←back to thread

Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

(newatlas.com)
369 points zeech | 3 comments | 26 Apr 25 00:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.596s | source
Show context
limbero ◴[26 Apr 25 17:01 UTC] No.43805260[source]▶
This article reminds me of this excellent tongue-in-cheek piece of writing by Jonathan Zeller in McSweeney's:

Calm Down—Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/calm-down-your-phone-isn...

replies(3): >>43806692 #>>43808289 #>>43808448 #
Spooky23 ◴[26 Apr 25 20:09 UTC] No.43806692[source]▶
There is so much time spent “debunking” audio recordings being shared with various entities it makes me more suspicious.

Just like Facebook’s “we never sell your data (we just stalk you and sell ads using your data)”. I’m sure there’s a similar weasel excuse… “we never listen to your audio (but we do analyze it to improve quality assurance)”

replies(7): >>43807661 #>>43807727 #>>43808347 #>>43808662 #>>43809138 #>>43809519 #>>43824424 #
kurthr ◴[26 Apr 25 22:20 UTC] No.43807727[source]▶
I can just say that I knew an entrepreneur in early post Y2K who developed apps to track music played in clubs in SF for folks like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. They gave out "free" phones (these were the small expensive candybars and nice flip/slideups) to the influencers of the day. They compressed the audio for orthogonality, and had a huge number of hashes to match. If they got more than a few consecutive matching hashes at a location that wasn't paying royalties, they got an enforcement call.

So the idea that it takes a huge amount of computing resources, battery life, permissions, or bandwidth to do matching of keywords is hilarious. That's what "siri", "hey google", "alexa" etc are all doing 24 hours a day. Just add another hundred and report them once an hour. You don't need low latency. It's just another tool in the bag!

Of course the cat food example is bad, because if they weren't looking for that you wouldn't get a response. Who would be willing to pay big for clicks on cat food. Now bariatric surgery? DUI? HELOC? Those pay.

replies(3): >>43807838 #>>43810185 #>>43811924 #
1. gf000 ◴[27 Apr 25 07:44 UTC] No.43810185[source]▶
What kind of keywords would you imagine provide an actual, profitable advantage to an ad company? I can't imagine "computer 2", "fridge 3", "egg 4" being all that valuable compared to.. literally my whole browser history and my reaction to other ads/videos (I looked at that short for 10s vs immediately skipping builds a very nice profile). And now add i18n in the picture - even the main AI assistant products suck in anything other than English, so this fancy, advanced technology with low return of value would end up with a low target audience as well.

Also, "Siri" and the like ends up waking the main processor, which is definitely easy to prove/disprove. Just talk to your phone continuously for a long time and see if it wakes.

replies(1): >>43810216 #
2. thinkingemote ◴[27 Apr 25 07:50 UTC] No.43810216[source]▶
Low, even very low, return of value is not no return. Therefore, given they make some return, and it has some value, that's enough for them to do it. Ads and ad data are two sides. We are often not the target for an ad, but our data provides stats about how an ad is performing. If more consumers are influenced to spend $1000 on something than not, then it's worth if for them. It's an aggregate cost benefit analysis not how effective it is at the isolated individual level.

Another thing to consider is that we should never fall into the trap of thinking we are immune from influence from advertisers. Firstly, it's basically what advertiser want; it allows more actions like this, more of our data to be sold and secondly because it's easier to influence someone if they think of a decision as their own choice, than if they think they were manipulated into it. We do not remember the ads we see but we can remember that we are all susceptible to influence.

replies(1): >>43811690 #
3. gf000 ◴[27 Apr 25 13:13 UTC] No.43811690[source]▶
Return of value is with respect to the costs of it. A lawsuit/brand value loss from illegally recording every communication you make (which we would have definite proof if it were happening, given that there our more phones than people on Earth) would far outweigh the tiny benefit (if any? I'm not convinced you would get any extra information in the general case compared to the tracking of the regular usage of your phone)

Also, I don't see the relevance of your second paragraph. The baseline is not "no ads", the baseline is "ads supported by all the tracking that Meta/Google currently does".