this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
1014 points (95.9% liked)

Funny: Home of the Haha

5660 readers
391 users here now

Welcome to /c/funny, a place for all your humorous and amusing content.

Looking for mods! Send an application to Stamets!

Our Rules:

  1. Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.

  2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.

  3. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.


Other Communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Was it a smart TV or a dumb monitor? Smart TVs share tracking data about everything.

How did you acquire the movie? Did you purchase it online? If not, did you visit a Chinese supermarket? Or did you purchase it at a large store and had a membership?

Did you borrow it from a Chinese movie aficionado and spend some time with (or rather around) them?

There are SO many variables to get data from. Everything is linked. Everything.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Was it a smart TV or a dumb monitor?

Played a DVD, with a separate DVD player, over HDMI. It would be shocking if they can track that back to your phone and/or gmail account which wasn't touched. Not logged into the TV, so it would be seeing if it's the same wifi, or going through another HDMI cable to the chromecast.

How did you acquire the movie?

An old DVD probably bought at HMV before smart phones existed.

spend some time with (or rather around) them?

???? So the microphone would hear Chinese in that way instead? It's the same fucking thing.

The extent you're going through rather than accepting the microphone is listening is fucking astounding. Occams razor.

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de -3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For the last part:

Your location is tracked constantly, through GPS, cell towers and nearby WiFi access points. This can be used to associate you with certain locations - like visiting a store - or who you frequently spend time with/around (by being logged into the same WiFi network etc).

As for the smart TV: There is this insanity although I'm unsure whether it can be applied to content played from HDMI ports. You don't need the phone to listen if the TV does it already.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Location? WTF does location have to do with hearing mandarin? JFC you're making shit up. The CLOSEST you can say is that visiting a chinese market will make it show chinese ads, which is a very fucking far reach when this is about AFTER playing the DVD, not before. Which I already said didn't even fucking happen.

ACR? AND THEN TIE IT TO THE GMAIL ACCOUNT FFS. That's the whole fucking point. How the fuck would it do that when you're not logged into the fucking TV or the DVD player.

JFC I'm out. You're just throwing all the words you know at the wall without actually saying anything or tying anything together. Instead of the very fucking simple and obvious that the fucking microphone is fucking listening.

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 months ago

How the fuck would it do that when you're not logged into the fucking TV or DVD player?

Why do websites have this in their cookie notices? I don't think it's purely decorational now, is it?

I highly, highly doubt that Google uses your microphone for advertising. 95% of the information is available through other, obviously legal means.

Additionally, there's one glaring reason Google is not doing it: Because it would be impossible to keep it a secret for so long. It would take hundreds, maybe thousands of different employees (over the years) to maintain a secret microphone listenting tool that is both performant and nearly impossible to detect. It would take merely a single person to leak it all and cause the demise of Google.