[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?