https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtfU9AsUmc4
A product you were just talking about pops up in an online ad. How? Advertising algorithms are so good that they may know what you want even before you do. C…
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.
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
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
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.
I think you need to pick some weirder phrase to test… for science
“Triple-headed remote-controlled vibrating crack scratcher”
“'chocolate-flavored clown wig”
Yeah
Nope. The amount of data required for constant recording and streaming of audio would be ridiculous and would show up in analysis.
The simpler answer is that the algorithms are getting scary good.
The device wouldn’t necessarily have to be constantly streaming the audio to a central server. If it’s capable of hearing wake up words like “Ok Google” it’s capable of listening for other phrases and having onboard processing to relay back the results much more compressed. Whether or not this is common practice is another matter, and yes the algorithms are scary good even without eavesdropping.
I heard a big one is location. If your mate just came back from Asia and talks to you about it and you then see ads for holidays to Asia. It’s because if the location proximity to him, not the conversation. They just assume you would talk about it
Ah ok, thank you for clarifying, that’s not creepy at all
You are right, but it is very simple for phones to convert spoken word to text and sending text information back and forth is very lightweight on data usage. So it’s not happening, but it could happen.
My phone’s lock screen automatically tells me the name of music being played near it that it has to be hearing through the mic.
Mine does that too. It’s actually all done on device with a special chip and it periodically updates a database on the phone with digital fingerprints for songs. You’ll notice sometimes it’s just wrong or thinks fan noises are music playing.
Yeah, my chip does the same thing. Sometimes I think I hear distant faint music in the background of fan noise, but turns out ir was just the fan.
The amount of data required for constant recording and streaming of audio would be ridiculous
Relax, it is no big deal. Less than 1 GB for 24 hours of constant recording in good quality.
Even much less with compression (mp3 etc) and a little loss of audio quality. And if you leave away all the silence, I guess you can tune it down to a few MB.
That’s one harddisk for a year. But ofc you don’t even want to keep a whole year.
Processing is done on the device and only text is uploaded. Streaming audio would also be easy to detect.
Not to mention there are a lot of data points that are better. For instance, the can now if your interested in something by monitoring how long you look at it and if you click on something.
Download Instagram and start talking about dogs and dog food and it will give you posts and ads about dog food. My friend was talking about random stuff like feet and foot fetishes the other day and you wouldn’t believe what was on their feed when they were scrolling.
I’m just assuming it is
Even if it isn’t now, it’s good practice for when it starts in the future.
I always say into the microphone of my smartphone, “I know you’re listening to me.” If they are really listening to me, they will get scared. And if not, no one will know about it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=xtfU9AsUmc4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
In the not-so-far future, when your smartphone breaks down, you can hear the doorbell ringing immediately, and the Amaz*n guy brings a new one.
I disable “hey siri” so… probably not? Shouldn’t be anyway but I don’t I don’t subscribe to the idea that it is because of how good the ads lineup sometime. I’m aware of how slick advertisers are with cookies and web traffic.
Yes, yes they do. My wife’s phone does this all the time, Talk about something, even random or sometimes from a tv show. In minutes she has instagram or youtube ads about the very thing.
That is because it has 100 other data points to go off of. It also compares you to everyone else.
Listening=spying. There’s literally a little fucking soy in every phone. The best way to give them hell is to poison the well. Shit in it. Just put your phone over a thing that sways around and makes voice sounds. So a radio and a baby swing. It will think it’s you and it will start fucking up their database about you.
