[newswasboring]

I understand you have used Occam's razor to come to this conclusion. And its a perfectly valid point. But, this particular story has been repeated so many times around me that I am genuinely suspicious. But alas, the only way to know would be to look at the code. And even then we might not understand because its a blackbox type system which is ill understood by even its designers.

[GekkePrutser]

It's actually possible to evoke some interesting responses from the algorithms by reducing the amount of data input.

For example: When I set up a new facebook account for my mother (at her explicit wish), she had no friends or interests marked yet. Facebook showed her some random ads and posts.

During the setup I was scrolling through her timeline and my phone beeped so I stopped scrolling for about 2 seconds. The post shown was a random post about some fish.

When I picked it up, I saw it quickly replacing the next random post with something about the same kind of fish. So evidently it even looks at how long you look at certain content to determine your interests.

I suppose it is possible to derive other algorithmic determinations using similar methods.

[nexuist]

> So evidently it even looks at how long you look at certain content

It does. Instagram constantly sends back telemetry including your scroll position, which can then be used to determine what you were looking at and for how long. Scroll right past an ad? you probably won't see it again; the algorithm knows it didn't have an impact on you. Meanwhile, spend a few seconds reading what it says, and this teaches the algorithm that you are interested in similar content.

[syndacks]

How is it that no such scandal has been uncovered? Surely by now some hacker would have been able to prove that a phone is recording, sending to server, processing, and returning relevant ad. Or surely someone would have come forward or whistle blown by now. So I'll quote Hitchen's razor for you:

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

[michaelcampbell]

Many have tried. Steve Gibson (of GRC fame) did some wiresharking around one of his Amazon devices and found no abnormal networking traffic when he was talking to it, vs not.

[scubbo]

Alexa devices have been extensively and repeatedly shown to not be "passively listening".

The same cannot be said for phone apps.

[worik]

Untrue.

I am pushing the boat out because I rely on my memory. But there were reports from Apple contractors about what they heard on Sirri. It is always on, always listening.

[michaelcampbell]

> But there were reports from Apple contractors about what they heard on Sirri. It is always on, always listening.

These 2 sentences may not necessarily need to both be true. As I recall, one could opt in (or was it opt-out?) to an Apple program to upload bits and pieces of spoken word for its people to parse "humanly" for it to improve its speech to text.

I'm no Apple fan, but I'm not sure one implies the other, here.

[newswasboring]

I have acknowledged that my reasoning is less sound than the occam's razor, and I didn't really assert data impropriety. So calm down.

But about your first point. I don't think even the designers and maintainers of this blackbox understand the system. Looking at it from that point of view, the chances of a hacker finding proof for this is pretty low.

[IX-103]

The thing is you can disapprove one piece without understanding the whole system.

It would be pretty easy to show that a) sound is not being continually recorded and streamed over the internet and b) the device is not using enough processing power to decode speech. Both have been done, so this is veering into conspiracy theory territory.

[TeMPOraL]

FWIW, streaming voice over the Internet isn't required for this attack - all the software needs is to send a few bytes long tag indicating the topic of an overheard conversation.

The processing power required for this isn't big either - remember that 12+ years ago Microsoft Windows shipped with a speech recognition system that was in many ways better than what the phones currently offer, and worked off-line and with almost unnoticeable performance penalty. And if you're interested in probabilistic reporting ("there's 86% I've heard a word matching this tag in the last hour..."), you can relax performance requirements even further.

So, out of the things you mention, the only somewhat convincing piece of evidence would be that the apps in question are not accessing microphone in the background.

[newswasboring]

My dude! we are talking past each other. I am not asserting data handling impropriety. That is not what concerns me. What concerns me is they are letting these black box systems emotionally manipulate me.

[qyi]

Why would Google be recording your mic and using it for ads where they would just be caught for doing it? I mean it's completely possible. But more likely just confirmation bias. Speaking of Occam's razor, we should just dump modern "technology" (smart phones, smart TVs, the web, IoT, even feature phones were no good).

There's actually nothing hard about the concept of a mobile phone, it's just a computer (or could even be a simple PCB) with a mic and speaker. No need for "secret sauce" standards such that nobody can tell if it's secure (I mean it isn't, the bugs just get patched every week, day, nanosecond, whatever). Hell, you can even make a completely open and simple (even more important than open) phone communication standard and charge 1 billion people tens of dollars per month to use your network and become the richest person on earth.

edit: I mean facebook, or whatever (also facebook would have to gain access to the mic [maybe facebook has mic permission i guess, i am unfamiliar with smart phones])

[worik]

Because they have "voice assistants" that have to be always on, always transmitting, because the software that recognises your words on your mobile phone needs help.

Facebook has access to your mic if you ever use it for its voice com functions (do not do that) and do not explicitly remove the permissions to access teh mic (do do that).

They have been caught several times. Thing is people give them permission to record through the mic so it is legal.

Do not confuse legal with good, it is evil.

[anigbrowl]

Well, another approach would be to do some controlled experiments: Pick a selection of somewhat-uncommon products. Get some volunteers to set up Facebook accounts on clean computers and phones with no adblockers. Monitor their incoming advertising messages for 2 weeks.

Then randomly assign the products from the first step to the volunteers, give them information about the product on paper and ask them to hold verbal conversations about such such products.

If they start getting adverts that happen to match the subject of those verbal conversations, something is going on.

[quenix]

The "11:11 on the clock" story has also been repeated by millions of people for decades. That many people fall prey to a cognitive bias does not make it any less of a bias.

[skybrian]

You need to default to uncertainty. It’s not proven that it was coincidence, but it’s also not proven that it isn’t.

Sometimes you never do find out what happened.

[whimsicalism]

Yes, it is a common cognitive bias.

[michaelcampbell]

> But, this particular story has been repeated so many times around me that I am genuinely suspicious

So, one meta-step up in abstraction? People "notice" these these things which they talk about and now you're especially sensitive to hearing them?