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Social media companies engaged in 'vast surveillance,' FTC finds, calling status quo 'unacceptable' (www.nbcnews.com)

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

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[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They’re not listening to your microphone, at least not while your phone is in your pocket or whatever, because they don’t need to.

I don't deny that fingerprinting is powerful. But, I also have started to wear a tinfoil hat on the "mic always listening" issue. I have experienced (several times) ads for random things that I have only discussed -- never searched for or had other interaction with in any way.

It wouldn't be in my fingerprint, so the only other possibility is that others with a similar fingerprint to me had already searched for the same thing. Frankly, from an Occam's Razor perspective, I just find it far less likely that we have such a hive mentality that everyone with similar digital fingerprints ends up having the same "random" discussions. At that point, "they're always listening to your mic" seems downright practical.

[–] deranger@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How many times a day are you shown ads that are completely irrelevant?

Me personally, I’ve never once experienced the “they’re listening to my mic for ads” phenomenon. I think someone would notice by now either by seeing increased upload usage or a hot device- at least with current technology. On device machine learning will make this much easier to analyze without having to upload audio.

Not that I don’t think it’s entirely possible to listen right now, I just don’t think it’s occurring to unimportant people. I’m not particularly important or rich nor is anyone I know. It seems much more plausible to me that we’re just seeing conventional web tracking get a lot better + a healthy dose of confirmation bias.

[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 months ago

It's certainly possible. I do get ads that don't seem relevant for me pretty regularly. But this last time I'm referencing: one of the first ads I saw that night was for our discussion topic.

I'm not disagreeing with you, so I'll just mention it's safe to say: whether it is digital fingerprinting or mic listening, the surveillance level is absolutely off the charts.