Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
Kuyawa | on: Root shell on Samsung TV
They hear us all the time, here is an anecdote...

I was at the butcher one day and asked for "ossobuco" because I wanted some bones for my dog, then all of a sudden I got reels with ossobuco in it, recipes, sellers, nearby shops, etc and I said WTF? Who the fuck makes posts about ossobuco? Why all of a sudden after using social apps just for football and porn all I start getting is ossobuco ads everywhere? A word you will never see anywhere now popping up in all my social feeds.

Possibility of that being random? Zero, not in this probabilistic universe we live in

AstroNutt | parent | next
I got had a similar thing happen. My buddy inherited a lake house from him father. The dock needed repair. We talked about it one evening and that same night, I got a dock supply house ad. We never once looked it up online since we are both general contractors and already know how to fix it.

Dock repair is too random of a subject to be a coincidence.

driverdan | root | parent
It's not. They can use your IP to see your approximate location is on a lake or your buddy did search and it associated to you via shared IP.
101008 | parent | next
Yeah same experience. People working in Facebook (I had a friend there) say it is only pattern behaviour, they can predict your interests, check when you meet with your friends, share WIFIs, etc, so they can imagine things you have been talking about. I call this bullshit. I dont know if my friend working at Facebook believes this, or was just hiding it for me, but it's 0% chance of them doing that. Also because I never got any of these recommendations BEFORE I mentioned it out loud, which means their prediction engine (if it exists) also knows when I am going to talk about it!
gambiting | root | parent | next
I also got ads for things I have only thought about and never ever searched online or mentioned to anyone.

Doesn't mean my phone can suddenly read my mind - just that prediction algorithms + data from BLE trackers is incredibly good at guessing what I might be interested in. It's just crazy crazy good.

loading story #50234069
senordevnyc | root | parent | next
Sorry, but there’s just zero evidence that your phone is listening to you like this. There never has been. Lots of people have tried to uncover such evidence. On the iPhone at least (not as familiar with Android), it’s not even clear how your phone would be listening and sending the data to Meta.

This isn’t happening.

NoMoreNicksLeft | root | parent
>I dont know if my friend working at Facebook believes this, or was just hiding it for me, but it's 0% chance of them doing that. Also because I never got any of these recommendations BEFORE I mentioned it out loud, which means their prediction engine (if it exists) also knows when I am going to talk about it!

He's just repeating the internal propaganda. The truth is reserved to a small team that implemented the spyware who are highly incentivized to never give any hint. Your friend doesn't work for that team.

I estimate the team size to be fewer than a dozen people. The managers above them that know about it are even fewer, with only one or two reporting to Zuck. And possibly they're so mentally retarded they don't necessarily understand it.

Don't ever install the Facebook app on your phone.