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My experience working at one of the companies that gets accused of this a lot is that many colleagues wish we were as evil as claimed because it would be so muc

by jere 2y ago

My experience working at one of the companies that gets accused of this a lot is that many colleagues wish we were as evil as claimed because it would be so much easier do their jobs that way than struggling through the reality of it which is endless red tape over the tiniest issues that have even the slightest proximity to privacy. So I've been a bit skeptical too.

arcmechanica 2y ago
[dead]
- alex1138 2y ago
  Citation for Apple?
  - arcmechanica 2y ago
    its on the front page $95m fine
bbor 2y ago
Yup - having worked at Google Display Ads (arguably the epicenter of such talk), I personally only ever witnessed people walking the walk, privacy-wise. The threats to our privacy are quite public and not at all illegal; IMO data brokers and 3P browser trackers are at the top of the list, but all of Google’s known ills are there too (location tracking, exchange monopolization, allowing predatory advertisers, gestures broadly at chrome, etc etc etc). They don’t need to be listening to us, and wouldn’t know how to even begin hiding it if they were. Something like that would require tons of compute and thousands of conspirators risking massive backlash, all to prop up a relatively tiny part of their business. > Convincing people of this is basically impossible Absolutely correct IME, btw. This is one of those things a smart engineer learns not to argue online, or at the Christmas dinner table for that matter. People tend to stand their ground on this one and move quickly to accusations of bias and naïveté…
- jgalt212 2y ago
  I'm not trying to change your mind, but this response (from another user) was flagged, so I'm providing a pull quote. > A marketing firm called Cox Media Group has recently revealed that it is listening to user conversations via their smartphones through its so-called "Active Listening" Software. With this, the company will push advertisements that users will see on certain platforms based on the heard conversations as unveiled by a report. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/307372/20240904/cox-media-group-reveals-active-listening-software-spies-user-convos.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/307372/20240904/cox-media... Is techtimes.com junk?
  - bbor 2y ago
    Ahh this one. Thanks for sharing, important point! Basically this is just a random small-ish company trying to get new clients with a flashy feature. Ultimately they have to use the same data as everyone else, which I’m 99.99% sure doesn’t involve any intentional (much less “active”) recording by Google, Apple, or Meta. Maybe they have their own hardware partners that have networked microphones, maybe they’re really using incidental recordings from their “407 data partners”, or maybe it’s an empty promise - I sadly can’t read the original(ish) article https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/ https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-list... It’s perhaps noteworthy that the intermediary source is the NYPost, which is most certainly junk! This story isn’t fake news, but it also isn’t presented in a honest way, IMHO
    - jcrawfordor 2y ago
      Cox Media Group is attached to Cox Enterprises which owns Cox Communications, one of the largest US cable providers. They distribute set-top boxes with an integrated voice assistant. So, I would wager that is at least one source, and I would actually put down money that it is the only source. Cox Media Group doesn't make any claims about where they get the data or how much they have, and it seems like it would be very difficult to negotiate to get that data from the other major voice assistants.
efitz 2y ago
Exactly. The big companies are scared of lawsuits and trying to get approval for something like that would be a nonstarter. As a matter of fact the device folks at the same company would be working hard to kill such an idea in its infancy because it’s already an uphill battle to sell always-listening or always-watching devices to consumers because of the creepiness factor. And people also are terrible at math. Modern ML (regression & neural nets) are ridiculously good at predicting stuff you might be interested in, particularly when rich data sources like browsing and e-commerce histories are available; the decision to show the ad to you at some point almost certainly was made long before any audio-to-marketing pipeline could act on it.
- Ancalagon 2y ago
  Aren’t TikTok and Huawei easy counterpoints to this?
  - efitz 2y ago
    Neither is a US company. TikTok is on their last appeal to the Supreme Court to avoid being banned in the US. Huawei is banned by the US government for many uses, e.g 5G infrastructure. Neither is a good example.
- danillonunes 2y ago
  After shadow profiles, cambridge analytica, prism, etc, I don't think those companies are all that scared of privacy violation lawsuits.

by jere 2y ago

arcmechanica 2y ago

[dead]

alex1138 2y ago
Citation for Apple?
- arcmechanica 2y ago
  its on the front page $95m fine

bbor 2y ago

Yup - having worked at Google Display Ads (arguably the epicenter of such talk), I personally only ever witnessed people walking the walk, privacy-wise. The threats to our privacy are quite public and not at all illegal; IMO data brokers and 3P browser trackers are at the top of the list, but all of Google’s known ills are there too (location tracking, exchange monopolization, allowing predatory advertisers, gestures broadly at chrome, etc etc etc). They don’t need to be listening to us, and wouldn’t know how to even begin hiding it if they were. Something like that would require tons of compute and thousands of conspirators risking massive backlash, all to prop up a relatively tiny part of their business. > Convincing people of this is basically impossible Absolutely correct IME, btw. This is one of those things a smart engineer learns not to argue online, or at the Christmas dinner table for that matter. People tend to stand their ground on this one and move quickly to accusations of bias and naïveté…

jgalt212 2y ago
I'm not trying to change your mind, but this response (from another user) was flagged, so I'm providing a pull quote. > A marketing firm called Cox Media Group has recently revealed that it is listening to user conversations via their smartphones through its so-called "Active Listening" Software. With this, the company will push advertisements that users will see on certain platforms based on the heard conversations as unveiled by a report. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/307372/20240904/cox-media-group-reveals-active-listening-software-spies-user-convos.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/307372/20240904/cox-media... Is techtimes.com junk?
- bbor 2y ago
  Ahh this one. Thanks for sharing, important point! Basically this is just a random small-ish company trying to get new clients with a flashy feature. Ultimately they have to use the same data as everyone else, which I’m 99.99% sure doesn’t involve any intentional (much less “active”) recording by Google, Apple, or Meta. Maybe they have their own hardware partners that have networked microphones, maybe they’re really using incidental recordings from their “407 data partners”, or maybe it’s an empty promise - I sadly can’t read the original(ish) article https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/ https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-list... It’s perhaps noteworthy that the intermediary source is the NYPost, which is most certainly junk! This story isn’t fake news, but it also isn’t presented in a honest way, IMHO
  - jcrawfordor 2y ago
    Cox Media Group is attached to Cox Enterprises which owns Cox Communications, one of the largest US cable providers. They distribute set-top boxes with an integrated voice assistant. So, I would wager that is at least one source, and I would actually put down money that it is the only source. Cox Media Group doesn't make any claims about where they get the data or how much they have, and it seems like it would be very difficult to negotiate to get that data from the other major voice assistants.

efitz 2y ago

Exactly. The big companies are scared of lawsuits and trying to get approval for something like that would be a nonstarter. As a matter of fact the device folks at the same company would be working hard to kill such an idea in its infancy because it’s already an uphill battle to sell always-listening or always-watching devices to consumers because of the creepiness factor. And people also are terrible at math. Modern ML (regression & neural nets) are ridiculously good at predicting stuff you might be interested in, particularly when rich data sources like browsing and e-commerce histories are available; the decision to show the ad to you at some point almost certainly was made long before any audio-to-marketing pipeline could act on it.

Ancalagon 2y ago
Aren’t TikTok and Huawei easy counterpoints to this?
- efitz 2y ago
  Neither is a US company. TikTok is on their last appeal to the Supreme Court to avoid being banned in the US. Huawei is banned by the US government for many uses, e.g 5G infrastructure. Neither is a good example.
danillonunes 2y ago
After shadow profiles, cambridge analytica, prism, etc, I don't think those companies are all that scared of privacy violation lawsuits.