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In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention (futurism.com)

submitted 2 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Yeah, there was a viral video years back about a couple that thought this was happening to them, so they started talking about cat litter for 1 day, only inside their house, and then within 2 days they were being served cat litter ads for the first time in their lives.

They didnt own a cat.

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 months ago

Did they mention cat litter in any messaging app? Upload a video announcing their plan?

I'm skeptical, lol

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How many other novel ads did they see that they didn't talk about?

[–] VoterFrog@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'd be incredibly skeptical of the claim that they've never been served a cat litter ad. Everybody gets served ads that are misses. They're obviously easy to ignore which makes it difficult to recall what they were about. But I have no doubt that they would've been served cat-related ads plenty of times before. Cats are, after all, one of the most common pets.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm not saying they didn't get an ad for cat litter. I'm saying they probably also got ads for other random products that they didn't talk about, but they didn't pay attention to those because they weren't talking about them. It's not a valid experiment design.

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

I know. But we're both talking about the same thing. Everyone gets irrelevant and ostensibly novel ads all the time. Cat litter, beauty products, diapers, whatever. They just so happen to have focused their attention on cat litter when they just as easily could have focused on dozens of other products and noticed the same result. And, in truth, it's unlikely that they are actually novel, just unnoticed before.

[–] DBT@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Yea they can deny it all they want, but I’ve had similar happen to me countless times.

Even better, last time I tried to buy something from one of their adds it turned out to be a scam. I reported the post (add) and they said they wouldn’t remove it because it didn’t break any policies. lol.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 0 points 2 months ago

I used to pick up things for a friend at the supermarket and they moved over five years ago. To this day, I still use the savings card, and still get coupons for baby formula and diapers. Even if I had an infant at the time, does the supermarket think my now six year old would still be using formula and diapers?