I’m learning a language, I speak it in public to other people who do. I don’t research the language, because I have some old text books on it. My partner doesn’t speak it and doesn’t research it on their devices. I don’t normally have my phone on me in public, but my partner does. It took about 4 months of publicly speaking in the language before they got ads

What do you think this means?

::edit::

It was a Reddit ad and my city has embraced those AI smart cameras, so I assume some of those are Google owned which makes sense with Reddit and Google’s recent alliance. This is assuming our devices aren’t listening to us without our permission and AI cameras are mining data on passersby

Other theories are that since cellphones are involved it doesn’t matter if I nor my partner ever searched for the language, at some point my phone or partner’s phone was near someone who spoke that language and the data brokers/ad sellers inferred from there

Seems like the consensus is that I must have posted in the language on some social media or used Google to research it or made some new friends who speak the language and that’s why

  • otp@sh.itjust.works
    531·
    1 month ago

    I think “the microphones are listening when they’re off” is still a conspiracy theory at this point. It’s not really needed to get enough information.

    Are there any ways that Google could find out that you’re interacting together?

    • Do you share an IP address/router?
    • Do you watch YouTube videos in that language?
    • Do you use any messaging apps where you speak that language with other people, but also speak with your partner?
    • Do you access any Google services (with a Keyboard for that language installed) that your partner also accesses?
    • Do you use location services that could pinpoint both of your locations to the same street address?
    • Does your partner interact with any of the people you’re learning that language with? (E.g., Social media friends, "Contact"s, live in the same geographic region)
    • Is your device on the same network as your partner’s*? (Wi-Fi or Bluetooth)

    I’m not saying these are all ways that Google uses, but I believe that each of them are ways that Google would be able to associate that language to your partner.

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
      20·
      1 month ago

      Yea, that is my problem with the “always listening” theory. I am sure they’re capable of that, but don’t think they’re doing it just because they can get more data with a fraction of the cost by more “traditional” tracking.

      In a way, it is scarier than listening - because listening is far easier to understand than the multitude of ways the data is collected and combined.

      • otp@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        1 month ago

        Exactly. They definitely could, but there’d also be potential legal issues, and it’d just be much more expensive to analyze sound data.

        If it’s done on each device, then their battery power would suck, and performance would decline. Sure, they could do that, but I imagine most phone manufacturers would rather sell more phones and make money from app companies (Meta, Google) who pay to have their apps pre-installed on the phone. Or Samsung and Apple, who have their own ecosystems for mining data like Google does.

        If they were instead just uploading audio to central servers (which could mitigate legal issues due to “anonymizing” the data), then they’d be paying for the computational power to analyze all that data.

        Again, completely possible, and likely in use with things like Alexa and Google Home. But on our phones (and laptops for that matter), they have so many other cheaper ways to get probably the same quality of information.

        • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
          4·
          1 month ago

          It is not about “too risky”. It is about “costs much more in processing power while providing a fraction of the info”.

          • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            1·
            1 month ago

            Tbh, my theory wouldn’t be too much more.

            My theory is not that they’re always listening and sending a live stream of audio back to some dingus in headphones. It has to be always listening for the trigger words, right? That’s how it works, you say “yo siri” and she hears you, so it must be listening at least for the trigger word. With that in mind, what’s to stop them from using other, secret trigger words, which may even behave differently than the advertised ones? Like say I’m Joe Bridgestone, and I pay google to add “tires” or “new tires” as silent trigger words, and instead of “activating” the google bitch it sends ads for Bridgestone Tires? Why wouldn’t that be possible? It’d also be harder to catch them, as opposed to “literally a 24/7 hot mic.” Tbh I find it hard to believe that the NSA hasn’t at least tried to get this up for words like “bomb” or whatever, too.

    • aviation_hydrated@infosec.pubOPEnglish
      51·
      1 month ago

      Yeah only one that would match would be geolocation, and I’m a pretty offline first person, so no overlap in internet history since my footprint is pretty much Lemmy this summer.

      Which makes me think it could be all the AI smart cameras recording interactions

  • lud@lemm.ee
    11·
    1 month ago

    It wouldn’t surprise me if the reason is very obvious when you know why. Something like you both use Facebook and you post in that language and your partner likes the posts, or your partner googled a few words in that language to surprise you, or something equally mundane.

    It’s also very likely that’s it’s just a misclassification or just pure chance.

    It’s highly unlikely that any “ai” cameras are involved especially since Google doesn’t make cameras for cities (afaik)

    • aviation_hydrated@infosec.pubOPEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      Google owns Nest, it’s just a guess since we know they train AI on this data

      We don’t post in the language. They don’t speak the language. I specifically study only offline and rarely have a cellphone on me. I only speak it in person to strangers since I’m too shy to speak to any friends who speak it and we have no new friends who speak it

      Assume I performed my opsec properly, how could they get this information?

  • glimse@lemmy.world
    4·
    1 month ago

    I haven’t been to a Spanish speaking country in 2 decades, don’t speak Spanish, and the only Spanish speakers I know primarily speak in English around me.

    Yet 50% of the ads I’ve been getting on SoundCloud for years are in Spanish…

    Is it because I faved a bunch of songs in Portuguese? That’s not even the same language! Is soundcloud’d ad network racist? The people (me) demand answers!

  • foremanguy@lemmy.ml
    3·
    1 month ago

    I shoud not be a listening, but instead a well knowledge about all your life. So they know that your partner is your partner and then they can send foreign language ads because you are related

  • tamagotchicowboy [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    Oh but they totally are, it gotta make sure you didn’t ask voice bots something. Anyway, its something you don’t opt out of because that would require a totally de-googled device using lineageos or something and avoiding voice things, also it goes off IP rather than device. For example, my dad visited my house and started to complain about getting youtube ads in Tamil and then being amused by some of the ads and going down a youtube Kollywood wormhole. I do watch a lot of foreign film where my phone can hear me, so every once in a while I’ll get an ad of the language of the last film watched, which is sort of funny ngl.

          • RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            11·
            1 month ago

            Then it could be from google assistant listening in the background or speach to text. I would do google takeout if you are really curious, you get a copy of all the data that they have on you. You can find all sorts of stuff depending on your account settings like transcripts of your conversations, locations you visit, …

      • minibyte@sh.itjust.works
        73·
        1 month ago

        This was years ago, but I left my phone at home with the Spanish channel on. I planned to do this for a few days, but after 9 hours my Twitter and Facebook feed ads were both in Spanish. I’d be surprised if they stopped scraping that data.

        • BakedCatboy@lemmy.mlEnglish
          11·
          1 month ago

          What kind of TV service / set top box did you have at the time? I remember a lot of talk about providers pushing set top boxes both because it lets them use newer broadcast tech with customers using old TV tuners, but crucially it allows them to have their own software running on the box that you use to switch channels, which let them use out of band communication over the cable network to report what channels you watched, when, and how long, which I don’t doubt gets sold and aggregated by ad targeting firms.

          It’s pretty common for smart TVs to do a similar thing to collect streaming app watch data when using the TVs built in apps.

      • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        Any sources on this? We don’t use voice activated AI bots like Alexa

        If your partner has their phone on them it is always listening so it can activate if you say “okay google” or whatever.

      • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
        14·
        1 month ago

        The sources I know are in Russian so they won’t be useful for you but generally gapps have this feature and idk if it can be fully disabled without degoogling.