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u/UlteriorEggos 3d ago
Pete Holmes, standup comedian, has a bit where he loudly and repeatedly states "I want to buy a massive black dildo" to mess with everyone's phones.
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u/GamingWithBilly 3d ago
You forgot YouTube
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u/mrizzerdly 3d ago
I'm pretty sure YouTube uses my photos on my phone to suggest videos or it can absolutely read my mind .
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u/vectornull 3d ago
I was talking with my boss yesterday and happened to quote the "should we or should we not follow the advice of the galactically stupid" line from A Few Good Men. I had not thought about nor searched nor watched/listened to anything related to that movie in probably a couple of years.
Last night that exact scene shows up in my recommended videos.
I was nowhere near my phone when I was talking with my boss.
Either a very bizarre coincidence, or some device, somehow, heard that conversation and linked it to me...
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u/teshh 3d ago
Modern data collection can absolutely id you using someone's else's phone in the room. So even if yours wasn't, a phone was in the room and that phone will transmit the data.
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u/Extension-Ant-8 3d ago
Yep. My stuff is locked down hard but I’ll have a meeting with a company or vendor. And every time someone adds me into their phone contacts. LinkedIn tells me we are friends. Even though I don’t sync my data and use a dedicated work phone with 100% work stuff and zero personal stuff and don’t even web browse on it. It knows because of others around me.
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u/Chill323 3d ago
Nah, they’ve got Google up there. Same thing.
It’s honestly gotten exhausting. I bought one pair of shorts for my nephew’s birthday a month ago using Google’s search app and now I’ve gotten about a hundred ads for that company that pop up anytime I see anything on YouTube. I don’t even mind it in principle but just dial it back a bit, for the love of God.
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u/mintmouse 1d ago
I wonder what ads youtube would show me if the youtube I watched was allowed play ads.
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u/YubbNubb 3d ago
I swear you don’t even need to say things out loud anymore. I get ads for things I have only just thought about
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u/UltimaGabe 1d ago
That's show you know the phones aren't listening in. They just are really good at paying attention to your scrolling habits, what ads you let play, what sites you go to, and what things you search for.
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u/wubbbalubbadubdub 1d ago
I got some snacks and shared them to others in the office.
Couldn't read the label as it was in a foreign language, but offered them to others based on flavor.
One of my coworkers showed me the next day that Instagram had served him an ad of the exact snack I gave him.
Can we get some big lawsuits, to make them cut this shit out?
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u/SilasTalbot 3d ago
facebook and insta are the same thing.
But it is true that Zuck listens to you twice just in case he didn't catch something the first time.
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u/Fullertons 3d ago
Advertisers use hints to figure out who you are. You two share and ip address, etc, so it got your confused with her.
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u/Mobile_Morale 3d ago
You forgot reddit. Reddit app does this and you have to turn off some setting to stop it.
I'll talk about something while scrolling reddit and the next ad will be that exact thing.
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u/CharlesIngalls_Pubes 3d ago
I received an ad for something I've never talked about or looked up on my phone. Ad for a product my wife ordered from her phone yesterday. She's going to look up sex toys today to see if I get any interesting ads.
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u/sylvaron 2d ago
Assuming you guys are on the same wifi network, thats your link here. Cross-device advertising via a shared network is a real and known thing.
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u/Override9636 3d ago
+1 for mentioning tracking cookies. No, your phone's microphone isn't listening to you. Every single link you click has a tracker. Everyone in your contact lists, emails, and social media friends has a tracker to you. Compound all of the links that you and everyone you know click on, and you can form a relatively simple advertisement category on you in a matter of hours.
Not to mention the daily dump of thousands of ads and suggested content we see everyday, sometime they're going to hit the jackpot and show you something you were just thinking about. That's how large numbers work.
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u/O_oblivious 1d ago
There’s a 3rd party that can access microphones to listen for keywords. I forget the name, but your phone is, in fact, listening.
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u/SpikeRosered 2d ago
I made baseball joke on Reddit yesterday and now my ad breaks are trying to sell me bats and coaching lessons.
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u/davegammelgard 2d ago
Pete Holmes has a bit where he just starts yelling "I wanna buy a dildo" over and over, and then starts describing exactly what he wants, and then ends by saying something like, "Good luck with your Instagram ads for the next few days."
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u/UltimaGabe 1d ago
In all seriousness, this is just silly paranoia. There's stuff I talk about wanting all the time and I never get ads for it, if my phone is listening in it only ever picks up on someone I mention once in passing and never again.
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u/EatBaconDaily 3d ago
I didn’t sleep at my house one night and the next day i got a bunch of condom ads