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My wife and I experience this on a regular basis. We even tested it. Picked a subject that is never a conversation piece, we spoke about it with our phones and

My wife and I experience this on a regular basis. We even tested it. Picked a subject that is never a conversation piece, we spoke about it with our phones and Amazon's Alexa near by and guess what: an ad that we have never seen showed up within hours that was directly related to this subject... We are convinced that our conversation is minimally listened to if not recorded (for AI training purposes of course).

dragonwriter 6y ago
The conversation primes you to notice the ad, which otherwise you would ignore and take no special note of. Do the same thing but in writing, near devices that have no video input, and you are likely to get the same result. Do it many times with both spoken and written topics, and away from and near the devices, and I bet you'll seem similar frequency of hits afterward.
- adkadskhj 6y ago
  Or just plan a topic and a survey period. Eg if we're going to talk about cereal, monitor Facebook/etc for cereal ads for X hours, then under similar conditions (time of day/etc) after you talk about cereal for a while. To be ultra paranoid i'd avoid even chatting about it digitally. ISP distrust.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  One should also try talking about a topic with no phones or other connected devices with microphones around. If ads start appearing after that, you've pretty much confirmed it's just recency bias causing you to notice the ads.
the_only_law 6y ago
I've a few similar things happen. I talked to my brother on a discord vpice chat. He very briefly mentioned some game he plays and we went back to what we were doing. I never did anything else regarding that game, not searches, not text convos mentioning it, nothing. The next day I started seeing YouTube ads for it.
nopeNopeNooope 6y ago
Obviously the most likely explanation is that every corporation within earshot has started an illegal clandestine wiretapping of you and your wife using machine learning at great expense in hardware and power. Some people might say you started talking about cereal because you were blasted with commercials about cereal you just didn't remember until that conversation framed you to remember them. But we know better.

dragonwriter 6y ago

The conversation primes you to notice the ad, which otherwise you would ignore and take no special note of. Do the same thing but in writing, near devices that have no video input, and you are likely to get the same result. Do it many times with both spoken and written topics, and away from and near the devices, and I bet you'll seem similar frequency of hits afterward.

adkadskhj 6y ago
Or just plan a topic and a survey period. Eg if we're going to talk about cereal, monitor Facebook/etc for cereal ads for X hours, then under similar conditions (time of day/etc) after you talk about cereal for a while. To be ultra paranoid i'd avoid even chatting about it digitally. ISP distrust.
pmiller2 6y ago
One should also try talking about a topic with no phones or other connected devices with microphones around. If ads start appearing after that, you've pretty much confirmed it's just recency bias causing you to notice the ads.

the_only_law 6y ago

I've a few similar things happen. I talked to my brother on a discord vpice chat. He very briefly mentioned some game he plays and we went back to what we were doing. I never did anything else regarding that game, not searches, not text convos mentioning it, nothing. The next day I started seeing YouTube ads for it.

nopeNopeNooope 6y ago

Obviously the most likely explanation is that every corporation within earshot has started an illegal clandestine wiretapping of you and your wife using machine learning at great expense in hardware and power. Some people might say you started talking about cereal because you were blasted with commercials about cereal you just didn't remember until that conversation framed you to remember them. But we know better.