this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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What are the odds than anyone in the household searched for the shows? Targeting ads to all devices on the same IP or even devices that have previously been on the same network happens.
I was able to predict that my mom had been researching “bunion shoes” after I started seeing ads, seemingly randomly, for them not long after she came to my house to visit.
It's not even just that, humans a incredibly predictable and that predictability is able to be microtargeted based on trends and past activity of an individual.
I agree in an abstract, but shoes do not wear at the same rate each year, especially when you buy different shoes each time. My shoe purchases, for instance, vary by a number of years.
I literally let years go by between buying shoes, no kidding. So I don't think that what you described would cover my specific case.
Especially out of the blue, and not shown ads for that at all before, and exactly around the same time when that discussion comes up in a moving vehicle.
(As an aside, and in case you're curious, when it comes time to buy new shoes, I usually buy two or three pairs of the same shoe, and then stick the other ones in the closet (usually buy at a really good sales price). Then when the first ones wear out I throw them away, and grab the next pair out of the closet.)
~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~
You just described a pattern, though.
From where I see it, there is no pattern of purchasing shoes there, unless you truly expect Google AI/servers to track you multi-years long (with the required CPU and storage requirements needed to do so), to establish an unique shoe purchasing pattern, instead of what they more likely are doing, which is looking at recent online and microphone activity.
AKA, Occam's Razor.
And also, how would Google know beforehand, that I will walk into a shoe store and buy shoes, if I didn't do any search for them ahead of time online?
~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~
It's just me and my wife, and we were both in the car together.
Also, I meant to say shoes, not shows. The voice-to-text doesn't always get me perfectly, and sometimes I miss the typos it creates.
~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~