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I still don’t think companies serve you ads based on spying through your microphone (simonwillison.net)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

189 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Not my title! I do think we are being listened to. And location tracked. And it's being passed on to advertisers. Is it apple though? Probably not is my take away from this article, but I don't trust plenty of others, and apple still does

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

With the scientific method and anecdotal evidence: kind of never. It's illegitimate to draw that conclusion, this way.

You got to dig down to the facts. Or we can just tell the fact that a lot of people feel that way. And I mean "confirmation bias" is a very good explanation. We also have thousands of people believe in esoterics, homeopathy etc. The mechanics of psychology are well-understood. And it's kind of the reason why we invented science in the first place. Because we found things aren't always as they seem. And there are a lot of dynamics to factor in.

If we want to get to the truth, we have to do a proper study. I'm not an expert on this, so I don't know if we got to that, yet. I know people have demonstrated this is technically possible. But as far as I'm aware people have also taken apart a few of the major apps like Facebook etc, logged the traffic and couldn't find anything that uses microphone data to do targeted advertising.

Conclusion: It's either not there, or we missed it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Now I want to do some kind of experiment where I speak things into my phone and see what happens. It still seems too much to be coincidental.