I'm yet to see anything other than anecdotal evidence that proves that phones listen to what you say around them and serve ads based on that. the only thing I've seen was a research performed a few years ago that proved the opposite.
this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
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My assumption is that it's almost certainly the other way around. Ads visible surrounding you in your life work their way into your head and make it to your conversations. At that point it stops being subliminal and you're thinking about it and notice the ads.
My entire theory is hinged on the idea that advertising works. That all these companies spending millions and billions on ads fundamentally know what they're doing and that you're being hacked in an insidious and grotesque way by them.
My worldview still makes it a duty to protect your own goddamn soul by installing as many ad blockers as possible though
oh, I definitely believe that a part of the "I've been talking with my partner about a trip to Spain and now I'm seeing the ads about it everywhere" is experiencing frequency illusion.
another big part of the phenomenon is how predictable the human nature is in some ways. oh, you're middle class with a steady income and it's a second half of November, with the days getting shorted and the sun setting even sooner after the clocks have been adjusted? it's super difficult to guess that you might be considering a vacation somewhere warm and sunny.
All it takes is a search for travel options in Spain and if course it's going to start popping up.
If it were actually happening it would be so easy to prove. That's not to say that always-listening devices aren't a huge privacy violation with the potential to record and monitor your conversations, but most of the things that people think are evidence of this are just them being monitored in other ways. For instance someone has a conversation with someone about something, never searches for it on their phone and sees adverts about it, but ignores the fact that the other person might have searched for it and whatever is monitoring their searches also has a link between the two of them.
For me it also happens constantly with things like the crossword, which obviously can't be listening.
Links between folks is part of it, but a lot is just ordinary coincidence.
Consider swapping the link with one that doesn't have a tracker
https://twitter.com/CryptoTweetie/status/1725885211823468839
Alternatively link to a Twitter frontend
I've played around with this a few times now and I talked about getting a trench coat for a good day with my wife and now I just won't stop getting ads for long coats...
Honestly it's ridiculously invasive.
Pro tip if they are about privacy (or maybe rather cyber security) https://agilestationery.com/collections/cybersecurity-games/products/elevation-of-privilege-with-privacy-suit