this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Memes of Production
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The thing is that your phone doesn't actually need to listen to you for this to happen.
For one thing, it's possible that you're interested in the product because of what your phone showed to you. It can lead you by the nose.
Also, it's possible that your phone has been trying to sell this item to you but you didn't notice before because you weren't interested. It's like how you notice more blue cars if you play a game where you count blue cars.
People often take longer to make decisions than they think. You may think that this is the first time you've been interested in a product, but you may have been hinting about it for a long time, and your phone could pick up on that from searches, for example.
It's possible that your phone knows what people you are near to. If those people have been searching for something, your phone might be able to make recommendations from that data.
It is horrifying. Phones have access to so much other cheap and easy data that I think the phone companies would see processing all of that audio as an unnecessary expense.
And so that's why I suspect it's a red herring. I could easily be wrong though.