• PoopingCough@lemmy.worldEnglish
    416·
    6 months ago

    I know a lot of people won’t believe it happens, because the simpler and more mundane explanation (which is usually the true one) is that it isn’t necessary because of all the data that we know is being collected like browsing habits, searches, etc but my partner has a few times tried to test this as a party trick. Normally her ads are for like kitcschy knick-knacks or like funky flower pots but one time we were hanging with friends talking about this discussion and we decided to all repeat out loud “lab grown diamond engagement rings” for about 15 min. Not 1 hour later she had an Instagram ad that said word for word “lab grown diamond engagement rings.” I know it’s anecdotal and isn’t proof but we’ve done this a few times and it’s seemed to work about half the time; each time we get an ad that’s both hyper specific to what we’re taking about and also not something close to anything we’ve been advertised before.

    • lud@lemm.eeEnglish
      283·
      6 months ago

      Just take this in mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_correlation

      People usually don’t think about the times that the ads haven’t matched up.

      For example a person I know got an ad for a specific ice cream she was talking about earlier. What she didn’t think about is that it was summer and ice cream ads are incredibly common in summer and so is talking about ice cream.

      She likely got many similar ads the days before and after, but she didn’t think about them because they didn’t match her theory that phones (specifically Facebook in her case) are listening.

      I personally think it’s extremely unlikely that phones are listening anywhere close to that degree. At absolutely worst they might try and gauge your mood or something, but that feels unlikely too.

      First of all there would be a lot of actual evidence (like with network sniffing) of it happening if it were happening and the public and legal fallout that would come after someone figured it out would be enormous

      • GiveOver@feddit.ukEnglish
        161·
        6 months ago

        On top of this, there’s lots of ways that they would get the data without secretly listening to microphones, which people may not be aware of in all these anecdotes. In the one above, maybe just one party member googled lab grown diamonds, or perhaps messaged a friend on Facebook messenger about their trick. Not sure if that gets analysed for ads but it’s more plausible than mics. Anyway if they’re all on the same WiFi then they’ll probably be on the same IP and could easily be shown the same ads, making all party members now ripe for a diamond ad.

        There’s a well known video of a guy saying “cat food” around his phone, and then his phone shows Google ads for cat food. He concluded that it was secretly listening to him, because there was no other way for Google to get that info other than to shadily tap into his mic. He performs this experiment on a live streamed YouTube video

        • BorgDrone@lemmy.oneEnglish
          101·
          6 months ago

          There is also the practicality angle. If apps were listening in on all the random bullshit conversations people have, that would be such an unbelievable crapton of data to sift through, it would simply be uneconomical even if possible, just to show you an ad for cat food that will pay out like one cent IF someone clicked on it?

          As for the lab grown diamonds thing, there is a real possibility that it went exactly the other way around. The ads didn’t get shown because they talked about it, but they talked about is because of the ads. We see ads all the time to the point we’re no longer consciously aware of them. Obviously, they still influence our behavior or companies wouldn’t spend a fortune on them. So a lab grown diamond company is running an ad campaign on FB. Someone sees that ad and it doesn’t consciously register, but it plants the idea of lab grown diamonds in their head. Then this causes them to bring it up in a conversation later. Now consciously aware of the concept, you suddenly notice the ad you ignored earlier.

          IMO, this is a much more realistic and even scarier scenario than apps listening in. It’s apps manipulating your unconscious thoughts.