TIL my phone's been listening to me for years and I just proved it

I was painting a house over in Arlington last week and mentioned to my crew that I was craving a specific brand of hot sauce I hadn't bought in like 5 years. The next day I opened Instagram and there was an ad for that exact hot sauce. Creeped me out so I started digging and found out that apps use your microphone data for targeted ads and it's been a thing since at least 2017. Has anyone else had that moment where the algorithm got way too specific?

3 comments

3 Comments

cora_west53d ago

Oh my goodness, yes. That happened to me last year and it honestly shook me up. My husband and I were talking about an old childhood candy bar neither of us had seen in decades, and not ten minutes later my phone showed me a Facebook ad for an online store that sold it. I know people say it's just "coincidence" or whatever, but I have seen way too many of these experiences to believe that anymore. It's just not right that our personal conversations are being scooped up and sold like that without us knowing clearly what we agreed to. I really think there needs to be more laws about this kind of thing, because it feels like a total invasion of privacy.

nora_webb513d ago

Ten minutes later? That's terrifying, @cora_west5.

max_schmidt773d ago

It really feels like we're all living through some kind of sci-fi movie now, doesn't it? I notice it with the weirdest things, like my wife and I were joking about a old movie quote from the 90s and suddenly my YouTube recommended page had a clip from that exact movie. It's not just one platform either, it's all of them feeding off each other somehow. I get that targeted ads have been around forever, but when it happens with stuff you only said out loud near your phone, that crosses a line for me. The worst part is you can't even prove it because they always say it's just algorithms and coincidence. But honestly, how many coincidences can one person have before it's just plain creepy?