No, Aldi SHOP&GO is not part of a plan to make a 'digital prison'

By: Arron Williams
June 13 2023

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Context

A video on Twitter with over 900,000 views claims that Aldi SHOP&GO, a supermarket in Greenwich, London, is part of the “beginning stages” of a “digital prison.” The tweet also urges people to “resist digital IDs.” This video has gained wider virality through shares on both Facebook and TikTok. Other social media posts have labeled it as evidence of the “Great Reset” and New World Order conspiracies, and evidence that supermarkets are using “World Economic Forum (WEF) Digital IDs” to limit and deny people access to food.

In Fact

There is no evidence that Aldi SHOP&GO is part of a plan to make a digital prison or that it will be used to deny people access to food. These claims are related to the known Great Reset conspiracy theory.

According to the BBC, the first – and currently only – Aldi SHOP&GO store opened in January 2022 and is a trial store allowing customers to pay without a conventional checkout. Aldi is also not the first supermarket to trial this; Amazon, Tesco, and Sainsbury’s all opened check-out free stores in 2018. A 2019 article by Forbes explains that the “cashier-less” trend is an effort to attract time-crunched customers and that Amazon Go has seen positive results.

The Aldi website mentions that to gain access to the store, you must download the SHOP&GO app, register an account, and then scan a QR code at the gate. The store has no checkouts and instead uses in-store cameras to scan items as they are picked up and taken off shelves. Items not returned to shelves are added to a virtual basket before digital payment is taken when you leave the store with your shopping.

There is no evidence that Aldi’s SHOP&GO or any other till-free stores are part of a plan orchestrated by the World Economic Forum or related to digital identity programs. Claims that the WEF intends to implement a digital prison are related to the unsubstantiated Great Reset conspiracy theory, a variant of the New World Order conspiracy theory.

According to the Institute For Strategic Dialogue, the theory believes that the WEF and its founder Klaus Schwab orchestrated the COVID-19 lockdowns, the pandemic, and other crises to further their nefarious plans and establish a totalitarian rule. Other claims assert that the WEF wants to collapse the economy, bring in a Marxist authoritarian regime and use climate action policies to control what people eat. Logically Facts has previously checked numerous Great Reset conspiracy theory claims – including those related to digital IDs – and found them false.

The Verdict

There is no evidence that Aldi SHOP&GO is part of a plan to make digital prisons or control access to food. These claims are related to the known Great Reset conspiracy theory. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.