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Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

I flipped on this when a nickname I was calling my newborn child privately in my room also happened to be the name of a common consumer food product (which I don't buy and have never been 'in the market for' beyond it just being a generic food item) - and I was getting slammed with those ads for that product. They're listening.

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Why is this comment getting so much heat for being confirmation bias? If anything, we should all rally around trying to guess the name in question. Did you name your kid Butter? Bananas? Campbell's CHUNKY Savory Pot Roast?

hahah you actually guessed it so I'll tell you - it was "Chunky man", and yes, I was slammed on social media with a relentless stream of inexplicable adds for CHUNKY soup, until I was like "holy shit"

edit: and before anyone asks, this nickname was only said verbally, in my house, among my family members, and never typed into a computer a single time

What if you had it backwards? You named your child "Chunky" after slowly being operantly conditioned to think about the name from the endless ads you were seeing before?

I'm not sure that the human mind works like that. I'd look into it further, but little Raid Shadow Legends just woke up and needs his breakfast

Gosh, crazy! I've literally never talked about Raid Shadow Legends before but now I'm seeing their ads everywhere. So creepy.

I can't rule it out

1. Common consumer product exists.

2. Common product has common name.

3. You call your child that same common name.

Therefore:

Ads for this common product shown to you must be because some unnamed entity was listening to you talk to your daughter.

Did I get that right?

I'm not sure I understood everything correctly, if you're sure, we'd certainly appreciate the names of any consumer products that you feel do this, as well as the consumer product.

Any tech product that keeps an audio livestream, then shares the entities with a powerful company later, just so they can show you ads, shouldn't go unnamed.

Wifi enabled baby monitor sold you out.

Yep, I was watching old Shark Tank episodes, soon adverts for those products started showing up for my spouse.

Classic confirmation bias.

There are enough anecdotes to be more than confirmation bias

Try it for yourself. Choose a product. Maybe one of the examples here. Talk about it loud with your phone in proximity. Maybe turn off adblocker and see what happens.

(1) I already talk about plenty without getting targeted ads

(2) Android is open source and I'm familiar with the core codebase as part of my job

(3) Even if I get an ad after talking about a product, that isn't proof (hence my confirmation bias comment...)

I'd assume that this listening functionality only comes with certain apps, that's certainly the case for ultrasonic tracking apps [0]. Probably you have just managed to avoid installing such apps.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-device_tracking#Applicat...

The operating system shows when the microphone is turned on.

Only since Android 12

Classic confirmation bias.

Every time I run into you, you're being somewhat schizophrenic in public. I hope you're well.

Sounds like you might have the problem here if you think you can determine someone is acting schizophrenic via internet comments. The person I am replying to is suffering from confirmation bias about their belief in confirmation bias.

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