Maybe you'd have insight into something that happened to me recently:

I did a search (DDG, Chromium) for an Anker product line that I've been following. Clicked the link to Anker, skimmed, nothing new.

Then shortly I get an email from "Checkmate" with a promo offer.

I don't have an Anker account or whatever, don't recall signing in. I figure it's fingerprinting or cookies, but so far it's never been so overt.

I feel like this is an indicator of something, some sea change. Of needing to squeeze more water from the stone. My phone's been blowing up with spam calls since. I've been mysteriously added to email lists. I'm getting short-code text spam in addition to the regular spam, which when I report to 7726, AT&T basically tells me it's fine, it's paid for.

This may be a ploy to get me to turn the AI features back on in Gmail, but it feels like somewhere, lines have been crossed.

> This may be a ploy to get me to turn the AI features back on in Gmail, but it feels like somewhere, lines have been crossed

Lines have absolutely been crossed and there is no going back without a lot of political will

There are no rules anymore. The internet started it, and AI companies proved it. We're much worse of for it. The social contract is extremely flimsy nowadays