Tell HN: Ate Food Inside Brazilian Ballot Box, Got Ads About It

Yesterday was election day for Brazil and I decided to do a little experiment.

I asked someone to purchase 2 different types of food at the supermarket, bag them so I could not distinguish what they were and put each in one of my pocket, separately.

I went to vote as normal, without smart devices on me, as the law prohibits bringing them to the ballot box.

I then picket one pocket at random, draw the content and proceeded to eat it while casting my vote.

After exiting, I got rid of the content on the other pocket without looking at it.

Back at home using my phone (which I didn't take with me), didn't take long for LinkedIn to start showing me related content: as what I ate was a cookie, LinkedIn suggested content about "browser cookies" with a big splash image of a cookie. The irony being that it was an article about privacy.

Twitter showed me ads for a drink brand with cookies on the background.

On news websites, while checking election results, I got ads for competing brands of cookies.

I am tempted to conclude that Big Tech's spying likely lets them know on who I voted and the only reason it isn't explicit that they do is because all political ads are prohibited on the day of the election, otherwise I would have seen ads for the candidate I choose.