Comment on Your Phone Isn’t Eavesdropping on You to Show You Ads (It’s Worse Than That)

• Jack_Burton@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  A while back on Reddit I saw a post asking about this stuff. Companies don’t need to “listen” anymore, they have much more sophisticated options now. This example will use 3 people: A (wife) B (husband) and C (wife’s old friend from school).

  The question: A goes to the store without B, and runs into C, who proceeds to tell A about this cool gaming chair he just got. After the conversation, A puts the interaction aside and never mentions it to B. B later gets ads for the gaming chair. If B never had any interaction whatsoever about the chair, and A never even talked about it to B, how does B get the ads?

  The answer: A goes to the store, and her phone knows this through location data. The algorithm knows A is at the store, and now picks up that C is also at the same store. The algo then finds a connection through social media that A and C know each other, and maybe even knows spending habits and sees A and C buy similar things. The odds are good that A and C will interact at the store.

  C has been searching about this gaming chair for months, has just recently bought it, and talks about it constantly on socials. Odds are good that if A and C interact, C will talk about the chair.

  A has no interest in gaming or tech, but B does. The algo knows A and B are married, and B would be interested in the chair C just bought. There is now a vector to send ads from the interaction of A and C directly to B, even though A never mentioned anything about the chair to B, and B has never even met C.

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• ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I mean, what’s the point of collecting all that data if there is no use to it. Why offering you a points program that seemingly gives you free stuff for tracking your purchases if there is no benefit to the company. I’d say unless it’s a hugely incompetent company, they don’t collect so much data on people for no reason whatsoever.

  And its been going on for decades with some people having handed in their info to various companies, many if them maybe even connected at some level the different dots on people, for the entire time. And that’s all for nothing so now those companies also need to record you 24/7? Which is an even bigger amount of data to be stored exactly where? Also needs a massive amount of filtering, because really, how meaningful are everyday conversations of people.

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• Pheonixdown@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  See, people say that ad companies can use all this information they gather to better serve targeted advertising, but that’s just not my anecdotal experience.

  I get served ads all the time in languages I don’t speak, for VERY specific job related audiences that I’m not even close to related to, state politics that I’ve never lived in, services that I’m already actively subscribed to, just the worst targeting ever.

  If I have to get advertised to, I’d so much rather get an ad that could actually be at all relevant to my life, or even some generic ad over the total misses.

  Like, if you’re going through the trouble to do all this shady shit to get my data at least be good at it using it…

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  • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If targeted advertising worked the way they say it does then why is Amazon with my entire purchase history at their disposal, still unable to stop themselves from trying to sell me a second washing machine just after I bought one from them? Or Audible with hundreds of books in my account, most of them English, is still trying to sell me German versions of books with original English language versions? The whole notion that advertising has all that data to do better advertising assumes a competence level that just isn’t there.

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    • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Because Amazon just have a shit algorithm. They don’t distinguish single purchase items but their algorithm is skewed to try and get you to come back to get the things you got in the past.

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      • Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        One of the goals of that targeting might also be: not to make you buy another washing machine but just to have you click on an ad. That alone brings them ad revenue. And chances are, that people still look at other washing machines even if they just bought one.

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      • joshcodes@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Oooo close. It’s a shit algorithm that favours the company that paid the most for the spot. So people rely on paying for a good spot to get promoted on the most minor fucking chance of someone buying their shitty item. I heard someone say the average best item you search for is found 17th place.

        They’re scamming the buyer and the seller and profiting off of being terrible for everyone.

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• deranger@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is what I’ve been saying for years. You don’t need to listen to someone’s microphone to serve eerily relevant ads. I’ve heard people commonly discussing how they talked about something and saw an ad for it later. You’re already being tracked everywhere and a bit of confirmation bias is all you need to focus in on the times it works. It’s like that story of the prenatal vitamins being recommended to that woman who didn’t realize she’s pregnant.

  This isn’t to say that I don’t believe someone can’t possibly turn on the mic in a targeted attack, but few of us are having conversations that are that important. It’s way easier to target you other ways using data that’s much more available.

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  • BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’ve been thinking it’s the other way around. You see such and such ad X times and then the next thing you know you’re thinking about it, then mention something to someone. Then Notice the ad you’ve been seeing for a while now.

    They don’t have to listen for a thought they put there in the first place.

    I think history will look back at this period of wild ass mass propaganda and be like: what do you mean they used it to sell crap?

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  • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you’re already taking about a product you’ve likely already been swayed by targeted marketing (not just online but physical/traditional too). And you only become more aware after you’ve seen an ad with it still on your mind. And this is the moment where some people say that their phone must’ve been listening to them earlier on, because they can’t seem to comprehend cohorts and marketing in general.

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  • ch00f@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It would cost like $1k for some YouTuber to buy a few burner android phones, slap prepaid sims in them, and then talk to them about their love of Hyundai and protein powder. It would blow the whole lid off whatever conspiracy were all just resigning ourselves to.

    Such an easy thing to test and yet there’s zero evidence that it’s happening. At least the way people assume.

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    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How would it even work? You would need to transmit and process mind boggling levels of data, in almost real time according to some of these stories.

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      • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Local speech to text has been easy to do for at least a decade and then you’re just firing off a text file to HQ to add keywords to a user file. These days an AI will likely parse the text to find recommendable products, ten years ago you’d have just had a gigantic list of all your partners’ brand names and desired key trigger phrases in a database and run the conversation text against the database and look for matches. Super easy to accomplish. Updating someone’s ad preferences 15-30 minutes after they talk about a product may as well be considered real time.

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