I have this feeling it’s more like a mentalist mind-trick.
We are fed so many inputs from so many sources, we don’t notice the influence, but we end up thinking about such and such, maybe talking about it with other people and suddenly, lo and behold! the algorithm presents us with an ad for the very subject that was on our mind! Mind reading! Magic!
But just like a Derren Brown subject, we just picked the card he wanted us to pick from the beginning.
I reckon the only thing preventing us from being completely subjugated is the amount of actors trying to influence us simultaneously, as we flock through our attention grabbing sources.
Which is why the consolidation of media is such a worrisome phenomenon. One dude controlling an entire network of sources means you are constantly under the same influence.
And then you get MAGA.
I wonder what’s next?
I wish it was that way. Soo many ads are completely irrelevant. The only platform where I get good ads is google news (the swipe left on Pixel). It’s filled with Adafruit ads. I’m cool with that.
I see the debate happening in here, and I honestly think the way this really works is a lot weirder and at a bigger scale than what most of us might imagine. We’ve had pretty strong machine learning for quite a while… we still don’t know exactly how it works, but these models have reasoning, pattern recognition and the ability to classify data which improves every day.
The likes of Google ingest all manner of disparate data points, buying and selling them to each other, responding to the push and pull of markets and trends. These players have a realtime profile on every single person who touches their platform. Users touch that platform with almost everything they do. These touch points where data get gathered are not just users’ own personal devices, either. They increasingly happen via corporate and state-controlled devices and networks out in the built environment.
We feed these entities continuously with our actions, whether we know it or not. They continuously map all the intersections of millions of data points across billions of profiles, theoretically getting as granular as needed. It’s picking up patterns that humans would never think to look for, modulating, and feeding it back to us. Generative agents fit into this framework, hand in glove.
At this scale, these entities can derive trends, interests, motivations. They create massive feedback loops, driving trends that suit them as they observe, predict and influence what we’ll do, wear, buy, eat. Where we go online, and IRL. And what we search for.
This is a massive, largely invisible, endlessly adaptable machine they’ve created. No one person can fathom the entirety of it. Even for the engineers who contribute, they only know their one small piece, and they may be unaware of how it contributes to the whole or how it ultimately is used.
The only ceiling to it is data storage, compute, and access/adoption. They’re obviously working to massively raise that on all fronts.
This is becoming the mycelium beneath our forest floor. Like trees, we find it convenient and practical to know each other’s statuses and whereabouts, to converse, and to get things. We eat from it, or it feeds us. Meanwhile, it shapes the environment itself, deciding who rises and falls, spreading, terraforming the earth and transforming the substrate of above-ground life according to its own alien logic. Unlike a mycelial network, it has our own hubris reflected and embodied. It’s not self-limiting, not in a way that means anything to the well-being of most of us. The end result here won’t exactly be balance and homeostasis in the ecosystem.
They don’t need our microphones.
Very fitting comparison! Nicely written! :)
That might be useful.
It’s more like, you buy a pair of boots online.
FB and Chrome for the next week and a half BOOTS!! BOOTS HERE!!
I think that might work for certain items, you keep seeing the ads and the next thing you know, you now have a growing collection of said item
Stories of these companies listening through everybody’s mics are like modern day ghost stories. It definitely totally happens every single day but nobody ever manages to get a piece of hard evidence. Maybe the algorithms can sense wireshark like ghosts sense cameras
Cox Media Group got kicked off Google’s ad partner program a few years ago when 404 Media scooped that they had a feature called CMG Active Listening which did exactly this. They had a slide deck. Audio spying by advertisers is like doping in pro sports, everybody does it and you only get caught if you’re stupid. Remember back in 2013 a whistleblowing NSA contractor told us to put our phones in the fridge if we wanted to have a secret conversation? He had a slide deck, too. The western world is run by a cult of pedophiles, the fact that our phones listen in on us without our consent is not a stretch.
So the only piece of evidence is a single mention on a low quality PowerPoint presentation from a company nobody has ever heard of. This is tinfoil hat territory
Metaphors are just a step too far, eh?
No, they’re not “listening” to audio, but their servers are definitely listening for all the data we send them.
Meta / Instagram / Facebook definitely does this, they even hack your phone to get even more data.
Neither of those articles has any evidence of them secretly listening through everybody’s microphone
I linked the second one because, I think, if they resort to hacking devices, they have no problems with recording you. Your voice doesn’t even have to be transmitted to them, they can just analyze it on your device and use their system services which come preinstalled on every android device to distribute it locally.
It definitely totally happens every single day but nobody ever manages to get a piece of hard evidence.
Are you just lazy and in denial? There is traffic sent from both Alexa and Google Home every time it detects something that it considers speech, regardless of whether the wake word was detected. This is not debatable, set up your own tests.
I have Google Home and monitors on my own network, I’ve never seen suspicious activity. Here’s somebody else doing it:
Anyone who says they aren’t listening are idiots who know nothing of big tech. They are listening.
Why would they need to listen? That’s a lot of processing power for information we already give them. They don’t need to listen, honestly. They get more information from us than we verbally communicate.
Why would they need to listen? That’s a lot of processing power
But… why would they care? It’s your energy bill, not theirs.
I think about this every time I see a random thing I have never heard of before and go to search for it and autofill has the exact phrase I wanna search after typing only 1 or 2 letters. It either reads text on the screen or listened to me say to myself “what the hell is yadda yadda?” because how else would it know I had a really good chance of searching “what is yadda yadda” after only typing “wh?” The yadda yadda part could have been anything, but it still managed to predict the exact thing I was gonna look for.
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I always just thought it was the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon at work… but who knows, I could be wrong.
I’ll have two number 9s, a number 9 large, a number 6 with extra dip, a number 7, two number 45s, one with cheese, and a large soda.
Big Smoke is that you?
And Alexa, of course
That’s who the person is talking to in the room. They don’t even need to sneakily listen in
Mate I’m its even worse than we could possibly imagine by now.
~20 years ago, when smartphones were new and super expensive, I arranged to meet my friend using Facebook chat. I did not have a mobile phone at all, I used desktop PC to access it. While I was in his car we were talking about possible careers and I said i would probably enjoy being a teacher. When I got home and logged back in, every single banner ad was for teaching courses, teach English abroad, teachers wanted.
It definitely used his smartphones microphone to hear that there were 2 people in the car, and used the chat log to figure out it was me, and this was a long time ago.
We all know they’re doing it yet there are 0 laws to stop it. Huh. Time to start axing data centers.
Out of curiosity: And you never researched any teaching topic before?
Nope, I was just desperate for something to say other than “I have absolutely no ambition”
It might be the other way around too though… You might be thinking of buying something, because Facebook or google have convinced you that you need it
That said, I had to create an account in FB due to work and studies. I did some research and decided to run it only on a browser and use a seperate browser only for FB. Along with some strict privacy rules.
My account was flagged within 30 seconds of creation. They asked for a selfie ID that they got and they did a manual assessment but banned the account nonetheless for not following community guidelines
You can’t even read their community guidelines without accepting their cookie policy
Try having an account since 2007 and logging in once a month to check in with friends, but this last year I get banned for using vpn. Same deal, verify, ban, unlock, verify, ban. I personally like that they tell me my account was compromised…
I have it running now on and old Mac that isn’t logged in with any other accounts. It’s on its own, doesnt use Adblock and uses the public WiFi from the coffee shop below my apartment. If I have to use Facebook, they can figure my usage patterns out without help.
…superPAC dedicated to funding policies that hold IT organizations liable for the consequences of their actions.
We are gathered here today to honor the memory of Remember_the_tooth, who unfortunately committed suicide by shooting themselves 3 times in the back of the head and falling out a locked window.
After a sudden spike in their car insurance, healthcare, and home owners insurance rates.
Dynamic pricing is already here. If you don’t have the app on your phone dinner costs 25% more than for the tracked.
We’ll never know why they did it. I guess depression can sneak up on the best of us 😔
RIP 😔
I talk about Kendal Mint Cake whenever I think I might be around an open mic.
I and my wife constantly get adverts for it on Amazon and in other places.
None of us have ever bought any.
Hashtag confusion to the enemy, or something
So instead of screaming bullshit ads you get pics of a confectionary classic?
Kendal Mint Cake
I’ve never heard of these, being across the pond and all that. Now I’m tempted to sneak this into conversations and see if the algorithms fall for it…
Wish tech companies respected my privacy they’re awful people to interact with.
What is with the trope of using a glass to listen through a wall or door? Surely it doesn’t work, right? Do all of these people have glasses with no bottom?
It’s like when you see in TV/movies when someone gets tied up and “gagged” by just putting a sock in their mouth with no tape or anything. As if the person couldn’t literally just spit the piece of cloth out.
Takes me out of it completely, every time.
…it having a bottom is how it works.
the vibrations carry through the glass and into your ear that is pressed against the bottom. it works.
Interesting
This works. Tape over the mouth doesn’t as you can just chew it off.
How would that work? How could putting a piece of cloth in someone’s mouth prevent them from spitting it out?
Maybe that sox is a warning that if he spits it. He is going to get beaten the shit out of himself.
What did I miss? Facebook has done this for well over a decade, but how does Google illegally listen in now?
Also been doing it for over a decade. Cookies and other data tracking software. The entire mainstream internet relies on google and aws. They are and have been tracking everything and attaching it to your ip and linking it to other devices and accounts like fb. All in the name of advertising and surveillance
How do you think google assistant works?
In my experience, badly.
Eh Siri is no different really
Oh, you’re right. The google-guy waltzes right in alongside yourself. Doesn’t bother waiting outside to listen. And to disallow him entry is rocket science mixed with slapstick idiocracy.
Lucky my do i know how to load a CustomRoms.
You re right. The depiction of google is a bit off.
It’s your phone, it’s your app store, it’s your browser, it’s your email, it’s your storage, it’s your search, it’s your maps, it’s your music, it’s your news, it’s your credit card, it’s your password manager
Google is so deeply integrated into most people’s lives that they can’t imagine going without it.
The fact this meme mentions Facebook should tell you approximately how old it is.
outta curiosity, where do you think Facebook learned it from?
Sometimes I dream about a nonprofit mega platform (like a web search with social media and a shopping platform included) that clearly communicates it‘s users that it will share all the knowledge with everybody that is interested in it for free in a privacy respecting way. Making this information basically worthless. Just to fuck with google and all the big players in the ad business.
A platform that is financed by donations and ads that have some sort of fair use pricing where small advertisers are even allowed to advertise for free (but the usage of ads is only allowed to compensate money that is missing to keep everything operational) A platform where small players can sell their stuff for free. A platform with social media, without any algorithms. Fuck it, let‘s even include a video platform and some sort of business platform just to make it complete.
As I said it must be a nonprofit. So it would basically have no intention to earn more than enough money to keep everything operational, making it the cheapest option for everybody and destroying all the mega corps out there that just can’t get squeezed enough revenue out of it’s users. This way we would be brought back to the golden ages of the internet 10-20 years ago.
Any such thing, even if it were to emerge tomorrow, would be swiftly destroyed by all the other platforms that already exist. Because it would be an absolute threat to their business model.
