Tested this a while back, had me and my gf talk about kids like where going to have one and all that but never got any baby products before and never typed or asked any electronics about anything related to it.
Within like a few days we started getting ads for babies and expecting parents.
It’s solid proof there always hearing us.
It’s solid proof there always hearing us.
there was actually a study performed a few years ago that didn’t find any evidence for several thousand tested apps to listen on you (some of the scummy ones were caught recording screens, on the other hand). also, the company mentioned in the posted article admits that their claims were exaggerated.
It’s a solid anecdote, for sure.
Absolutely not “proof” though. Unless you made absolutely sure to not accidentally look at a photo on social media of a baby for too long, or scrolled too slowly past a YouTube reel aimed at kids, or listened to a baby shark trap remix on Spotify.
We have LLM models that can give you (mostly) accurate data on how to do a given task based purely on their ability to guess which word comes next from the sources being fed to it, and you don’t think algorithms exist to extrapolate your potential buying habits based on the aforementioned data points?
I’ve gotten very specific targeted ads before that were completely wrong, just because I’d watched like one YouTube video about the hobby or something. It’s really just a prediction algorithm based on the troves of data our use of digital devices gives them.
Or happened to be in the same place as someone who is looking up this type of thing (for example coworkers, or patrons of a park you visit often.)
In reality, the other data that can be gathered is more useful and easier to work with than trying to parse audio and video all the time.
Plus you’d absolutely see that traffic on your network, especially if you lived in an area where you only get like 5Mb/s down.
Uh dude, your girlfriend is pregnant
I have ads blocked on nearly everything, but when I was at a client where they are not blocked, I got an ad for something I was talking about the week before. Don’t remember it, but it happened exactly as you said.
A popular podcast in brazil called Brainstorm9 did the “bowl experiment”, where everyone of the members talked about wanting to buy a bowl but only using their voice, they all started receiving ads for bowls, and I bet you never received a bowl ad since it’s not a thing people often search for online.
Just like apps aren’t accessing your camera, but Zuckerberg that owns the second biggest ad company in the world, tapes his notebook camera.
Always listening is somewhat preferable to ‘Has such an accurate profile on you from the data that is available that these instances happen by pure coincidence’. That’s way scarier and just as intrusive. At least with a listening device you can get rid of it.
Sad thing is, it’s likely both.
I’ve always stood by the position it’s totally possible to snoop audio and match it to a bloom filter or on device least of keywords for ads. Siri is always on so your mic can be always listening and have no impact on the battery life.
In modern mobile OSs it should be clear that your mic is either on or off (to apps) and we don’t see the mic on all the time as would be needed for this. Maybe there’s a hack, but at the scale and being used for commercial services I think someone would have noticed.
That’s probably because you have no technical knowledge of voice recognition whatsoever.
Lots of people of Siri disabled entirely. My household included.
And you aren’t wrong, from page 2 of the article:
Amazon, for example, has previously confirmed that it uses stuff people say (and do) with Alexa for targeted ads (Amazon has long claimed that it doesn’t sell customer data). But our devices are only expected to gather data on what we say when we ask them to listen to us.
Let’s start with this. Google Assistant, Siri, Cortina Alexa, etc are always listening.
Your phone can be listening, but at least on Android the microphone permissions are necessary, and unless there are native exploits I’m super unaware of, this happens at the lowest levels.
Keep your phone in your pocket, check the app permissions, learn how to check data leaving your network, and learn to love Big Brother.
Talk about a new car near your phone.
Enjoy car ads.
Nope, nothing going on here.
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Since when? I disable the camera through software and also use a makeshift lens cap attached to the phone case. Never once came across this. What phone are you using?
I’m skeptical of this, but I wouldn’t put it past them either.
“guys google assistant isn’t always listening lol it only wakes up on the trigger word. you people know nothing about IT or how good marketers are at guessing” -10,000,000 neckbeards for the last decade, despite everyone’s obvious anecdotal experiences that are just too bullshit to ignore.
Did it really take them admitting it for a publication to talk about it?
Edit: this has angered the neckbeards
the company itself has admitted that their claims were exaggerated.
Just because you don’t understand statistics and metadata analysis doesn’t make it fake. And of course, since it’s real, you can surely point to all the apps whose network traffic was monitored and all the voice data constantly being transmitted that was captured. Because surely in an era where many people pay for data, it’d be impossible to miss the constant audio stream coming from every one of these devices eating up your bandwidth cap.
But nah, “I feel this is true” is all we need. Even when the person who says it, and said it to advertise their product, admits they lied for sales.
Are they tracking you? You bet. If you think they’re so unsophisticated that they need to literally listen to your every word instead of the millions of other data points you FREELY give away already, you just don’t understand the tech and are fear mongering.
Exactly, their predictive algorithms are entirely too accurate and it’s not just clicking on or searching for products that gives them the information. Even how long it took you to scroll past something is used to analyze potential future behavior and deliver you ads.
You take in so much content everyday that you don’t even realize. They probably saw plenty of them that OP didn’t even realize, I’m sure they gave it away via some other means.
People have tested this before and gotten no additional ads based on their words, it’s all anecdotal.
It was the admission that was the news. People know they are being gaslit so when someone finally admits they are gaslighting you you can and should make them pay. Problem with gaslighting is that you don’t have proof, but you know
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