[ellyagg]

I've been keeping a running gag with my acquaintances over YouTube's recommendations for a while now, because they're so improbably and time-sensitively on the nose.

Yesterday was the worst one yet. We were driving and my daughter was filling out MadLibs by hand in a paper booklet in the backseat. One of the fill-ins we came up with was "pantyliner".

As soon as we got home from the event, I sat down and YouTube gave me an above-the-fold recommendation for a Japanese pantyliner commercial.

I've seen enough. This word never comes up in day-to-day conversation, it's not in my interests, and it's one of the least exciting topics imaginable. None of me, my wife, nor my daughter had hands free to search it up at that time, and besides, we were totally preoccupied with driving and our event until I got home a couple hours later.

For the record, we're an iPhone family and were in a Tesla.

I had been convinced by, I think, a Simon Willison article that this isn't happening. But he's wrong. This is happening.

[mgillett54]

I wonder if the sequence of online events that lead you to “organically” come up with pantyliner was also enough for the ad algorithms to do the same.

Maybe subconsciously in videos or other browsing activity pantyliner adjacent things were discussed.

Not saying companies aren’t using audio for ads, but it just feels like there would be more leaks from the big COs if it were ubiquitous in everyday life

[carimura]

This is what we've been gaslit into believing that's for sure....

[ribosometronome]

You can see the flag fluttering in the breeze! It was a sound stage and not a moon landing! Oh wait, wrong one.

[jonathankoren]

I also think there’s something weird going on with YouTube recommendations. The thing that I’ve noticed is that people I follow on TikTok are showing up in my YouTube recommendations, and I’ve never interacted with their YouTube accounts. Most times I didn’t even know they had a YouTube account.

I use the same email address on both accounts, but it seems weird that TT would export its follow graph to YT for any reason.

[echoangle]

How is that surprising? Maybe you just get recommended the same stuff on multiple platforms because it reflects your interests? If I am interested in Retro computing and get the 8-Bit Guy in my recommendations on multiple platforms, would you conclude that the platforms colluded? Occams Razor tells me what’s the more likely conclusion

[jonathankoren]

Because I have never interacted with any of that type of content or creators on the platform, and then when I suddenly get 10 different creators recommended to me simultaneously from 10 different topics. That’s weird.

I also explicitly said it would be “weird” for them share information, so you concluding that that I think collusion is the result is unwarranted. Perhaps you should work on your reading skills instead of injecting your assumptions.

[chrisco255]

Are Google's cookies / ads / analytics used by TikTok? Does TikTok send notifications to your email address (is it Gmail?)? Do the TikTok accounts embed YouTube / related links in their profile anywhere? Quite easy for Google to get tracking info. So many ways that metadata gets leaked.

[robocat]

Maybe Google are listening to you use Tiktok?

[jonathankoren]

I would prefer a more plausible guess

[Dibby053]

I suspect tech companies spy us in ways they don't disclose, but anecdotal evidence like this is not useful. The most likely culprit is cognitive bias: if you hadn't heard that word, you wouldn't have noticed the recommendation. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

[weikju]

I do believe in this. I had this experience last year where I suddenly started thinking of a pillow product I had first seen 5 years before (and had never looked into since then).

In the following days, I started noticing the ads for that product everywhere -- in the physical world! Not online, not in my browsing, but in shops and buses and street signs.

Got me wondering which came first, the ads, or me thinking of the product? Probably the ads....

[_nalply]

When I was twenty years old I bought a red Vespa. Suddenly I started to see them everywhere.

[mewpmewp2]

Can't believe these tech companies can time travel too.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"The most likely culprit is cognitive bias..."

His family is surrounded with microphones, cameras and sensors. The company has a long track record of unwarranted surveillance.

In the most recent case against Google for wiretapping, all claims survived the dismissal and summary judgment stages. Google settled instead of showing a jury that what the company does is not wiretapping. Why would anyone trust this company, except out of necessity.

Anecdotes are not proof, but are anecdotes needed to form a reasonable suspicion of Google conducting unwarranted surveillance.

For some reason, HN commenters will oppose the notion of Google/Meta using microphones for data collection but how much does that matter when we already know Google uses any available means it can get away with.

[thedrbrian]

On the other hand they were using an iPhone and iOS comes with the option to complete lock out an applications ability to use the microphone

[mewpmewp2]

It just seems so unfeasible, impractical and error prone to be able to track like that.

[southernplaces7]

You mean much like the algorithms they already use, which so frequently get complained about on this site for their shitty tracking abilities despite very much being used by these companies?

It's laughable that many comments on this site would try to shame people into thinking they're paranoid when discussing a potential further means of surveillance, when these same parasitical companies persistently, pervasively reveal themselves to use a very complex, expanding range of techniques through any hardware possible for tracking of their users (and non-users too).

I mean, a car filled with tracking sensors and microphones, people inside it with their own little devices that contain similar and in both types of devices software run by some of the most prying, intrusive corporations on the planet (though these days just about any company in any tech parrots the others for "improved user experience") and somehow it's silly cognitive bias by the users of the tech to suggest that they might just have noticed being spied on in one more way?

I know HN comments have many tech employees ready to raise the battle flag for their ethically deformed corporate tech lords, but it would be nice to see a few more such people with their heads pulled out of their asses instead of deriding those who don't follow the same defensive reasoning.

[mewpmewp2]

So for mobile phones.

1. Bypassing OS to be able to track sound without microphone icon shown. All companies who do that must have some sort of backdoor through Android/iOS permission system.

2. Not draining battery massively.

3. Being able to do all of that without anyone reverse engineering the apps, or catching odd network traffic.

4. Doing that intra company so that no one will whistle blow on that.

5. Risking the whole company with this implementation, since it would be extremely illegal.

I just don't see it happening. It would seem very obvious to reverse engineer, it requires having so many different parties hiding it, etc.

Edit:

Also listened to podcast now. Podcast authors don't seem to consider that this 3 man operation would be much more likely to scam their customer businesses. You can't upload a CSV of specific user ids to facebook. You can probably do segments that makes sense which othet marketing agencies do as well, but they could easily be just taking input from their customer and then generating segments, putting it into CSV, but claiming they have some sort of magical edge because of voice data. If they were willing yo be highly illegal with voice data, surely they would be willing to bs their customers which is much more feasible than backdooring android/ios, setting up this complicated infra.

And the CSV could also be good ROI if they share good segment data depending on their customer input. It is just that add bs unique selling points to get those customers in the first place and no one is wiser. They also probably scam their podcast customers. That is typical of this bro hustle business guru advice.

It is commmon from any sort of gurus to mix magical content with common sense, expert content. They probably learn their subject matter well, but then use charisma and magical made up things to build a following as otherwise they couldn't do any better than usual sepcialists.

E.g. they will be perfectly scientific and reasonable about most advice to win the trust, but then will have this one piece of magical supplement that is better than anything else out there that they are selling.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

re: defaults versus other options

Why does Google pay hendreds of millions of dollars annually to be a "default search engine" when computer users have the option to change the default settings at any time.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I've seen similar things ... except that the internet-connected device in the situations where I become aware of this does not have a microphone that could be used by software. So I suspect that the cognitive bias explanation mentioned by others is more likely.

[djtango]

Your anecdotal experience mirrors mine too. Could just be some selection bias but it is really uncanny...

[jaredhallen]

It is happening, and has been for a long time. When my first daughter was a baby, so around 2015, my wife and I were discussing options for helping her prop herself up, and came up with the idea (on our own, as far as I know) that a horseshoe shaped pillow would be perfect. I picked up my phone, opened the Amazon app, and typed the letter "h". The app autocompleted "horseshoe shaped pillow" based on just the one letter.

[chrisco255]

These are common baby items. If you searched for baby stuff on Amazon or anyone in your household sharing your IP did, and especially if you purchased baby stuff on Amazon, they're going to recommend baby stuff more often. It's called an a priori algorithm. It looks at what other people purchased that have purchased similar things as your search/purchase history and recommends based on that.

[fmajid]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

[carimura]

Would Apple (or Tesla) have to be colluding here if it was in fact using the iphone mic to listen in?

edit: found some info on this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38688101

[api]

A ton of this data goes to data brokers that integrate and resell it. No direct collusion is needed.

The data broker industry is huge, shady, unregulated, and in many cases offshore.

[averageRoyalty]

A long time ago, my friend bought a Hyundai Getz. We used to play the Getz game - nothing complex, but whenever you saw a Getz you'd yell "Getz" and get a point.

After playing for a few days, we were seeing easily 20-30 per day. I'm sure I'd seen them many times before (they were one of the most popular cars in Australia for a few years before that), but I'd never really noticed them. I've played the game with a few other car models with friends since, and it always results in a comment like "Wow, there are so many X on the road".

I understand why your story feels chilling to you and how it would convince you, however it's more likely that:

a) in the 100+ ads you see per day[0] you've seen panty liners before but it was never relevant to you (like a Getz) or

b) you've seen ads for panty liners recently but not conciously taken it in, resulting in the inverse of what you thought happened - your MadLibs suggestion was due to an ad.

I'm very confident many companies would be happy to spy on you via microphone if practical, but outside of malware I'm yet to see anyone proving this actually happening. We have billions of smartphones in the world and millions of tech people, many who would have to be keeping the secret all these years and many others who somehow couldn't find evidence of this. Occum's razor just doesn't add up here.

[0] https://www.thedrum.com/news/2023/05/03/how-many-ads-do-we-r...

[FLT8]

Haha... I'm surprised to learn my wife and I aren't the only people playing the "Getz" game! We started around 15-20 years ago, when every second hire car in Queensland was a Getz.. they're a little harder to come by now, but I still get a little thrill from calling one before she's seen it :)

[averageRoyalty]

I'm glad it gave you pleasure! I almost changed the model for privacy reasons to obfuscate myself, but now I'm glad I didn't.

It's actually more thrilling now because they're so rare. You can play the i30 game, but it just feels less fun than pointing out that derpy little chug-along that is the Getz.

[kbelder]

I'm worried about falling prey to conspiratorial thought, but I'm in the same boat. I can't think of any other reasonable explanation that would explain the advertising.

[barkbyte]

You don’t notice the thousands of ads that don’t seem suspicious.

[hallway_monitor]

It's happening and we are being gaslit by people saying oh it would never happen. Apple and Google would never allow it to happen. They're both capitalist corporations driven by profit alone. There's immense profit in this. It's happening and it makes me want to throw my phone in the river.

[cassianoleal]

> Google exec says you should warn guests about your spy speakers

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-exec-nest-owners-shou...

They've been warning us themselves.

[VelesDude]

There are a few acquaintance over the years that have been involved in various sectors of social media and various 3 letter government agencies. The one thing they have always said is, just assume they doing to most morally questionable things to get data - they just won't public admit until it is absolutely vital to do so.

Slightly off topic but I did like one of them being so frank about Linux and open source. They worked for a while with the NSA, all they said was "Linux has 100 million lines of code. You have to fooling your self to think we didn't slip in hundreds of backdoors onto that thing". The same can be said of almost any other system though.

I have long suspected that the gaslighting thing of "it is just subconscious coincidence" is just a very neat cover for these things. There might be a slight influence but it is nowhere near as powerful an effect as they would like you to think. With advertising swaying people, they can move a few percent of people a few percent in one direction but it doesn't really target individuals effectively in guaranteeing results. Only as an aggregate.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> They're both capitalist corporations driven by profit alone. There's immense profit in this.

This is exactly why I hate this dumbass conspiracy theory. You're totally correct, they are both capitalist corporations driven by profit alone. And the fact is that if they were secretly recording us in direct opposition to what they have said on the record it would be an absolute disaster for their bottom line.

[soupfordummies]

Only if they get caught

[hn_throwaway_99]

Again, that highlights the stupidity of what's being proposed in TFA. I agree, it would only be if they "got caught". But this isn't like some super secret government program found a way to listen in on your conversations. This is a shitty marketing company saying that they have this access and are making it fully available to any advertiser who wanted to use it. Given that, wouldn't it be trivially easy to verify their claims?