this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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you just need to process the audio on the devices and then send keywords to Google etc. it's technically trivial since most phones already have dedicated hardware for that. your phone listens to activation words all the time, unless you disable it. there is no reason why they can't also forward anything else it hears as text
I would assume that you are right, considering how much gargage you collect if listening.
Now imagine recording those who have not given consent, or the device saving full scripts of movies.
Anecdotally, the odds are near zero that my wife and I can talk once about maybe buying some obscure thing like electric blinds and suddenly targetted ads for them somehow pop up on our devices.
This happens a lot.
I think you're being naive if you believe they don't locally distill our discussions into key words and phrases and transmit those.
That in itself is concerning. Everyone is arguing that no company would invest resources to voice to text everything. But Google does it in YouTube.
What a hilarious oversight with that experiment lol! He must have felt stupid when it was pointed out to him.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
genuine controlled experiment to determine whether Google was listening to him through his microphone
When this was pointed out to him he retracted his statements
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Confirmation bias — people unconsciously prefer remembering things supporting their beliefs.
You are assuming he had the belief before the events when it could be the events creating the belief.
Ok but third parties have no access to this in the background. My guess is they are buying marketing data from their listed “partners” and making wide claims about how they obtained it. Still a huge breach of privacy though!