Do our mobile phones listen to us?

It's the BUMMER technique - Jaron Lanier's book 10 Reasons to Delete your social media accounts explains in detail.
 
Yes the way to test it is to talk about some really random stuff, when you suddenly get adverts for a hand glider when you are scared of heights you kNow that the walls have ears and it is not a coincidence.
 
Strange. We were talking about this just yesterday. I've been watching Humans lately and was telling my son about it - synths and everything - in the morning. That afternoon my word of the day from "Words with Friends" on my phone was "SYNTH". That is too much coincidence.

I told my mate about it and he obviously thought I was on the brink of talking about lizards taking over the world, but now I've read this thread I can see that there are a lot of connections going on that we know nothing about. I don't like it much.
 
Experiments were done with phones left in a room and played audio at them discussing brands and products and monitored their activity vs some phones in silence. No changes to behaviour or data usage was observed.

more likely coincidence, or derived by your other behaviour online. Search history, music choices, buying patterns etc all tie back to unique identifiers so advertisers profile you quite specifically.

there is a thing called the baader-meinhoff effect. You notice something because you have recently discussed it or learned about it for the first time. That thing might have popped up plenty of times before but you didn’t have that mental link created in your head to make it stand out.

https://www.sciencealert.com/you-know-how-when-you-learn-a-new-word-you-see-it-everywhere-here-s-why
 
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I can't even find mic access settings. There are dozens of settings. It would take me ages to go through them all. No doubt that is intentional.
 
I was out in my car with my wife on Friday night and Say Hello, Wave Goodbye came on the radio so I was singing it very enthusiastically. Not a song you hear too often and not a song that I ever play on my phone. Yet when I woke the next morning and had a look on Facebook this was there at the top of my feed.

A few weeks ago I was discussing the possibility of getting a greenhouse with my wife, a short time later that was an advert on Facebook for greenhouses.

Coincidence?

View attachment 7677

Great tune, I must admit.
 
I can't even find mic access settings. There are dozens of settings. It would take me ages to go through them all. No doubt that is intentional.
It is indeed. Same as the end user licencing agreements which are pages and pages and pages long and no one ever reads what they are signing up for
 
This actually happened to me today. I was speaking to a removal man on the phone about what needs moving and mentioned washing machine and fridge/freezer. Following the call I logged on to Facebook and got adverts for washing machines and fridges. Deactivated my account for a while.
 
Experiments were done with phones left in a room and played audio at them discussing brands and products and monitored their activity vs some phones in silence. No changes to behaviour or data usage was observed.

more likely coincidence, or derived by your other behaviour online. Search history, music choices, buying patterns etc all tie back to unique identifiers so advertisers profile you quite specifically.

there is a thing called the baader-meinhoff effect. You notice something be cashed you have recently discussed it or learned about it for the first time. That thing might have popped up plenty of times before but you didn’t have that mental link created in your head to make it stand out.

https://www.sciencealert.com/you-know-how-when-you-learn-a-new-word-you-see-it-everywhere-here-s-why
Is that effect like when you buy a car you think is unique and then all of a sudden you see them everywhere after you've bought it?

Swear I had the only model and colour specification of a car a few years ago and after month or so I suddenly started seeing carbon copies of my car all over the place. I was gutted 🤣
 
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