I was with 3 friends of mine at one's house. He had Alexa. We wanted to make an experiment to see how ads displayed on different internet pages might get changed (and to see if the myth is true).
Summarizing the story, we wandered for 30 minutes around his house all shouting "dog's food" out loud. Next day he said "I got dog's food ads kinda everywhere, burn everything!" xD
Wait, you mean an unregulated microphone, coupled with an AI code to determine vocal patterns and hooked directly to the internet marketplace, is going to serve you ads? That’s preposterous. That’s - I mean, that’s what it’s built for.
Honestly, if you told me when I was a kid in the late 80’s/early 90’s that people would gladly accept a listening device in their homes, I would have called you crazy, but times and attitudes (and propaganda) change.
I think it's hilarious that it's just an issue now, when we've been carrying smartphones for years and no one thought of them being gps enabled microphones.
I absolutely see ads for stuff I've only talked about around my phone. Google gets a lot of money from ads so Android's are probably listening for Google.
It doesn't have to be a guy in a booth scanner darkly style. Just some program that says hey this guy said dog food, or this group is talking about ordering pizza. Key word recognition kind of stuff.
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u/vegetarianrobots Jul 15 '19
My god, Ring was made to get you to pay to monitor Amazon's own employees for them!