8 ms·

I pulled the vendor's brochure; if you were curious what a vending machine would use this information for... They collect demographics on WHO is purchasing wha

I pulled the vendor's brochure; if you were curious what a vending machine would use this information for... They collect demographics on WHO is purchasing what items including gender, age, etc. They use this information for targeting advertising (inc. with "partner media brokers"). They're also proud that when users install their app, it uses "gamification" to increase sales (whatever that means). See here, they're super proud of it too: https://a.storyblok.com/f/184550/x/e7435c019e/brochure-svm_generic-dark-netflix-ui.pdf https://a.storyblok.com/f/184550/x/e7435c019e/brochure-svm_g...

disillusioned 3y ago
The machines use the charitably named "demographic sensor" which is obviously the embedded camera linked to a "facial recognition" application, BUT, it doesn't appear that it actually recognizes (or records) faces. Meaning, it's not linking your face to any online identity, or recording your face at all. In fact, the company is European and claims that their entire platform is GDPR compliant, which is... probably true? Rather, it throws out a series of guesses and confidence values of a person's age, gender, and race, and allow the planogram (and OOH advertising) to change dynamically based on that information. Which is not necessarily great, but also an entire order of magnitude less invasive than every interaction any casual user has on the internet with any ad ever. Or, frankly, with any POS system recording a repeat purchase from your credit card, from which motivated vendors can back into the rest of the demographic data. I'm not excusing it, but while the error reads "facial recognition", it's more "stereotyping enablement platform," which, while only marginally better, is probably still better. It's also hilarious to think of the thing displaying the green M&M if you're a "probable" woman, and the red or yellow M&M if you're a "probable" man, and seeing how long it'd take for anyone to correlate the change.
- rwmj 3y ago
  That's what the company claims, and maybe it's right, but how do we know? Do we have access to the source code? Will it change in future? You can be absolutely sure that if the company thought they could make more money by storing the photographs or somehow associating them with real identities then they would.
- tdudhhu 3y ago
  It is invasive. In theory they can do something like "Why do you look so sad? Maybe a Mars can cheer you up!". This can be done while being GDPR complient but people don't like that. It creates a feeling that everything is watching you. Privacy is not about hiding things, it is about controlling what you want to show.
  - rob74 3y ago
    "You don't look like yourself today... have a Snickers!"
  - sleepingreset 3y ago
    maybe I'm weird. I put small pieces of blue tape over all of the cameras in my dorm's vending machines for this reason, too.
    - reaperman 3y ago
      Kind of surprised people haven't started putting a piece of tape over it, then coming back 8 hours later with a small drill and drilling through the now-blacked-out camera lens to permanently disable it in their living areas.
  - pimlottc 3y ago
    "Feeling good? Celebrate with a Mars bar!"
- ImHereToVote 3y ago
  I can't wait for the shitstorm when it starts suggesting grape soda to POC.
  - southernplaces7 3y ago
    What's a POC? And why would pushing grape soda at them cause a shitstorm?
    - disillusioned 3y ago
      Person of color. Because of the implication.
      - hnbad 3y ago
        Honestly, as a European some American racist tropes are truly baffling to me. Stereotypically Black people apparently enjoy watermelons, deep fried chicken and grape soda. In other words Black people allegedly like food humans often like and Americans managed to take than and make it racist. I'm not saying it's not used as a racist trope. I'm saying it's amazing how Americans managed to be racist enough to make such a non-issue racist.
        drekipus 3y ago
        Engagement metrics effects on a corporate society
        narag 3y ago
        Stereotypically Black people apparently enjoy watermelons, deep fried chicken and grape soda. Check, check, check. Yum! TIL that I could pass for black in America. OK, maybe not. Unfortunately grape soda is almost impossible to find in Madrid, I've only tried it a couple of times, first in Rota Base, and loved it.
        giraffe_lady 3y ago
        My experience has been that european cultures are approximately as racist as the US, they just have different histories and dynamics so it comes out differently. There is a lot less visible reckoning with race as well, which makes it easier to assume or pretend that there are no problems with it.
- oniony 3y ago
  It's not a camera, it's an optical sensor, lol.
- codethief 3y ago
  > In fact, the company is European and claims that their entire platform is GDPR compliant, which is... probably true? I don't see how it is. The mere processing of my personal information (age, gender, race – doesn't matter that it's only a guess/estimate) without my explicit consent or any contractual need should already represent a violation of GDPR.
  - maxcoder4 3y ago
    As far as I understand it's not, because GDPR concerns itself with personally identifiable data and "age/gender/race" is not identifiable in general (in context of a vending machine in a large city).
    - codethief 3y ago
      Correlate this with the date and location of the vending machine and it's not so clear anymore. GDPR is also concerned with data that could potentially be used to identify you.
- mateo1 3y ago
  Honestly the whole thing would be funny if it's wasn't part of the dystopian society we're building. Is this... innovation now? What are we trying to optimize society for? Extracting maximum rents? But were will the money come from if everyone is doing the same thing and producing nothing of value?
- mrighele 3y ago
  > In fact, the company is European and claims that their entire platform is GDPR compliant, which is... probably true? Is a picture of my face necessary to sell me a chocolate bar ? I would say not, and if they take it without asking consent before I would say that it is not GDPR compliant.
gherkinnn 3y ago
Vending machines covered by a large screen stand for everything I hate about contemporary tech. They improve absolutely nothing from a buyer's perspective. Every step of the transaction is made worse. You can't glance at the entire inventory. You never know how much of an item is left. The machine does not reliably know how much of an item is left. Every interaction lags. And in return I get ads and mini games. Just so some C-suite cretin (guess what the C in C*O stands for) can show his little cretin friends how innovative his farts are. It is late. I am hungry. My train departs in 2 minutes. Please, I just want a bloody Snickers. These companies are a blight.
- callahad 3y ago
  > They improve absolutely nothing from a buyer's perspective. It's the "good ads" argument -- this machine can guess your age/gender and offer up items most purchased by your demographic, all the while feeding that data back to the vendor. Who wouldn't love that? :-/ More seriously, this has been a standard capability in vending machines, fast food menu systems, and digital signage in general for over a decade. Check out this ad from 2012 for Intel's AIM Suite for an example of how this stuff is pitched: https://youtube.com/watch?v=KdMIp2vQjG8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=KdMIp2vQjG8 "Is the viewer a teenage girl? Then change to content to highlight a back-to-school shoe sale a few doors down. Is it a senior male? Then why not tell him about the golf club sale at the sporting goods store?"
  - dataviz1000 3y ago
    The technique in restaurants is to track the number of items sold, add innovative special dishes every day or week, and at the end of every week or month, remove the worst selling items on the menu and replace it with one of the special dishes. This over time creates demand. Vending machines can do the same. Remove the worst selling item and replace it with anything. After a time, the vending machine will only sell items with demand for that location.
    - Freak_NL 3y ago
      And this requires absolutely zero screens, cameras, or demographic data collection of any kind. Just track the inventory. This isn't new; I would be extremely surprised if Japanese vending machines didn't do just that for decades already. But those cameras aren't there because of the vending machine. That is just a convenient platform. This is about ads, and tracking, and data brokering. We had digital ad screens placed on the platforms at train stations in the Netherlands with a camera hole a few years ago, and the advertising company swore that those cameras would not be activated, for now, until the legal side was resolved, or until they could get away with it without anyone noticing. It feels icky.
alwa 3y ago
That's quite the brochure. My favorite selling point is the way you can make the machine display products that it's doesn't actually have inside, sell them, and give the punter a digital IOU instead of the soda they tried to buy... > "Customizable UI design - Product selection can be extended to include products not physically in the machine. Consumers can store them in Invenda Wallet [a mobile app] and redeem them somewhere else." Somehow managing to turn a convenience-driven impulse buy into an additional chore to redeem later. At the end of the day, there must be some angle I'm not understanding or these features wouldn't actually drive sales. I wonder if the idea is to vend digital products? Drive traffic to nearby physical stores through some kind of targeted digital coupon? Has anyone seen this kind of thing in the wild?
- tjoff 3y ago
  Maybe it's nothing but a scam? Place it somewhere where there are enough people that haven't tried it before and trick them into buying something they don't want. No one will ever use it more than once.
  - jowea 3y ago
    You're getting a soda's worth of money from every person who is tricked, and some will notice the trick before it happens or hear about it. I'm guessing it's not worth the price of the machine, tech, install costs and opportunity costs of a normal vending machine.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The real scam is the ones that require you to load a card instead of using them directly. Usually seen at newer laundromats and such - arcades, too. The most scammy make it so you can only load the card in multiples of ten but the machines all cost prime amounts.
      - kjkjadksj 3y ago
        All the scooter companies are trying that load by $5 and $10 thing now. Squeezing the last few drops from the stone I guess
red_admiral 3y ago
Detecting "gender" by facial recognition on a 21st century uni campus in the USA ... what could _possibly_ go wrong and cause a massive media meltdown?
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  Needs a TSA full body scanner to get the real demographics of drink sales.
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    You just assumed someone's gender by the form of their genitals. /s but...
RockRobotRock 3y ago
In Japan, facial recognition vending machines have been used to make product recommendations and collect statisics since 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2hwnGrn3go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2hwnGrn3go
ssss11 3y ago
Oh my god I can’t buy a mars bar without the world trying to send me targeted ads

disillusioned 3y ago

The machines use the charitably named "demographic sensor" which is obviously the embedded camera linked to a "facial recognition" application, BUT, it doesn't appear that it actually recognizes (or records) faces. Meaning, it's not linking your face to any online identity, or recording your face at all. In fact, the company is European and claims that their entire platform is GDPR compliant, which is... probably true? Rather, it throws out a series of guesses and confidence values of a person's age, gender, and race, and allow the planogram (and OOH advertising) to change dynamically based on that information. Which is not necessarily great, but also an entire order of magnitude less invasive than every interaction any casual user has on the internet with any ad ever. Or, frankly, with any POS system recording a repeat purchase from your credit card, from which motivated vendors can back into the rest of the demographic data. I'm not excusing it, but while the error reads "facial recognition", it's more "stereotyping enablement platform," which, while only marginally better, is probably still better. It's also hilarious to think of the thing displaying the green M&M if you're a "probable" woman, and the red or yellow M&M if you're a "probable" man, and seeing how long it'd take for anyone to correlate the change.

rwmj 3y ago
That's what the company claims, and maybe it's right, but how do we know? Do we have access to the source code? Will it change in future? You can be absolutely sure that if the company thought they could make more money by storing the photographs or somehow associating them with real identities then they would.
tdudhhu 3y ago
It is invasive. In theory they can do something like "Why do you look so sad? Maybe a Mars can cheer you up!". This can be done while being GDPR complient but people don't like that. It creates a feeling that everything is watching you. Privacy is not about hiding things, it is about controlling what you want to show.
- rob74 3y ago
  "You don't look like yourself today... have a Snickers!"
- sleepingreset 3y ago
  maybe I'm weird. I put small pieces of blue tape over all of the cameras in my dorm's vending machines for this reason, too.
  - reaperman 3y ago
    Kind of surprised people haven't started putting a piece of tape over it, then coming back 8 hours later with a small drill and drilling through the now-blacked-out camera lens to permanently disable it in their living areas.
- pimlottc 3y ago
  "Feeling good? Celebrate with a Mars bar!"
ImHereToVote 3y ago
I can't wait for the shitstorm when it starts suggesting grape soda to POC.
- southernplaces7 3y ago
  What's a POC? And why would pushing grape soda at them cause a shitstorm?
  - disillusioned 3y ago
    Person of color. Because of the implication.
    - hnbad 3y ago
      Honestly, as a European some American racist tropes are truly baffling to me. Stereotypically Black people apparently enjoy watermelons, deep fried chicken and grape soda. In other words Black people allegedly like food humans often like and Americans managed to take than and make it racist. I'm not saying it's not used as a racist trope. I'm saying it's amazing how Americans managed to be racist enough to make such a non-issue racist.
      - drekipus 3y ago
        Engagement metrics effects on a corporate society
      - narag 3y ago
        Stereotypically Black people apparently enjoy watermelons, deep fried chicken and grape soda. Check, check, check. Yum! TIL that I could pass for black in America. OK, maybe not. Unfortunately grape soda is almost impossible to find in Madrid, I've only tried it a couple of times, first in Rota Base, and loved it.
      - giraffe_lady 3y ago
        My experience has been that european cultures are approximately as racist as the US, they just have different histories and dynamics so it comes out differently. There is a lot less visible reckoning with race as well, which makes it easier to assume or pretend that there are no problems with it.
oniony 3y ago
It's not a camera, it's an optical sensor, lol.
codethief 3y ago
> In fact, the company is European and claims that their entire platform is GDPR compliant, which is... probably true? I don't see how it is. The mere processing of my personal information (age, gender, race – doesn't matter that it's only a guess/estimate) without my explicit consent or any contractual need should already represent a violation of GDPR.
- maxcoder4 3y ago
  As far as I understand it's not, because GDPR concerns itself with personally identifiable data and "age/gender/race" is not identifiable in general (in context of a vending machine in a large city).
  - codethief 3y ago
    Correlate this with the date and location of the vending machine and it's not so clear anymore. GDPR is also concerned with data that could potentially be used to identify you.
mateo1 3y ago
Honestly the whole thing would be funny if it's wasn't part of the dystopian society we're building. Is this... innovation now? What are we trying to optimize society for? Extracting maximum rents? But were will the money come from if everyone is doing the same thing and producing nothing of value?
mrighele 3y ago
> In fact, the company is European and claims that their entire platform is GDPR compliant, which is... probably true? Is a picture of my face necessary to sell me a chocolate bar ? I would say not, and if they take it without asking consent before I would say that it is not GDPR compliant.

gherkinnn 3y ago

Vending machines covered by a large screen stand for everything I hate about contemporary tech. They improve absolutely nothing from a buyer's perspective. Every step of the transaction is made worse. You can't glance at the entire inventory. You never know how much of an item is left. The machine does not reliably know how much of an item is left. Every interaction lags. And in return I get ads and mini games. Just so some C-suite cretin (guess what the C in C*O stands for) can show his little cretin friends how innovative his farts are. It is late. I am hungry. My train departs in 2 minutes. Please, I just want a bloody Snickers. These companies are a blight.

callahad 3y ago
> They improve absolutely nothing from a buyer's perspective. It's the "good ads" argument -- this machine can guess your age/gender and offer up items most purchased by your demographic, all the while feeding that data back to the vendor. Who wouldn't love that? :-/ More seriously, this has been a standard capability in vending machines, fast food menu systems, and digital signage in general for over a decade. Check out this ad from 2012 for Intel's AIM Suite for an example of how this stuff is pitched: https://youtube.com/watch?v=KdMIp2vQjG8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=KdMIp2vQjG8 "Is the viewer a teenage girl? Then change to content to highlight a back-to-school shoe sale a few doors down. Is it a senior male? Then why not tell him about the golf club sale at the sporting goods store?"
- dataviz1000 3y ago
  The technique in restaurants is to track the number of items sold, add innovative special dishes every day or week, and at the end of every week or month, remove the worst selling items on the menu and replace it with one of the special dishes. This over time creates demand. Vending machines can do the same. Remove the worst selling item and replace it with anything. After a time, the vending machine will only sell items with demand for that location.
  - Freak_NL 3y ago
    And this requires absolutely zero screens, cameras, or demographic data collection of any kind. Just track the inventory. This isn't new; I would be extremely surprised if Japanese vending machines didn't do just that for decades already. But those cameras aren't there because of the vending machine. That is just a convenient platform. This is about ads, and tracking, and data brokering. We had digital ad screens placed on the platforms at train stations in the Netherlands with a camera hole a few years ago, and the advertising company swore that those cameras would not be activated, for now, until the legal side was resolved, or until they could get away with it without anyone noticing. It feels icky.

alwa 3y ago

That's quite the brochure. My favorite selling point is the way you can make the machine display products that it's doesn't actually have inside, sell them, and give the punter a digital IOU instead of the soda they tried to buy... > "Customizable UI design - Product selection can be extended to include products not physically in the machine. Consumers can store them in Invenda Wallet [a mobile app] and redeem them somewhere else." Somehow managing to turn a convenience-driven impulse buy into an additional chore to redeem later. At the end of the day, there must be some angle I'm not understanding or these features wouldn't actually drive sales. I wonder if the idea is to vend digital products? Drive traffic to nearby physical stores through some kind of targeted digital coupon? Has anyone seen this kind of thing in the wild?

tjoff 3y ago
Maybe it's nothing but a scam? Place it somewhere where there are enough people that haven't tried it before and trick them into buying something they don't want. No one will ever use it more than once.
- jowea 3y ago
  You're getting a soda's worth of money from every person who is tricked, and some will notice the trick before it happens or hear about it. I'm guessing it's not worth the price of the machine, tech, install costs and opportunity costs of a normal vending machine.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The real scam is the ones that require you to load a card instead of using them directly. Usually seen at newer laundromats and such - arcades, too. The most scammy make it so you can only load the card in multiples of ten but the machines all cost prime amounts.
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      All the scooter companies are trying that load by $5 and $10 thing now. Squeezing the last few drops from the stone I guess

red_admiral 3y ago

Detecting "gender" by facial recognition on a 21st century uni campus in the USA ... what could _possibly_ go wrong and cause a massive media meltdown?

thebruce87m 3y ago
Needs a TSA full body scanner to get the real demographics of drink sales.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  You just assumed someone's gender by the form of their genitals. /s but...

RockRobotRock 3y ago

In Japan, facial recognition vending machines have been used to make product recommendations and collect statisics since 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2hwnGrn3go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2hwnGrn3go

ssss11 3y ago

Oh my god I can’t buy a mars bar without the world trying to send me targeted ads