It's funny because we've done this exact testing with the Facebook application on iOS by leaving my friend's iPhone14 with the screen locked next to Telemundo (a Spanish only public television channel) for 24 hours. (Our primary language is Ukrainian)

The next day, all of their ads were in Spanish.

So I do think additional research is needed for certain, the polling rate might be not as granular as you mentioned, but intermittent anonymous data collection like "primary language" could very likely be done passively with minimal impact on battery life, and it may be permissions-based and operating system dependent.

Nice try, I'm still going to wear my tinfoil

"My phone is listening, it knows what I want!"

*Uses social media, doesn't use ad-blockers, and clicks OK to share data with 1472 Trusted Data Partners to make the annoying popups go away*

For “Hey Google”, “Hey Alexa” or “Hey Siri” to work your phone/smart speaker has to be always listening

Then how does Google figure out what music is playing in the background to display it on the lock screen?

I'm very happy to have GrapheneOS on my phone now.

I used to say the same thing, but now I have some serious test cases that are very, very, compelling.

As in: a subject never before broached verbally by me or my friend (or anyone I know, and I don't associate with many people), was discussed by me and my friend in the car, with exactly 2 phones in the car, one of which is de-googled (i.e. Runs a non-Google OS with no Google Play, etc).

Both of us receive ads for that subject the next day.

Mind, neither of us had even thought about that subject before, and it was something way out of left field for both of us - as in not at all related to anything in our lives, and was a complete "shower thought" moment for me.

I get there's a lot of predictive analysis out there, but you're talking predicting something for two people with vastly different lives (we're decades apart in age, for example, in very different fields).

And this ad had nothing to do with our common ground either.

I simply can't buy the predictive analysis on this one.

I've never used any of the usual social media nonsense (it always bothered me, the invasiveness was obvious - Lemmy is my first, and only perhaps a year ago and this particular event was 3 years ago), have zero social presence online - no photo storage, etc, have always kept things separated as much as I can (since the 90's, because we saw the data mining coming back then). And neither of us did any search for the subject, because there was no need - it was a throwaway kind of thought.

I agree with you, it's crazy people still believe this is happening. However the fact that they can collect so much data about you through other means that people believe they're spying on your directly is still pretty fuckin scary.

I watched a Jet Li movie in Mandarin with subtitles (on DVD on my TV so not through the phone or any app), and suddenly my search autocomplete is filled with Chinese characters. Ads in Mandarin. Hmmm.

And just to be clear I don't know Mandarin and have no searches or activity related to that at all.

Ok. Why does Instagram demand microphone access to doomscroll?

https://slrpnk.net/post/12530482

It's also noteworthy that listening to audio via phone microphones is terrible. Speech to text works like shit, and the expectation is that people need to speak as plainly as possible, and over a long period of manual adjustments will it get to a point where it's halfway usable.

Ever gotten a pocket dial from someone? Can you hear anything that even resembles speech over the rustling of fabric? Seems like a wild leap to assume that corpos are listening in on random audio, when the software designed around people specifically speaking plainly and clearly to their phone barely works at all.

Plenty of things to be concerned about with info privacy, but it's important to recognize the limitations of hardware.

I made a joke using my name and minutes later my friend showed me a meme he go suggested to on Instagram that used my name as a punchline.

A few months ago at school my friends made some jokes about feet and stuff for feet showed up in their Instagram ads.

There are many occurrences of this happening if you allow Instagram to have the always access microphone permission.

No, your phone isn’t listening to you, plenty of tests have been done.

Nah, that doesn't apply to today's devices.

There are millions upon millions of people using "Alexa", "OK Google", "Bixby" and "Hey Siri", and those services require the mic to be always listening.

That's how they work. And when they hear something, that data gets recorded to the company server to do what they like with it, including targeted ads and content.

And I would find it hard to believe that these corporations, with so many privacy-related lawsuits, aren't using these always-on voice assistants to further market to their users.

I also believe this isn't true, but did have something happen that we couldn't figure out the other day.

I was looking at this really specialized gaming keyboard on my phone (cyborg gaming keyboard). I showed it to my wife and we talked about it a bit. Later my wife, who's not a gamer and never looks up any of this type of stuff, gets ads for this hyper specific niche gaming keyboard on Facebook. She never looked it up on her phone, she has no signed in accounts on my phone, she is not a target demographic for this device. The only connections possible that I can think of is that Facebook does know we're married (though it's never used that for this sort of ads before) and that we talked about it with her phone in the room.

It was freaky and I still can't explain it.