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For the folks who think your devices aren’t listening try an experiment: start talking out loud about a product you’ve never, ever searched for. Something you’v

For the folks who think your devices aren’t listening try an experiment: start talking out loud about a product you’ve never, ever searched for. Something you’ve never, ever needed or wanted. See how long it takes for ads for that very thing to start showing up in Facebook and in your targeted ads. I’ve done it and Started getting ads in a matter of days.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
I've always dismissed this as coincidence. But over the past few months, my wife reported to me several incidents of a relevant Facebook ad showing up a day or two after a conversation she had with me or her friends, and that was not followed up by any on-line searches on the topic. At this point, I'm starting to consider something may be going on after all - it seems to happen too often to be easily explained away as happenstance.
- sircastor 6y ago
  Usually when I see this sort of coincidence, I think that it is a matter of information relevance/leakage. You read an article about bug spray chemicals and don’t think about it, but start seeing exterminator ads online. If you read the article because you’re looking for pest control, the it feels suspicious. If you’re not, you ignore the ads and go on your way. I don’t want to discount your experience. I haven’t seen it myself, but maybe I’m not paying enough attention.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    That's a great point! Thinking about it now, I can't be sure why we started to talk about particular products (and then saw ads about them day or two later). It could've been because one of us saw an article or an ad about it earlier. So perhaps this is neither by coincidence nor surveillance - perhaps there's an earlier link in causal chain that we've missed. I suppose the only way to be sure is to start doing proper experiments.
- fuzxi 6y ago
  My theory is that those friends did search for those topics/products, and Facebook decided it would be wise to advertise them to your wife because of her proximity to the people searching for them. "Proximity" determined either literally with geotracking, or simply with something like chat records.
newscracker 6y ago
> For the folks who think your devices aren’t listening try an experiment: 1. Which devices: iOS or Android? 2. Are any apps that have been given the microphone permission in the foreground (for iOS) while the conversation is going on (but the app isn't in an explicit recording mode triggered by the user)? 3. Are any voice assistants enabled to always listen for the activation command words (like "Hey Siri" or "Ok, Google")? I have my iOS device set only to get typed text input for Siri (no voice activation). I rarely give any app microphone permissions unless the main purpose of the app is to record audio (or video and audio). I've never encountered targeted ads on topics I talk about.
Balgair 6y ago
Try the experiment with friends! First, get a friend or relative to go along with the ride here. Try to have that person not be on your local network of wifi and the like. Then, go a website that will generate a list of random words: https://www.randomlists.com/nouns https://www.randomlists.com/nouns . Make sure that you are selecting for nouns or adjectives. Copy the first three words that you get. More is fine too. Just get enough words to be pretty specific. Then go to amazon or some such online retailer: https://www.amazon.com/ https://www.amazon.com/ . Search for the three random words you got. Now, here is an important step, sort the returned list by price, from high to low. Take the most expensive item as your experimental item. You can do this with a few items if you'd like. You're just trying to get something that is not what you or your demographic would normally look to purchase. Then, talk about that item around your gadgets, critically, with someone that is not you. Your amazon search history is already corrupted just by searching for this. Check back in with your friend or relative in about a week. You can set a reminder in your phone to do this. See if they got any ads that were trying to sell them on the random item you chose.
- greiskul 6y ago
  Please add a control for this experiment. There should be another list of products selected that you did the same with, but you didn't talk infront of the gadgets. There might be some signals that the ads networks are getting from you or your friends.
  - slavik81 6y ago
    To be double-blind, they should talk about both lists of products, but a third-party should make a (hidden) gadget present for one conversation and not for the other conversation.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  This fails if the ad companies track your online activity, link it to your location, link your friend to your location, and then show the ads based on that.
IshKebab 6y ago
It's just confirmation bias. If this were actually happening then: a) You'd be able to detect it by sniffing the network traffic, and b) Some journalist or scientist would have reproduced it and written about it. It also makes absolutely zero sense that Google would do this. The press would be terrible if they were found it, it's outright illegal in Europe, and they don't need to! They have an amazingly good signal for the things you are looking to buy because you type that into a nice easy to collect search box for them! I know HN is home to lots of paranoid folks but I thought they were smart enough not to believe this dumb conspiracy theory.
- callmeal 6y ago
  >You'd be able to detect it by sniffing the network traffic, How? I can very easily come up with a compression/local storage + stream when app is being used mechanism to record whatever the app is hearing and sending it back to the mothership. Why is everyone assuming that the transmission is happening in realtime and not scheduled/hidden with usage?
  - clsw 6y ago
    I'm always up for a bit of google bashing but it's fairly ridiculous to assume they'd try and hide random bits of other audio in the snippets they send, google is staffed by actual humans, and if the us govt. can have whistleblowers, google sure as hell would have by now. a) how would they know what data to send? if they're able to do speech recognition offline and somehow gauge how important the audio is prior to transmitting it then why the hell aren't they using this technology to absolutely blow alexa out of the market? b) I've done some tracing on my router and seen minimal difference between data uploaded and the size of the voice clips you can freely playback in your google account history, not saying clever compression etc. couldn't cover this, but again - why? Im definitely not implying corporations like google aren't more than capable of great evil and deserve to be watched like a hawk, but let's pick our battles?
lolinder 6y ago
This happened to me with Google's search suggestions the other day and I didn't even say anything out loud. Should I consider that as evidence that Google has developed mind reading technology, or is it more likely that I just ignore search suggestions unless they're eerily relevant?
greiskul 6y ago
That's a crappy experiment. There is no way to disprove the result. So, how about instead, you choose 2 products. Flip a coin to decide one them to talk about. Just think of the other one. See how long it takes to see the product you talked about, and how long it takes to see the product you only thought about. Repeat a few times for different pairs of products. If google is listening, the time for the product talked about should be way shorter then the one you only thought about. If google isn't listening, there shouldn't be a pattern. Now, it is really important that you flip the coin. Also, do NOT TALK TO ANYONE ABOUT THE PRODUCTS YOU ARE USING. We want to test the microphones, if you make a search for the product, or you tell a friend, and the friend makes a search for the product, that is all information signal that ad companies could be using.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
When you do this, do it the following way: Silently write five such things on a piece of paper. Then loudly start talking about one of them. If you encounter one of the other four, you will realize the confirmation bias trap.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

I've always dismissed this as coincidence. But over the past few months, my wife reported to me several incidents of a relevant Facebook ad showing up a day or two after a conversation she had with me or her friends, and that was not followed up by any on-line searches on the topic. At this point, I'm starting to consider something may be going on after all - it seems to happen too often to be easily explained away as happenstance.

sircastor 6y ago
Usually when I see this sort of coincidence, I think that it is a matter of information relevance/leakage. You read an article about bug spray chemicals and don’t think about it, but start seeing exterminator ads online. If you read the article because you’re looking for pest control, the it feels suspicious. If you’re not, you ignore the ads and go on your way. I don’t want to discount your experience. I haven’t seen it myself, but maybe I’m not paying enough attention.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  That's a great point! Thinking about it now, I can't be sure why we started to talk about particular products (and then saw ads about them day or two later). It could've been because one of us saw an article or an ad about it earlier. So perhaps this is neither by coincidence nor surveillance - perhaps there's an earlier link in causal chain that we've missed. I suppose the only way to be sure is to start doing proper experiments.
fuzxi 6y ago
My theory is that those friends did search for those topics/products, and Facebook decided it would be wise to advertise them to your wife because of her proximity to the people searching for them. "Proximity" determined either literally with geotracking, or simply with something like chat records.

newscracker 6y ago

> For the folks who think your devices aren’t listening try an experiment: 1. Which devices: iOS or Android? 2. Are any apps that have been given the microphone permission in the foreground (for iOS) while the conversation is going on (but the app isn't in an explicit recording mode triggered by the user)? 3. Are any voice assistants enabled to always listen for the activation command words (like "Hey Siri" or "Ok, Google")? I have my iOS device set only to get typed text input for Siri (no voice activation). I rarely give any app microphone permissions unless the main purpose of the app is to record audio (or video and audio). I've never encountered targeted ads on topics I talk about.

Balgair 6y ago

Try the experiment with friends! First, get a friend or relative to go along with the ride here. Try to have that person not be on your local network of wifi and the like. Then, go a website that will generate a list of random words: https://www.randomlists.com/nouns https://www.randomlists.com/nouns . Make sure that you are selecting for nouns or adjectives. Copy the first three words that you get. More is fine too. Just get enough words to be pretty specific. Then go to amazon or some such online retailer: https://www.amazon.com/ https://www.amazon.com/ . Search for the three random words you got. Now, here is an important step, sort the returned list by price, from high to low. Take the most expensive item as your experimental item. You can do this with a few items if you'd like. You're just trying to get something that is not what you or your demographic would normally look to purchase. Then, talk about that item around your gadgets, critically, with someone that is not you. Your amazon search history is already corrupted just by searching for this. Check back in with your friend or relative in about a week. You can set a reminder in your phone to do this. See if they got any ads that were trying to sell them on the random item you chose.

greiskul 6y ago
Please add a control for this experiment. There should be another list of products selected that you did the same with, but you didn't talk infront of the gadgets. There might be some signals that the ads networks are getting from you or your friends.
- slavik81 6y ago
  To be double-blind, they should talk about both lists of products, but a third-party should make a (hidden) gadget present for one conversation and not for the other conversation.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
This fails if the ad companies track your online activity, link it to your location, link your friend to your location, and then show the ads based on that.

IshKebab 6y ago

It's just confirmation bias. If this were actually happening then: a) You'd be able to detect it by sniffing the network traffic, and b) Some journalist or scientist would have reproduced it and written about it. It also makes absolutely zero sense that Google would do this. The press would be terrible if they were found it, it's outright illegal in Europe, and they don't need to! They have an amazingly good signal for the things you are looking to buy because you type that into a nice easy to collect search box for them! I know HN is home to lots of paranoid folks but I thought they were smart enough not to believe this dumb conspiracy theory.

callmeal 6y ago
>You'd be able to detect it by sniffing the network traffic, How? I can very easily come up with a compression/local storage + stream when app is being used mechanism to record whatever the app is hearing and sending it back to the mothership. Why is everyone assuming that the transmission is happening in realtime and not scheduled/hidden with usage?
- clsw 6y ago
  I'm always up for a bit of google bashing but it's fairly ridiculous to assume they'd try and hide random bits of other audio in the snippets they send, google is staffed by actual humans, and if the us govt. can have whistleblowers, google sure as hell would have by now. a) how would they know what data to send? if they're able to do speech recognition offline and somehow gauge how important the audio is prior to transmitting it then why the hell aren't they using this technology to absolutely blow alexa out of the market? b) I've done some tracing on my router and seen minimal difference between data uploaded and the size of the voice clips you can freely playback in your google account history, not saying clever compression etc. couldn't cover this, but again - why? Im definitely not implying corporations like google aren't more than capable of great evil and deserve to be watched like a hawk, but let's pick our battles?

lolinder 6y ago

This happened to me with Google's search suggestions the other day and I didn't even say anything out loud. Should I consider that as evidence that Google has developed mind reading technology, or is it more likely that I just ignore search suggestions unless they're eerily relevant?

greiskul 6y ago

That's a crappy experiment. There is no way to disprove the result. So, how about instead, you choose 2 products. Flip a coin to decide one them to talk about. Just think of the other one. See how long it takes to see the product you talked about, and how long it takes to see the product you only thought about. Repeat a few times for different pairs of products. If google is listening, the time for the product talked about should be way shorter then the one you only thought about. If google isn't listening, there shouldn't be a pattern. Now, it is really important that you flip the coin. Also, do NOT TALK TO ANYONE ABOUT THE PRODUCTS YOU ARE USING. We want to test the microphones, if you make a search for the product, or you tell a friend, and the friend makes a search for the product, that is all information signal that ad companies could be using.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

When you do this, do it the following way: Silently write five such things on a piece of paper. Then loudly start talking about one of them. If you encounter one of the other four, you will realize the confirmation bias trap.