This is the same surveillance logic that powers Flock Safety's ALPR network. Whether it's a camera reading your license plate at an intersection or a loyalty app reading your face at checkout, the business model is identical: harvest biometric and behavioral data quietly, build a profile nobody consented to, then monetize or weaponize it without telling you. Companies always promise it's for convenience or safety. The actual product is you.
Surveillance pricing and ALPR dragnets are two heads of the same beast — normalize data collection in one corner of daily life and it metastasizes everywhere else. Check our camera map to see how far that infrastructure has already spread near you, and visit take-action for ways to push back before pricing-by-surveillance becomes as routine as plate-reading-by-surveillance.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Mading Thok, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.