Imagine all the times you’ve had a conversation with somebody where you didn’t identify a pattern match with your YouTube recommendations.
Comment on Your Phone Isn’t Eavesdropping on You to Show You Ads (It’s Worse Than That)
JayleneSlide@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Anecdote: (a little background) I don’t typically deal with narcissistic people; I’m not troubled by narcissists in my life. My tech life is pretty well locked down, but it could always be better (working on it). And my YouTube suggestions are tightly, carefully curated to topics pertinent to my professional and personal projects.
I had an utter piece of shit contractor working for me on a project; he was a grifting, conniving, manipulative shitbag. When I outright fired his ass, he first got all self-righteous then tried to play the victim, but I wasn’t playing any of his games. My phone was sitting on the workbench next to me.
The next day, I opened YouTube because an engineer I know told me he dropped a new video on software we recently discussed. There among my suggestions were a bunch of videos on how to deal with narcissists. So somehow, in only talking with the contractor (he doesn’t use email, text, or other electronic communications), YouTube decided I was curious about dealing with narcissism. I’m morbidly curious how YouTube made that decision, and whether it was audio or “we know you’re associating with this guy who we identify as a problematic narcissist and here are some resources.”
Now, I’m just some douchecanoe on the internet and you should probably dismiss me based on that alone. But GODDAMN, the data points sure do pile up quickly on how deeply we’re being surveilled.
poopkins@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Manticore@lemmy.nz 3 weeks ago
Phone proximity is used, so if your phone is in proximity to his, the algorythm can note a relationship between his interests and yours- or even the interests of people who also interact with him.
It’s possible his behaviour is learned from a narcissistic parent, or that enough of his customers are involved in learning about narcissism. You also mightve been at a Cafe near a clinic for long enough your phone tried to ping the office wifi.
Phones spy on us in a dozen different ways, mostly pattern recognition. They track location without GPS (by recording wifi pings), and track interests without the microphone. So they can claim they’re not tracking those specific things while still gathering scary amounts of data.
JayleneSlide@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The relationship correlation data makes a lot of sense if only from a bandwidth perspective.
TORFdot0@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not to counter your anecdote with my own. But I have been getting a lot of email spam pushing books and workshops dealing with narcissistic or toxic employees and I don’t even manage anyone so it may just be that firing toxic people is hot right now as far as workplace issues and any trend has people trying to make a buck off it
Marty_Man_X@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This can be as “simple” as your phones being in close proximity to each other for an extended period, and sharing device advertising IDs/other device data via WiFi, Bluetooth. Might be more to it, but it’s a likely factor.
Devices do this regularly btw, smartphones also scrape for WiFi networks to better geolocate etc.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It sounds like this guy doesn’t have a smartphone though
JayleneSlide@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Correct. I can definitively say “I don’t know how this happened.” But I do know it creeps me out and spurs me to speed up my privacy efforts.
@Marty_Man_X@lemmy.world and @TORFdot0@lemmy.world both make great points, both of which can certainly explain the sudden change in suggestions.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Doesn’t have to
Ime even if it’s just a brick for being able to call, or his car is from the last 15 years: they ping cell towers and that can be enough