[braindouche]

My personal favorite anecdote: I was out driving in the car with my partner. I said "hey, that guy is riding an electric unicycle", and then starting 4 hours later and lasting for 5 months, facebook showed me ads for electric unicycles.

[ryandvm]

Sure, we all have funny little anecdotes about times we talked about something and then saw ads for it later that day.

But as a technologist and software developer myself, I know just how difficult it would be to make a device that would be able to constantly transcribe the audio input stream and surreptitiously upload that data all day - and do so without destroying the battery life or having a noticeable network bandwidth footprint.

Not too mention the fact that if any memos/emails documenting any part of these "black-ops" advertising programs were leaked, it would be the tech story of the decade and probably result in billions of dollars of fines and legal fees for Facebook/Google/Apple/Amazon.

No, in the end, it seems much more likely to me that these occurrences are just the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in effect.

After all, how many things have you talked about that DIDN'T end up in your advertising stream? I mean, this is pretty easy to test. Why don't you just start talking about adult diapers in front of your phone right now and see what happens?

[sdinsn]

And do you recall all the times when you said something and didn't see any ads for it? It sounds like you are letting confirmation bias rule your thoughts.