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I used to dismiss these rumors as paranoia/conspiracy theories in a maybe naive application of Occam's razor. But concrete leaks and tech news of recent years m
by nothis 9y ago
I used to dismiss these rumors as paranoia/conspiracy theories in a maybe naive application of Occam's razor. But concrete leaks and tech news of recent years made me a believer. I sure believe Facebook is capable of this, nowadays. The only thing that makes me skeptical is that there should be reproduceable cases someone has documented for concrete evidence. All I ever hear is anecdotes.
- f_allwein 9y ago> concrete leaks and tech news of recent years which ones do you mean?
- cvsh 9y ago>All I ever hear is anecdotes. The fact that there is no hard evidence makes me very skeptical. Every anecdote is explainable another way. Someone in the comments said they were having a conversation about storage units and saw an ad for storage units immediately after. Even if they had never searched for storage units -- and can we really be sure? That would be easy to forget -- Facebook might just have extrapolated they they would need a storage unit from related searches, like searching for a moving company. I would be willing to bet this type of algorithmic extrapolation explains every one of the microphone-ad-conspiracy stories.
- hobofan 9y ago> The only thing that makes me skeptical is that there should be reproduceable cases someone has documented for concrete evidence. I'll throw another layer on the conspiracy pile and say they deactivate that behavior for anyone they notice trying to prove it, similar to Uber's Greyball.