OP recently posted an article from the same author on Medium. The headline was something like “15% of content on reddit is by corporate trolls”. The article linked to only one source which did not back up any of the claims of the article. I tried searching for another article in the journal and year that the article mentioned it took a study from and there was none related to the topic. My conclusion is that the author fabricates numbers to make their articles more interesting. I also wrote an email to Medium to bring this to their attention but they didn’t care about hosting misinformation and told me to contact the author. I don’t think it’s the audience’s job to look up their sources so I’d hazard a guess and say the author is fabricating numbers again.
Here’s the article: https://medium.com/@hrnews1/study-at-least-15-of-all-reddit-content-is-corporate-trolls-trying-to-manipulate-public-opinion-49cb302c26a5
If you see someone shoplifting food,
no you didn’tyou have a moral obligation to create a distraction.I will nullify if I get on a jury trial for a person that stole food.
This article smells strongly of ChatGPT output, and cites no sources aside from gesturing vaguely at NRF. Sharing it is a disservice.
Self checkouts are confusing. It’s so easy to accidentally miss something.
Ask for work. If they don’t give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.
Y’all’re gonna flip when the “wage theft” graph is laid alongside this corpo whine of a graph. 🤢 What a pile of agitprop, insinuating that these “losses” aren’t dwarfed by the money stolen from workers every single year. Fuck corporate. Gut 'em all.
If you see someone stealing food, you have not seen anything.
No such thing as stealing food.
No they fucking aren’t. Nobody saw anything.
But theft is out of control right now! When I go shopping, I see so many instances that I have to find the manager and show them the video evidence I collected, showing all of their CEOs profiteering off the pandemic and tariffs.
☝️
The specific metric cited is “retail revenue loss” given in dollar amounts. The “since 2019” is doing some heavy lifting. Q1 2020 was a historic dip in Retail sales. Retail revenue has increased by ~82% since then leaving only 11% of that 93% variability unaccounted for which covers operational inefficiencies, theft, food waste, fuel mismanagement, inventory errors, fraud, etc.
The source is the US census bureau and the National Retail Federation who has a vested interest in blaming all shrinkage as the result of outside forces.
Sure, there’s some truth there and as people get more desperate they will certaintly act like it, but this framing is at least 80% bullshit and using that as a starting point means any conclusions drawn from it will be even more bullshit.
Shoplifting isn’t the problem, retail stores are big mad they’re reaching hard limits on what they can/are allowed to extract from society and are using this talking point to push for more authoritarian power grabbing. Can we stop repeating and reinforcing it?
Can we start fucking nationalizing these demonic companies that exist only to impoverish the common people? Make every organization that is necessary for the functioning of society ACCOUNTABLE to society. DIRECTLY.
Shoplifting happens 93% more often now or is the statistic that the value of stolen goods increased by 93% in total? I feel like that matters a lot.
Edit: the article quite well written if you ask me, but lacks sources. There is a graph, but that doesn’t show the numbers mentioned. It shows losses of 31.1B in 2019 and an estimated 47.8B in 2025, which is a rise of ~54% not 93%. It presents itself as investigative journalism, but feels more like a op-ed instead.
I started reading it but am out of time for now. I’m fairly sure that the 93% number is number of known shoplifting incidents and is unrelated to the value of the items. I’d need to read more to be sure.
I do wonder whether the dollar numbers are inflation adjusted or not. I’m sure that info is in the report.
deleted by creator
An increase in the number of known shoplifting incidents would be conflated with increasing surveillance. It would be hard to distinguish observability vs actual increases.
I feel like they would still know about it when doing inventory, no?
Inventory would measure $ worth of goods missing, but wouldn’t ascertain the number of incidents that caused those losses. So the $/incident and incident count figures should be treated as if they have high uncertainty even if the $ figure is accurate.
Thanks, I continued looking further into it as well and found another article on it, which states:
Retailers reported a 93% increase in annual shoplifting incidents in 2023 compared to 2019.
So I believe you are right. Guess op proves that often you can have either interesting text with poorly supported numbers, or boring text with well supported facts. Too bad though, cause i did actually enjoy reading the article (so extra shout-out to op for sharing).
Remember during the pandemic, when they kept bitching about the incredible wave of shoplifting going on, and it turned out that what they were actually bitching about was “shrink”. The thing is that shrink refers to loss of inventory from all causes.
So yes, it includes shoplifting. It also includes spoilage, like if you over-order something and you can’t sell it all before it spoils (management error). Or you order something and it arrives late (supply chain issues during the pandemic, tarriff and ensuing port-clearance issues these days (especially with cuts to government staff)) and you can no longer sell your spooky"Happy Halloween" merchandise/candy for full price in November. It includes employee theft and vendor fraud, administrative error and return fraud, inefficient processes and a poor economy. It’s the difference between optimal sales during a period, and actual sales excluding items that can be carried over to next period. Like, if I don’t sell enough tvs, I can carry that over to next quarter, but I can’t do the same thing with lettuce and tomatoes.
And I can’t help but wonder if this is the same thing happening again. Yes, there’s an increase in shrink, but how much of it is actually shoplifting, and how much of it is due to tariffs and shipping difficulties, managers having ordered products for the economy they expect to have vs the one we actually have. Like, maybe prior can’t afford your organically-grown arugula and bought plain lettuce instead - or just stopped buying short-lived leafy green stuff because they can’t afford it Just because you didn’t get the sales you wanted doesn’t mean the entire difference disappeared into shoplifting - but admitting that would admit that you’re not a perfect manager, and that would threaten your bonus, so shoplifting it is!
It is, see my other comment.
Remember folks, if you see someone stealing food, no you didn’t. Just go about your day.
CMV: A rise in food theft is a failing of the government, not the individual, and it’s the government that should be punished.
I mean it’s the main premise of one of the most popular musicals - Les Miserables.
