[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.