this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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I occasionally do fun little experiments with others and there phones (with contest) where we find a subject we both have absolutely no interest in, and we figure it out without any electronics at all around, like our back and what not, then we agree to not do anything with our electronics about it at all and only talk to each other about it by our phones, and every fucking time we both start to get add recommendations about whatever we was talking about.
Had a past friend who was asexual and aromantic and never really cared or looked into paternity tests and baby stuff (because like why?) and after a few days of randomly talking about it they got tons of adds targeted for pregnant women (they was trans non binary but was afab)
So from my limited tests, it absolutely does spy on us
I have tried it as well. Speaking in front of my phone about surfing equipment for example. I couldn't care less about surfing so wouldn't accidentally google anything about it but so far I never got any specific ads for that.
Same. My partner and I have heard so much about this that we have over several months randomly brought up topics that are absurd and foreign to us.
We do it like this: while preparing dinner or so, one of us scribbles a word on a post-it note and we engage on it as though we're making plans or looking to buy something. We have phones, Google Home speakers and Nest devices nearby.
There are a few challenges:
I feel that ordinary people are terrible at running these experiments because it's honestly really difficult to be impartial and evaluate the results with statistical significance. As soon as you encounter one match, the pattern matching part of your brain will scream "told you so!" even if the success rate is 1%.
And guess what? Literally none of the topics appear as targeted ads for either of us.
You fool you just typed it and spoiled your experiment
Thought about that. Next time I'll just use paragliding!
Oh shit.
Turn microphone permissions off cmon
Does it really matter if the device admin is Google or Apple?
I cam here just to say: "we know" enough has happened over the years that the people i know ha e some sort of awareness or conviction that it's happening.