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I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

simonwillison.net

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Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#51

Post by darknavi »

alvah wrote: post #29

Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…

Why did they pick a swimming pool? Did they see people in their area installing pools? I think that's often people's best guess, is that the "random" thing people use to test this actually isn't random and subconsciously they already had this topic seeded to them.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#52

Post by Arelius »

Arelius wrote: post #45
fasa99 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don't believe any argument that says it's not feasible. Transcribing all spoken text and sending it home, sure, not feasible. What if we have 256 keywords, or 65536 keywords, maybe preconfigured for particular products or product classes. Some basic linear predictive coding mechanism ( you know, what powered those '80s chips Stephen Hawking style, speak and spell, etc) - very very low computational overh…

For sure! I mean, my Google pixel has "Now Playing" which is able to passively listen to the microphone for songs it knows, and displays them on the oled lock screen. So, we already know that it is A. completely feasible for a smartphone to do this. B. At least a subset of smartphones have always-on microphones. Maybe not a remote control... But why would you put it in a remote anyways when everyone has a phone?

I'm not sure I believe strongly either way, but after a few drinks I often convince myself it has to be happening due to the prior proof that it's possible, and the fact that if I were at the right place in one of theses companies, I'd do it just to prove that I can, and do it in a way such that the least amount of people internally would know about it.

But that may just be the conspiracy theorist in me.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#53

Post by jxramos »

alvah wrote: post #29

Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…

we haven't done an experiment like that but I've had family know what medium certain topics were expressed and discussed over and those topics that landed in the ads that startled with their topic intersection were topics discussed only verbally vs typed into some search field or connected to some other web interaction etc.

That's kind of the smoking gun when you can create a disjoint set of topics and a disjoint set of mediums of communication delivery and see what shows up in the ad space from those discussion topics strictly expressed verbally.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#54

Post by jsnell »

jgalt212 wrote: post #26
bbor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup - having worked at Google Display Ads (arguably the epicenter of such talk), I personally only ever witnessed people walking the walk, privacy-wise. The threats to our privacy are quite public and not at all illegal; IMO data brokers and 3P browser trackers are at the top of the list, but all of Google’s known ills are there too (location tracking, exchange monopolization, allowing predatory advertisers, gestures…

I'm not trying to change your mind, but this response (from another user) was flagged, so I'm providing a pull quote. > A marketing firm called Cox Media Group has recently revealed that it is listening to user conversations via their smartphones through its so-called "Active Listening" Software. With this, the company will push advertisements that users will see on certain platforms based on the heard conversations…

I've never heard of them, so can't say if they're junk. But they're certainly gullible.

It's a small media company whose primary business is operating a handful of local newspapers and TV stations. They have no privileged access to mobile operating systems. If they really had implemented this scheme in actual apps (rather than just write it into a pitch deck), those apps would need to be asking for microphone permissions.

Note how there never was any follow-up showing that this really was happening. The story was only ever about that pitch deck. Compare that to e.g. the currently ongoing story about the dodgy things done by the Honey browser extension.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#55

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

alvah wrote: post #29

Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…

The only way to test this would be to have your anecdote together with the complete marketing profiles of your friend and his wife. If such a profile could even be compiled in principle, from it we would be able to tell whether your friend or his wife had generated any non-audio pool-related signals, or whether they had seen other pool-related ads recently. Also, it'd be nice to know how often people in their marketing categories receive ads for pool fencing. Could be an astonishing coincidence.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#57

Post by oldgregg »

alvah wrote: post #29

Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…

There is a video of Zuck denying they "recording peoples microphone" -- but how he said it with a smirk I took him to mean "we do on-device transcription and only send back keywords"

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#58

Post by jcrawfordor »

bbor wrote: post #40
jgalt212 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to change your mind, but this response (from another user) was flagged, so I'm providing a pull quote. > A marketing firm called Cox Media Group has recently revealed that it is listening to user conversations via their smartphones through its so-called "Active Listening" Software. With this, the company will push advertisements that users will see on certain platforms based on the heard conversations…

Ahh this one. Thanks for sharing, important point! Basically this is just a random small-ish company trying to get new clients with a flashy feature. Ultimately they have to use the same data as everyone else, which I’m 99.99% sure doesn’t involve any intentional (much less “active”) recording by Google, Apple, or Meta. Maybe they have their own hardware partners that have networked microphones, maybe they’re really…

Cox Media Group is attached to Cox Enterprises which owns Cox Communications, one of the largest US cable providers. They distribute set-top boxes with an integrated voice assistant. So, I would wager that is at least one source, and I would actually put down money that it is the only source. Cox Media Group doesn't make any claims about where they get the data or how much they have, and it seems like it would be very difficult to negotiate to get that data from the other major voice assistants.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#59

Post by brookst »

alvah wrote: post #29

Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…

But this is just selection bias. If a hundred people do that and one gets an ad, it’s proof. Nevermind the 99 others who never saw a thing and wouldn’t bother posting.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#60

Post by gruez »

alvah wrote: post #29

Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…

Confirmation bias makes it hard to extract much from these types of anecdotes. On a daily basis you might be talking about dozens of products. If your lookback period is a few days, that could 100s of products, and you'll get spooky coincidences pop up from time to time from pure chance alone.
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