I've heard about this multiple times and there was even a Reply All podcast about it. If it were true, there are plenty of security researchers and bug bounty

I've heard about this multiple times and there was even a Reply All podcast about it. If it were true, there are plenty of security researchers and bug bounty hunters that install their own CAs on phones and pull packet dumps. You'd think we'd see reports of this by now. Facebook/Google and others have some pretty advanced learning algorithms, and a whole shit ton of data on you. What if, via some predictive analysis based on browsing history, messages, photos and other sources, their algorithms guessed the author would be thinking about Tokyo before the conversation happened? If true, it's kinda sad such a powerful system is simply used to sell shit to us. And if true, it could also provide some crazy insights into determinism and human predictability. The post is shit though. The author needed to team up with a researcher, pull apart the Messenger/Facebook/Instagram apks (or whatever iPhone packages are) and find real evidence the apps passively listens to conversations and transmits that data.