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This has happened to me waaaaaaay too often to be mere coincidence. Especially for topics I have just talked about for the first. And! This has happened to other people around me way too often too! Like if it happened to me once or twice, maybe coincidence. It's been countless times.

I haven't actually tried to prove it (for myself I don't really have to). It's not like that rare case when something made a sound and it seemed like a ghost but actually there was an explanation to it if you investigated it. This ad stuff is waaaaaaay more common than that. All coincidences?

How many times yesterday / this week / this month did you say something out loud near a device and NOT see a targeted ad relating to the thing you said?

Did you miss this thread back in 2018? x.com/dylanmckaynz... Even though the OS might be locked down, FB finds ways to exfiltrate your data anyway. They take anything they can. It's not a question of whether or not they are harvesting extra data from your phone, it's a question of what and when.

Nothing in those Facebook or Google exports suggests they've been recording audio from the microphone - I've looked

Yet from they way they operate we can be certain that they would if they could. That is the issue. Are they? Maybe. Could they? Probably. Would they? Yes. That is enough to justify addressing the issue and formally investigating it. On top of the "mass hysteria" around the issue.

My argument here is absolutely not that these companies don't invade our privacy in all kinds of weird and upsetting ways It's that targeting ads to us based on spying though our microphones is one of the few things that they do NOT do, and it's bad that so many people believe that one

Oh man, this is indeed one of those super prevalent and very hard to disprove conspiracy theories out there. I hear it all the time even from people who aren't normally into conspiracies.

It doesn't matter that it's a conspiracy theory or not... the issue is that state/capitalistic surveillance is **very doable** now, because engineers have been working on it for so many years. So whether it already happened or not, it's just a question of time We need to fight back now

What proactive measures do you suggest to stop a potential future phone-based audio surveillance?

I think the concerning part here is that online surveillance is so pervasive that people feel like their phones are spying on them—if anything, the truth is *much worse* because the ad networks are gathering data you would never dare to share even in private conversation

My playbook for explaining why in general phones are not listening: - Both Apple and Google show an indicator when third-party apps are recording and require the app to be actively used, so third-party apps cannot be listening - Apple/Google can listen (and do constantly, but immediately delete...

if a trigger word isn't activated) but those companies have a lot staked on their reputation, with a high probability of being caught if they did listen. Given those it seems unlikely that anyone is intentionally listening, and the events in the suit were probably accidental and rare.

Of course, Apple/Google and third-party apps are constantly getting as much info on you as they can, it's just that secretly recorded audio isn't part of that.

From the Reuters story: www.reuters.com/legal/apple-... "Two plaintiffs said their mentions of Air Jordan sneakers and Olive Garden restaurants triggered ads for those products. Another said he got ads for a brand name surgical treatment after discussing it, he thought privately, with his doctor."

... but since the case is being settled, I don't think we get to hear if that ended up being proven or not It's actually a detail that originates with the original lawsuit filing back in 2021 www.reuters.com/technology/a...

I bet that detail ends being used as "proof" that this happens from now on out, and nobody will ever try to explain how Apple's Q&A recordings of snippets of wake words were somehow fed in realtime to the world's ad networks in a way that resulted in as targeting shortly afterwards

I was in the "this isn't happening" camp for a long time. A few nights ago, I mentioned custom home builders. I did not look them up, neither did my wife. I haven't looked into it for months, maybe years. Next morning, I'm playing a game, up pops an ad for a custom home builder.

There could be other realistic explanations: you mentioned custom home builders to your wife, and SHE looked them up, and because you're connected to the same wifi, Facebook knew that you were in the same room, so he suggested them to you too, etc

That said, the issue is not so much whether it really happened or not, the issue is that *everything is in place to make state / capitalistic surveillance doable*, so we have to fight so it never happens, or we risk to become the next China, where citizens are watched and limited in everything

My answer to that is always the same: humans are pattern matching machines We are unable to consider the billion incidents when we talked about something obscure and DIDN'T see an ad for it shortly afterwards, but just one coincidence will convince us forever

I kinda trust that Apple doesn't intentionally do it, as they're not really in the ads business. I can believe Google doesn't do it on the system level. I don't trust that dozens of apps though, especially companion apps from some less reputable manufacturers.

Why wouldn't they? It's possible and it makes money. All phones have a chip constantly listening for keywords ("hey Siri"). It comes for free basically. Those assistants are the most underwhelming piece of tech today. And yet no on cancelled them, even Google that cancels everything?

They wouldn't because they say they don't, and they value the ongoing trust of people who spend $1000s on their hardware I genuinely believe that Apple have the most sophisticated privacy engineering in the world: simonwillison.net/2024/Jun/11/...