this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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I watched a Jet Li movie in Mandarin with subtitles (on DVD on my TV so not through the phone or any app), and suddenly my search autocomplete is filled with Chinese characters. Ads in Mandarin. Hmmm.
And just to be clear I don't know Mandarin and have no searches or activity related to that at all.
Was it a smart TV or a dumb monitor? Smart TVs share tracking data about everything.
How did you acquire the movie? Did you purchase it online? If not, did you visit a Chinese supermarket? Or did you purchase it at a large store and had a membership?
Did you borrow it from a Chinese movie aficionado and spend some time with (or rather around) them?
There are SO many variables to get data from. Everything is linked. Everything.
Played a DVD, with a separate DVD player, over HDMI. It would be shocking if they can track that back to your phone and/or gmail account which wasn't touched. Not logged into the TV, so it would be seeing if it's the same wifi, or going through another HDMI cable to the chromecast.
An old DVD probably bought at HMV before smart phones existed.
???? So the microphone would hear Chinese in that way instead? It's the same fucking thing.
The extent you're going through rather than accepting the microphone is listening is fucking astounding. Occams razor.
For the last part:
Your location is tracked constantly, through GPS, cell towers and nearby WiFi access points. This can be used to associate you with certain locations - like visiting a store - or who you frequently spend time with/around (by being logged into the same WiFi network etc).
As for the smart TV: There is this insanity although I'm unsure whether it can be applied to content played from HDMI ports. You don't need the phone to listen if the TV does it already.
Location? WTF does location have to do with hearing mandarin? JFC you're making shit up. The CLOSEST you can say is that visiting a chinese market will make it show chinese ads, which is a very fucking far reach when this is about AFTER playing the DVD, not before. Which I already said didn't even fucking happen.
ACR? AND THEN TIE IT TO THE GMAIL ACCOUNT FFS. That's the whole fucking point. How the fuck would it do that when you're not logged into the fucking TV or the DVD player.
JFC I'm out. You're just throwing all the words you know at the wall without actually saying anything or tying anything together. Instead of the very fucking simple and obvious that the fucking microphone is fucking listening.
Why do websites have this in their cookie notices? I don't think it's purely decorational now, is it?
I highly, highly doubt that Google uses your microphone for advertising. 95% of the information is available through other, obviously legal means.
Additionally, there's one glaring reason Google is not doing it: Because it would be impossible to keep it a secret for so long. It would take hundreds, maybe thousands of different employees (over the years) to maintain a secret microphone listenting tool that is both performant and nearly impossible to detect. It would take merely a single person to leak it all and cause the demise of Google.