Is Big Brother out of control?

[crooky]

Advertiser’s are actually selling services where they say they actively listen in on conversations via mic’s

MissConstrue (@MissConstrue@mefi.social)

So, have you ever thought your devices were listening to what you were saying, and then ads for that thing would show up...and all the pundits kept telling us it was coincidence and we were just seeing patterns because people seek patterns? Yeah...naw. @404mediaco@mastodon.social in their...

mefi.social

Final article they link to is paywalled but you can get around it, will post the free link when I can.


Last year, my wife and I were chatting in a resturant about a friend who had visited Japan and how if we did that length of travel we would prefer to go to New Zealand. My phone was on the table. A few hours later I was seeing adverts in Facebook for trips to Japan and New Zealand.

You're overthinking it.

On YouTube some of the videos suggested to you are ones watched by people you're subbed to and vice versa.

Same thing with Facebook I would assume but with friends and what they search for.

 

[grunge]

A big part of my job is placing digital advertising. The social media companies *claim* devices aren't listening to you, and certainly Apple place a lot of brand value on their devices being secure. We're talking a scenario here where either:

a) Apple and Meta (as we're mostly talking Facebook and Instagram ads here) are lying to customers and Apple is secretly giving Meta open access to the microphone feeds of every iPhone user

b) Meta have secretly hacked the iPhone microphone and got around Apple's App Store security verification checks to illegally hack into every iPhone user.

Both of these scenarios would result in senior executives going to prison and share prices falling through the floor. Sorry but I just don't believe it.

With Android / Google - put it this way I still don't see it as the outcry would be insane, but it would be a hell of a lot easier for more sneaky data collection to be going on. Google is in the data harvesting and reselling business, not the search engine and digital services business.

Advertising algorithms are very, very smart. On this example the algorithm will have known your friend went to Japan, so it's not unusual for it to then serve ads to the same local to their friends. You'll also fit a demographic profile of people who might want to book these kinds of holidays. Tourism advertisers also cast their net pretty wide compared to more niche advertisers.

I don't doubt it could be a coincidence but its a hell of a coincidence. and the very fact that large advertising companies are selling the services tells you a lot.

The friend is a work colleague, someone Im not linked to on any socials and I don't have his phone number etc. His trip to Japan was about 2 months before the conversation I had with my wife. At most you could say that my device had been on the same wifi connection as his device a few days previously to our conversation so there may be a common IP somewhere in there. There had been discussions in the office that week about his trip so entirely possible others had searched on the company network.

I am also 100% convinced that Slack is also selling message data to advertisers so again that maybe another tenuous link. I discussed ( via slack ) an arcade machine my boss bought for the office on slack and within an hour I was seeing adverts for Arcade units for sale in my facebook.

 

[grunge]

You're overthinking it.

On YouTube some of the videos suggested to you are ones watched by people you're subbed to and vice versa.

Same thing with Facebook I would assume but with friends and what they search for.

See my reply above. a 2 month gap between his trip and our conversation. not linked on socials, I don't even has his phone number in my phone.

At most there is some tenuous IP link from a shared wifi connection at work so others on that network may well have searched for it.

Here is the full link to the large advertising company who's pitch deck's actively state they listen in.

https://archive.ph/20240827084009/https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/

 

[Zablo Pabletta]

I think what's wrong with the situation is that you can't reasonably be sure what someone like Slack. I mean, I tried to look it up - it looks like it's not covered by their agreement - but I really can't be sure.

These companies are operating in the margins and grey areas. People don't think about it, or they risk getting called paranoid.

I mean, I get paranoid, I know it misleads me. But in my experience, the non-paranoid are really missing quite a lot. Consumer markets, especially those we can't avoid aren't meant to work this way - they must be easy to understand and clear.

At the moment these companies are taking full advantage and lodging themselves into everyday use so any regulation has to work around them.

That is how commerce tends to work in our democracies - innovation in the private sector leads to a new market - then the state takes notice. There's nothing you can do about that now, and honestly it's a terrible mistake to think that it's clear how to do it any other way without stifling innovation and commerce.

However it does matter that we get to a stage where what monitoring happens, and how it is used - is clear and easy to understand for the average person.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

See my reply above. a 2 month gap between his trip and our conversation. not linked on socials, I don't even has his phone number in my phone.

At most there is some tenuous IP link from a shared wifi connection at work so others on that network may well have searched for it.

Here is the full link to the large advertising company who's pitch deck's actively state they listen in.

https://archive.ph/20240827084009/https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/

The algorithm knows yours and his devices spend time in the same places and follow a similar routine, so it knows you know each other. If you have any Meta app (such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger) installed and location services turned on, it's harvesting that data. It knows this guy went on holiday and it knows you and your wife were out at restaurant, so it's not a wild jump for it to then serve you holiday ads.

It seems freaky and invasive because it is, just not in the obvious way people assume, which is that the device is listening to you. It *almost certainly* isn't.

I'll have a read of that article for sure - but advertisers don't need to listen in to conversations to target audiences, there is way, way, way more than enough data to do that already.

And to be honest, it's smarter than you are. It'll serve you ads for things that even you don't know you want/need yet.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

I don't doubt it could be a coincidence but its a hell of a coincidence. and the very fact that large advertising companies are selling the services tells you a lot.

The friend is a work colleague, someone Im not linked to on any socials and I don't have his phone number etc. His trip to Japan was about 2 months before the conversation I had with my wife. At most you could say that my device had been on the same wifi connection as his device a few days previously to our conversation so there may be a common IP somewhere in there. There had been discussions in the office that week about his trip so entirely possible others had searched on the company network.

I am also 100% convinced that Slack is also selling message data to advertisers so again that maybe another tenuous link. I discussed ( via slack ) an arcade machine my boss bought for the office on slack and within an hour I was seeing adverts for Arcade units for sale in my facebook.

RE Slack - it never used to be encrypted but I think they introduced some encryption a while back. I don't use it on a day to day basis so can't say for sure.

Again not a wild leap for it to serve you ads for that stuff - it knows you and your boss spend time together, your boss no doubt did several searches for arcade machines, so it wondering if you'd like one too isn't beyond the realm of sensible ad targeting.

 

[grunge]

RE Slack - it never used to be encrypted but I think they introduced some encryption a while back. I don't use it on a day to day basis so can't say for sure.

Again not a wild leap for it to serve you ads for that stuff - it knows you and your boss spend time together, your boss no doubt did several searches for arcade machines, so it wondering if you'd like one too isn't beyond the realm of sensible ad targeting.

Its all about the timing for me. boss buys an arcade machine, takes 2 weeks to get delivered. had been in the office 2/3 weeks, then about an hour after I mention it in a slack message to a colleague im seeing facebook ads for them. And No office visits for ages at that time. Hence im sure that slack has some key word analysis going on somewhere in there that they are selling on.

That one is quite explainable.