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Huh oh. As a committed anti-conspiracy-theorist for the "phones listen to your microphone and targeted ads based on what you say" thing I can tell this is going to be exhausting

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

It would be interesting to see what happened if USA congress tried to pass a law banning ad targeting via surreptitious microphone recordings, mainly because I would love to see who came out to lobby AGAINST that

I'm fully aware that this is a total waste of my time, but I wrote a blog post about this anyway: simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/2/t...

It's easy to dismiss conspiracy theories but it does not do them justice. The truth here is not the material truth about whether or not companies listen to you. The truth is what people believe these companies are capable of and willing to do.

That's what's so frustrating about this: companies violate user privacy in a whole host of complex ways, but people are getting distracted by the ONE thing that they aren't actually doing! If we want to advocate for better privacy we need to campaign on the issues that are real, not imagined

Does it really matter if you want to raise popular support to sanction these companies? It all points in the same direction.

I think it matters a lot. Campaigning to stop companies from serving targeted ads via spying through microphones is a waste of time, and not credible. What are lawmakers supposed to do with that?