4 ms·

You saying one conspiracy is 100% true but another one is laugh out loud impossible?

• daveidol 5y ago
  Wait, what conspiracy am I saying is 100% true? If your phone was listening to everything you do all the time then you'd need a lot of processing to analyze it on-device and exfiltrate the critical pieces of info (which would be pretty obvious when looking at CPU usage and battery life), or you'd be sending an insane amount of data off over the internet all the time. I'm not saying it's technically impossible - I'm just saying that the ol "Facebook is listening to everything and that's why you get ads for something after you talk about it in real life" is almost certainly a myth with zero actual data to support it other than some anecdotes online.
  • phkahler 5y ago
    There is a possible explanation for the schizophrenia example. My wife did a google search for a particular medication that person had been on and went off of. That was a couple days prior to the ads showing up. So good old Google could have been part of that - not sure how google searches affect facebook ads - or perhaps it was the pages she visited to read about that medication. It's all just f-ing creepy sometimes regardless of how it come about. It sure seems like verbal conversations being overheard is a part of it.