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

(newatlas.com)
369 points zeech | 2 comments | 26 Apr 25 00:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.019s | source
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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...

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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)”

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1. jsbisviewtiful ◴[28 Apr 25 18:25 UTC] No.43824424[source]▶
Not saying this is true, but the amount of time and effort put into saying "no one is listening to you" could be attributed to the novel 1984, where the government is actively listening to its citizens. Enough people could associate the novel with government surveillance that it's what people interpret as the most likely surveillance happening - and enough people don't understand tech that it's lost on them that a) the tech to actively listen to millions of people constantly doesn't exist at the appropriate level to be effective b) there are significantly more and far more effective ways to monitor people with current tech than via microphone. It's truly unfortunate people don't understand tech to realize what's actually possible and what is actively happening vs what they imagine could be happening
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2. Spooky23 ◴[28 Apr 25 22:37 UTC] No.43826861[source]▶
Sure it does. You just haven’t seen it.

Download OtterAI. Or run voice memos all day, load it into NotebookLM and it about your day. Hell, setup whisper on your MacBook and you can chug away at pretty significant quantities of audio.

I’ve seen solutions that process audio from hundreds of multi-party meetings and can do all sorts of analysis. In one case, it can do realtime sentiment analysis and alert security when an encounter is getting tense.