And the really shocking thing is how easy that was to normalize.
Talk about random thing at dinner, phone in pocket.
Post dinner, hit up Insta and boom, ad for random thing… and at that point, some people go “heh” and keep scrolling. Some likely think it’s “the algorithm” being magical and just using other context cues to guess that they would have mentioned it at dinner. Many have realized that, in fact, the devices you pay for and subscribe to are actively spying on you. Constantly.
And yet, the number of people who have opted out of using these devices and services is relatively minimum. There is a good reason for that: many of these services are so ubiquitous, they look and feel like utilities. And in some cases, they effectively are, as it can be impossible to use another service without a smartphone.
Hell, I can’t even pay my damn rent without using some stupid app.
What this demonstrates is how good tracking is now. They’re not listening to your microphone, at least not while your phone is in your pocket or whatever, because they don’t need to. They can already see your fingerprint, what websites you’re visiting, what your searching, and all of this applies to people you know as well- people who likely aren’t privacy conscious and share all contact info with whatever app is requesting. Listening to the mic is not necessary to suggest highly relevant ads.
They’re not listening to your microphone, at least not while your phone is in your pocket or whatever, because they don’t need to.
I don’t deny that fingerprinting is powerful. But, I also have started to wear a tinfoil hat on the “mic always listening” issue. I have experienced (several times) ads for random things that I have only discussed – never searched for or had other interaction with in any way.
It wouldn’t be in my fingerprint, so the only other possibility is that others with a similar fingerprint to me had already searched for the same thing. Frankly, from an Occam’s Razor perspective, I just find it far less likely that we have such a hive mentality that everyone with similar digital fingerprints ends up having the same “random” discussions. At that point, “they’re always listening to your mic” seems downright practical.
How many times a day are you shown ads that are completely irrelevant?
Me personally, I’ve never once experienced the “they’re listening to my mic for ads” phenomenon. I think someone would notice by now either by seeing increased upload usage or a hot device- at least with current technology. On device machine learning will make this much easier to analyze without having to upload audio.
Not that I don’t think it’s entirely possible to listen right now, I just don’t think it’s occurring to unimportant people. I’m not particularly important or rich nor is anyone I know. It seems much more plausible to me that we’re just seeing conventional web tracking get a lot better + a healthy dose of confirmation bias.
