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The creepy thing is not that Google is listening to you. (They're not. Period.) It's that they can get so good that they can convince a large segment of the population that they _are_ listening to you. As others have said, correlating your friends' activity with your colocation and other similar habits is enough.
There are two aspects that discredit these types of claims: The banal explanation, and the extreme risk Google would be taking by doing this. The banal explanation is that life is really complicated, and a coincidence of this nature is unimpressive. This could be as subtle as a video you watched said something that was worded similarly to lyrics in one of their songs that stuck around and made you think of it a day l…
So, google is not that, and has not been that for a very long time. Yes, this case is probably a coincidence, maybe it isn't, but the idea that google engineers would rise up for spying a teensy but more than they already do is just not reality. Alphabet employees aren't ethicists in a position to protect people from the inertia of a trillion dollar company and it is outright crazy to suggest that's the case.
There are two aspects that discredit these types of claims: The banal explanation, and the extreme risk Google would be taking by doing this. The banal explanation is that life is really complicated, and a coincidence of this nature is unimpressive. This could be as subtle as a video you watched said something that was worded similarly to lyrics in one of their songs that stuck around and made you think of it a day l…
I suppose the impeccable ethics of google employees are the reason google is such a reliably ethical company? Uh... So, google is not that, and has not been that for a very long time. Yes, this case is probably a coincidence, maybe it isn't, but the idea that google engineers would rise up for spying a teensy but more than they already do is just not reality. Alphabet employees aren't ethicists in a position to prote…
Like, Google monitors what you do. A lot. However they also are pretty clear about how they spy on you. There are cases where they misstep (like the recent tracking settlement where they're forced to be more clear about location tracking), but a secret conspiracy to record everything you do with your devices would take a large team and serious resources.
Could easily be a correlation thing, rather than a causation thing. It would not be hard to believe that the friends were talking about the songs because they're trending as "90's throwback" or whatever, and then YouTube suggested those songs because they're trending.
As a counterpoint: I was looking at some hair clay of a specific brand I'd been thinking about getting. When I checked my Facebook account, lo and behold, they were running ads for that product. Not at all surprised since their ad network tendrils are probably into everything, and I was deliberately looking.
"Stop reading my thoughts Please, XM"
The point is - in our long lives, stuff like this happens through shear probability alone several times. An advanced search algorithm designed to predict songs based on past history, and who knows how many other available inputs, isn't even in the same realm of weirdness as feeling a song and it appears on the radio.
There are two aspects that discredit these types of claims: The banal explanation, and the extreme risk Google would be taking by doing this. The banal explanation is that life is really complicated, and a coincidence of this nature is unimpressive. This could be as subtle as a video you watched said something that was worded similarly to lyrics in one of their songs that stuck around and made you think of it a day l…
The fact that a few (plural) of their friends were talking about X, means that they probably had a recent contact with X (searched for it, watched the videos, etc). There are anedoctal cases of shared recommendations by location/local network IIUC.
A while back (I believe May 2020) I did an experiment. I kept a phone in isolation for 3 days and recorded all the network traffic. Then I took the same phone and put it up against a speaker that played a podcast archive continuously over a 3 day period. Then I did another 3 days of silence and a different archive of podcasts for 3 days. At the end I had 24 days of phone network pcaps (4 sets of 3 days audio + 3 days…
It is possible, at least theoretically, that "keyword scanning" only happens when you interact with the apps. Say, you're searching for something while you speak, lo and behold Google Search's suggestion list pops up and is extremely accurate for what I am about to search based on 1 or 2 characters.
This isn’t what the popular conspiracy is though. People argue just having their phone with them while they hold normal conversations leads to advertisements later. No app interaction is ever mentioned. I think this experiment is perfect for debunking the conspiracy.
A while back (I believe May 2020) I did an experiment. I kept a phone in isolation for 3 days and recorded all the network traffic. Then I took the same phone and put it up against a speaker that played a podcast archive continuously over a 3 day period. Then I did another 3 days of silence and a different archive of podcasts for 3 days. At the end I had 24 days of phone network pcaps (4 sets of 3 days audio + 3 days…
I'm not sure if there's a way to test for this (or if you tried in your experiment)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is possible, at least theoretically, that "keyword scanning" only happens when you interact with the apps. Say, you're searching for something while you speak, lo and behold Google Search's suggestion list pops up and is extremely accurate for what I am about to search based on 1 or 2 characters.
> It is possible, at least theoretically, that "keyword scanning" only happens when you interact with the apps. This isn’t what the popular conspiracy is though. People argue just having their phone with them while they hold normal conversations leads to advertisements later. No app interaction is ever mentioned. I think this experiment is perfect for debunking the conspiracy.