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Comment by askvictor | Hacker News Reader

That's assuming they're listening/watching all the time. Google Assistant (and all the other assistants) wake up on a certain magic word; who's to say that other apps/companies aren't doing the same? Well, probably your battery life might be terrible and your phone running unusually hot, but Assistant and co get away with minimal battery usage...

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Quite often while talking about a restaurant, opening google maps will have it highlighted. I think this shows that not only does google not require a magic word to start recording, it actively processes the input it gets. I'm highly considering switching to lineage os.

Try making a controlled experiment. Humans are notoriously good at seeing patterns that aren't there.

The patterns are there. But often the connection is meaningful, not causal.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity

The pattern in this case is the connection between surreptitious listening and the suggestion.

The brain is still seeing a pattern though it is one of correlated meanings/abstractions, not concrete causes.

Someone conducted a simple experiment to see if the facebook app was listening to their conversations. Spoiler: it's listening to your every word.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps

Yeah, that's not a controlled experiment. I can think of at least three benign explanations that is consistent with not listening.

The experiment, the real, controlled (replicable!) one, isn't hard to do. You just need a couple of spare phones.

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