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There are two aspects that discredit these types of claims: The banal explanation, and the extreme risk Google would be taking by doing this. The banal explan

There are two aspects that discredit these types of claims: The banal explanation, and the extreme risk Google would be taking by doing this. The banal explanation is that life is really complicated, and a coincidence of this nature is unimpressive. This could be as subtle as a video you watched said something that was worded similarly to lyrics in one of their songs that stuck around and made you think of it a day later. It doesn't take many people to later search for that song for the algorithms to pick up on it and start suggesting it. For the risk, Google has had a history of a very open culture. Many people within the company have strong ethical convictions. To do a project like this, you'd have to selectively recruit a sub-selection of employees who don't have these convictions, and manage to provide data streams to other teams algorithms. This is without anyone noticing that, hey, that team sure is using a lot of ML resources or my device sure is uploading a lot of data. This is all on top of the legal risk of saying you're not listening while also doing so. I can't imagine that getting past a legal review. I think there are a lot of good examples of big companies abusing their power, but this isn't one of them.

LightHugger 4y ago
I suppose the impeccable ethics of google employees are the reason google is such a reliably ethical company? Uh... So, google is not that, and has not been that for a very long time. Yes, this case is probably a coincidence, maybe it isn't, but the idea that google engineers would rise up for spying a teensy but more than they already do is just not reality. Alphabet employees aren't ethicists in a position to protect people from the inertia of a trillion dollar company and it is outright crazy to suggest that's the case.
- Laremere 4y ago
  My point was perhaps lost in the pursuit of brevity. It's not that the ethical people could stop Google from doing bad things. It's that there's bound to be people outspoken in the event that Google is secretly spying on you. It's the kind of thing you'd see a leak making it to the front page of New York Times. Like, Google monitors what you do. A lot. However they also are pretty clear about how they spy on you. There are cases where they misstep (like the recent tracking settlement where they're forced to be more clear about location tracking), but a secret conspiracy to record everything you do with your devices would take a large team and serious resources.
rvieira 4y ago
Yes, the world is complicated and there are numerous simpler explanations. The fact that a few (plural) of their friends were talking about X, means that they probably had a recent contact with X (searched for it, watched the videos, etc). There are anedoctal cases of shared recommendations by location/local network IIUC.

LightHugger 4y ago

I suppose the impeccable ethics of google employees are the reason google is such a reliably ethical company? Uh... So, google is not that, and has not been that for a very long time. Yes, this case is probably a coincidence, maybe it isn't, but the idea that google engineers would rise up for spying a teensy but more than they already do is just not reality. Alphabet employees aren't ethicists in a position to protect people from the inertia of a trillion dollar company and it is outright crazy to suggest that's the case.

Laremere 4y ago
My point was perhaps lost in the pursuit of brevity. It's not that the ethical people could stop Google from doing bad things. It's that there's bound to be people outspoken in the event that Google is secretly spying on you. It's the kind of thing you'd see a leak making it to the front page of New York Times. Like, Google monitors what you do. A lot. However they also are pretty clear about how they spy on you. There are cases where they misstep (like the recent tracking settlement where they're forced to be more clear about location tracking), but a secret conspiracy to record everything you do with your devices would take a large team and serious resources.

rvieira 4y ago

Yes, the world is complicated and there are numerous simpler explanations. The fact that a few (plural) of their friends were talking about X, means that they probably had a recent contact with X (searched for it, watched the videos, etc). There are anedoctal cases of shared recommendations by location/local network IIUC.