Comment by rolltiide | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rolltiide | Hacker News Reader

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This is how an app like Facebook can show you an ad on something you were talking about.

It would be naive to point the finger at Facebook listening to you, it would be more accurate to assume its EVERY OTHER app (including FB) gathering data about you and your surroundings - MAYBE ONE IS ACTUALLY LISTENING - but whether any individual app is or isn't, the data brokers have all the data as well as other people like you that have probably reacted to the same external stimulus and can be predicted to be thinking about a certain product around that point in time.

POOF - an ad about that thing you talked about, now on your Facebook feed.

Zuckerberg gets hauled in front of Congress, accurately says "what? no we don't do that", data brokers and software engineers laugh to the bank and let Zuckerberg get crucified for their sins.

Yes absolutely, everyone else is gathering this apparently and it has to just be assumed now. I hadn't thought about it with the "facebook is listening" stuff but this makes way more sense.

It's particularly frustrating given how hard I try to disassociate myself and my family from "data brokers" and then I read another thing like this.

I think people jump to "the app is listening" because it's the easiest concept to understand. Anyone with a technical background knows why that's extremely unlikely, but it still makes more sense to people as a narrative than the complex web of online trackers and analytics gathering that happens out of sight and contains vastly more information about individuals than could be gleaned by eavesdropping on ambient room noise.

* "What? No, we don't do that. We provide the infrastructure for others to do that."

> This is how an app like Facebook can show you an ad on something you were talking about.

I helped my sister look at a new car an hour away in another town. Back home that evening YouTube was suddenly suggesting new car videos.

Not so much Bluetooth as my own fault for using Google products and tracking but still it was disturbing. I did not search for anything car related myself or for my sister all I did was visit a car dealership.

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