You don't think the targeted phone/tv ads aren't suspiciously relevant to something you just said aloud to your spouse?

BigTech already has your next bowel movement dialled in.

I have always been dubious of this because:

Someone would have noticed if all the phones on their network started streaming audio whenever a conversation happened.

It would be really expensive to send, transcribe and then analyze every single human on earth. Even if you were able to do it for insanely cheap ($0.02/hr) every device is gonna be sending hours of talking per day. Then you have to somehow identify "who" is talking because TV and strangers and everything else is getting sent, so you would need specific transcribers trained for each human that can identify not just that the word "coca-cola" was said, but that it was said by a specific person.

So yeah if you managed to train specific transcribers that can identify their unique users output and then you were willing to spend the ~0.10 per person to transcribe all the audio they produce for the day you could potentially listen to and then run some kind of processing over what they say. I suppose it is possible but I don't think it would be worth it.

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amatecha 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Google literally just settled for $68m about this very issue https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/26/google-pr...

> Google agreed to pay $68m to settle a lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated assistant spied inappropriately on smartphone users, violating their privacy.

Apple as well https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/03/apple-sir...

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monocularvision 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

“Google denied wrongdoing but settled to avoid the risk, cost and uncertainty of litigation, court papers show.”

I keep seeing folks float this as some admission of wrongdoing but it is not.

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caminante 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The payout was not pennies and this case had been around since 2019, surviving multiple dismissal attempts.

While not an "admission of wrongdoing," it points to some non-zero merit in the plaintiff's case.

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anigbrowl 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No corporate body ever admits wrongdoing and that's part of the problem. Even when a company loses its appeals, it's virtually unheard of for them to apologize, usually you just get a mealy mouthed 'we respect the court's decision although it did not go the way we hoped.' Accordingly, I don't give denials of wrongdoing any weight at all. I don't assume random accusations are true, but even when they are corporations and their officers/spokespersons are incentivized to lie.

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stackghost 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>I keep seeing folks float this as some admission of wrongdoing but it is not.

It absolutely is.

If they knew without a doubt their equipment (that they produce) doesn't eavesdrop, then why would they be concerned about "risk [...] and uncertainty of litigation"?

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gildenFish 5 hours ago | parent [-]

It is not. The belief that it does is just a comforting delusion people believe to avoid reality. Large companies often forgo fighting cases that will result in a Pyrrhic victory.

Also people already believe google (and every other company) eavesdrops on them, going to trail and winning the case people would not change that.

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stackghost 5 hours ago | parent [-]

That doesn't answer my question. By their own statement they are concerned about the risks and uncertainty of litigation.

Again: If their products did not eavesdrop, precisely what risks and uncertainty are they afraid of?

	▲	caminante 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm giving parent benefit of the doubt, but I'm chuckling at the following scenarios: (1) Alphabet admits wrongdoing, but gets an innocent verdict (2) Alphabet receives a verdict of wrongdoing, but denies it and the parent using either to claim lack of > some admission of wrongdoing The court's designed to settle disputes more than render verdicts.

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romanows 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The next sentence under the headline is "Tech company denied illegally recording and circulating private conversations to send phone users targeted ads".

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caminante 7 hours ago | parent [-]

That's a worthless indicator of objective innocence.

It's a private, civil case that settled. To not deny wrongdoing (even if guilty) would be insanely rare.

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romanows 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Obviously. The point is that settling a lawsuit in this way is also a worthless indicator of wrongdoing.

	▲	caminante 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> settling a lawsuit in this way is also a worthless indicator of wrongdoing Only if you use a very narrow criteria that a verdict was reached. However, that's impractical as 95% of civil cases resolve without a trial verdict. Compare this to someone who got the case dismissed 6 years ago and didn't pay out tens of millions of real dollars to settle. It's not a verdict, but it's dishonest to say the plaintiff's case had zero merit of wrongdoing based on the settlement and survival of the plaintiff's case.

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jmholla 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Someone would have noticed if all the phones on their network started streaming audio whenever a conversation happened.

You don't have to stream the audio. You can transcribe it locally. And it doesn't have to be 100% accurate. As for user identify, people have mentioned it on their phones which almost always have a one-to-one relationship between user and phone, and their smart devices, which are designed to do this sort of distinguishing.

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Mogzol 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Transcribing locally isn't free though, it should result in a noticeable increase in battery usage. Inspecting the processes running on the phone would show something using considerable CPU. After transcribing the data would still need to be sent somewhere, which could be seen by inspecting network traffic.

If this really is something that is happening, I am just very surprised that there is no hard evidence of it.

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caminante 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Even the parent's envelope math is approachable.

With their assumptions, you can log the entire globe for $1.6 billion/day (= $0.02/hr * 16 awake hours * 5 billion unique smartphone users). This is the upper end.

	▲	htrp 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Terrifying cheap if you think about it

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intended 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have a weird and unscientific test, and at the very least it is a great potential prank.

At one point I had the misfortune to be the target audience for a particular stomach churning ear wax removal add.

I felt that suffering shared is suffering halved, so decided to test this in a park with 2 friends. They pulled out their phones (an Android and a IPhone) and I proceeded to talk about ear wax removal loudly over them.

Sure enough, a day later one of them calls me up, aghast, annoyed and repelled by the add which came up.

This was years ago, and in the UK, so the add may no longer play.

However, more recently I saw an ad for a reusable ear cleaner. (I have no idea why I am plagued by these ads. My ears are fortunately fine. That said, if life gives you lemons)

	▲	bspammer 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> At one point I had the misfortune to be the target audience for a particular stomach churning ear wax removal add. So isn’t it possible that your friend had the same misfortune? I assume you were similar ages, same gender, same rough geolocation, likely similar interests. It wouldn’t be surprising that you’d both see the same targeted ad campaign.

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idiotsecant 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

who says you need to transcribe everything you hear? You just need to monitor for certain high-value keywords. 'OK, Google' isnt the only thing a phone is capable of listening for.