hendrik

Btw, I think it’s pretty much accepted fact that smartphones do spy on everyone. It’s the main business model of any big tech company. Google, Meta… They definitely have algorithms to tailor their targeted ads to someones personal profile. And per default they look at what you’re doing online all day. Keep track of your location if they can… The one thing that’s unclear is whether they use the microphone and also listen to your offline conversations. My main point being: Listening in with the microphone isn’t that far off. If you feel uncomfortable with that, you might want to re-consider a few other things as well.

With the scientific method and anecdotal evidence: kind of never. It’s illegitimate to draw that conclusion, this way.

You got to dig down to the facts. Or we can just tell the fact that a lot of people feel that way. And I mean “confirmation bias” is a very good explanation. We also have thousands of people believe in esoterics, homeopathy etc. The mechanics of psychology are well-understood. And it’s kind of the reason why we invented science in the first place. Because we found things aren’t always as they seem. And there are a lot of dynamics to factor in.

If we want to get to the truth, we have to do a proper study. I’m not an expert on this, so I don’t know if we got to that, yet. I know people have demonstrated this is technically possible. But as far as I’m aware people have also taken apart a few of the major apps like Facebook etc, logged the traffic and couldn’t find anything that uses microphone data to do targeted advertising.

Conclusion: It’s either not there, or we missed it.

I mean we have countless Reddit stories where someone’s dog or grandma died that day, and while groceries shopping someone tells them “hey, a beautiful girl like you should smile”.

That’s just an a**hole move. You don’t know anything about that person. Maybe they’re not smiling for a reason. I’d say it is very likely that this might be the case… Otherwise they’d probably already smile… And people keep forcing themselves on other people and telling them what to do. Like smile. When it’s really none of their business and very intrusive.

Leave them be. Everyone is entitled to feel. Sometimes people are happy and sometimes they’re not. It’s not however their job to smile for you.

And if it’s a medical condition or they were born with what people call a “resting bitch face”… You’re just rubbing it in and be the 500th person who did a negative comment on their looks.

Difficult to judge. Could be confirmation bias, as well. Meaning you got ads for flight befores. But you were not paying attention to them at that point. Which changed after your session and now you think these are connected. (Or you looked something up about that location and that kicked it off.)

These are the usual findings in the rare cases people are able to trace it back and they write some article or podcast about it. Mainly confirmation bias. And once you interact with one ad that got you taken aback, you’re trapped.

Doesn’t rule out other possibilities, though. I guess what I’m trying to say is, this counts more as anecdotal evidence. And we have plenty stories like this. It’s not enough to infer anything. More a reminder to investigate some more.

And yes, it’s good practice to keep your phone someplace else when you’re having protected/confidential conversations. Smartphones are very complex and they certainly have the potential to spy on you. In fact we know a lot of the apps and computer code is meant to analzye your behaviour and transfer that information to third parties.

I don’t comment on YouTube videos and that solves the issue for me. The comments are often crap anyways. So I don’t think I’m missing out on anything.

Just put a big sports ground in the back. That tends to have a fence anyways. You can leave the front an open area with buildings to each side. That’ll provide another barrier without looking like a prison.

I think we can see the consequences pretty clearly. Look at the society in countries like the USA where people are deeply divided and can’t talk to each other. And where politics etc isn’t about facts anymore, but politicians just invent arbitrary things which are 99% wrong but get to the people. Where nothing is about doing some sane thing, but just becoming more and more extemist.

We’ve had bots, filter bubbles, algorithms etc for quite some time now. I’d say about 10 years. This isn’t something fundamentally new, just the next step that will accellerate things further.

Agree. Though the felt level of democracy and freedom seems pretty low. A lot of people feel disadvantaged. People are getting ripped off for example with healthcare payments by the (rich) establishment. I hear a lot of complaints here for example you absolutely need a VPN because all internet service providers spy on you. There seems always to be a choice, but a fake one. In the end, it’s all the same and you can’t really choosse anything but the label that gets slapped on. Same for the politicians. You have like 2 candidates to vote for. Probably neither of those does you any good. And they’re both part of the oligarchy and they put in quite some effort to not offer you any third option.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism