What scares you most? And why exactly this?

Use a dns blocker (like nextdns) for systemwide ad blocking meaning it blocks mobile ads too. I haven’t had an ad in ages.

Edit: Or use something like adaway if you’re on android.

I've got ublock origin in firefox on my phone. Pihole also helps. So I ask again: you guys get ads?

Don't use whatever serves you ads, simple as that.

Brave browser app. Get it, thank me later.

See, that right there is true horror.

bUtItSfOrThEcHiLdRen!!11!1!

dOyOuHaVeSoMeThInGtOhIdE?11??!?1?

I get so frustrated when people find it extremely weird that I care about my privacy at all and haven't accepted that I'm under surveillance 24/7. I know I can't achieve full privacy, but why is a little more privacy a bad thing and why do they take it so damn personally, without even telling them to do the same. There are so many people who are cucks for corporations, silently accepting every new violation of their rights as if they have no alternative.

Your devices recording you is something that doesn't happen.

There's no evidence of that happening.

What's your basis for this claim? I mean that might be the case, but is there some reason you're able to have so much certainty?

I understand the "bandwidth" argument, and the "they don't even need that" argument (I make a similar case in a comment to another reply), but neither of those support the idea that it can't be happening.

Getting around the bandwidth problem isn't that crazy: Low bitrate encodings (cause the audio doesn't need to be human-comprehensible) and edge compute (i.e. doing some work on the device before sending anything) could mitigate this significantly, so it's hardly impossible.

I think we mostly agree, I just wouldn't apply that degree of certainty. But if you're really confident that it's definitely not happening because it's definitely not possible, maybe you know something I don't?

Personal story time. A few years back, I texted (through Whatsapp) a colleague for a few minutes about a friend taking up welding as a supplementary source of income, and immediately (within the day) received a targeted ad in the Duolingo app for... welding torches. Important facts, I don't weld, I've never done any welding and I don't know anything about welding. How this bit of info got from whatsapp to whomever was providing interstitial ads in the duolingo app, I have no idea. My best guess is still that google's keyboard app is logging every single keystroke I type and aggregating it in a database somewhere. I can't fathom how that shit isn't extremely illegal.

Instead of recording and sending to servers, the tracker could use some speech to text locally amd send transcription to the servers too

It is rarely some coincidence and has more to do with extrapolating data.

If you talk with a friend about getting a pet, your phone and by extension the ad company that receives your location data, knows you 2 saw each other.

If that other person searched for pet food, then you will also receive ads for pet food even though you "only talked about it".

Other example, you post you have a new job on Facebook (which a lot of people do). Facebook knows where you live because of location data, and they know where the company is located since it is public data. So they know how close those 2 are. If Facebook then looks through your photos and notices none of them have a picture of a bike in the last 5 years. Then you are likely to buy a bike in order to go to work. Thus you get ads for bikes.

You're getting some downvotes, but yes, lol. I mean I'm not sure there's never any surreptitious hot mic eavesdropping going on, but people definitely often assume so when there's a more parsimonious explanation, e.g.:

Most peoples' ads are targeted based on more mundane technology, and they see hundreds of ads per day, so if even 1% of their ads overlap with something that they were just talking about, they'll still be fairly likely to see a spooky "I was just talking about that!" ad relatively frequently. Not to mention that they're likely to be thinking about a thing because their platforms are also proactively marketing that thing to them. Just pareidolia, no eavesdropping necessary.

Doesn't mean eavesdropping isn't happening-- Just means it doesn't need to be happening for that effect to occur.

https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

On desktop, Firefox + ublock origin is my goto.

On Mobile, the best I can really do is Youtube revanced and PiHole, but that doesn't cover everything, and often breaks other functionality.

Drugs: tricking Americans into conditional use of a sane system since the 60s!

It's hard to believe anyone missed this:

As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.

This article is from 2012

I wouldn't underestimate it. I also wouldn't buy into the "I have nothing to hide" narrative. It's not about hiding or not hiding. The fallout from the Dobbs decision is a great example of why, if you aren't concerned with privacy now, then you will be in the future. All of a sudden, the right of 51% of the population to make decisions about their own bodies was suddenly gone, and handed over to state governments. The day before that decision, people needing abortions and the doctors who provide them had "nothing to hide." The day after? They're suddenly criminals. Their social media can be monitored. Their online and in-person purchases. Where they travel and why. Their medical records. And maybe worst of all, their fellow Americans are offered prize money if they turn someone in so that they can be charged in criminal court.

Or what about Florida's "risk prediction" software that supposedly can predict which "at-risk" (aka non-white) kids will become criminals? Maybe I'm wrong for finding that unsettling. This is from 2015

https://theweek.com/articles/495147/floridas-minority-report-crime-prediction-software

What about social credit scores? Which we already have, we just don't get to see them (LexisNexis "risk solution" software). But sooner rather than later, every word and action will be recorded and held against us in every aspect of our lives, rather than just when applying for jobs and mortgages. And anti-discrimination laws don't do shit. They always find a work around. Although with the current supreme court I'm sure all forms of discrimination will be perfectly legal soon enough.

Btw private browsing doesn't prevent tracking. It just doesn't store anything in the broswer history.

Yeah, the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon is fascinating and something that I experience constantly. I would be surprised if that's not what's going on here. I've never experienced it for something as personal and important as doubting my sexuality though, that must be jarring as hell.

What really upset me though was the privacy aspect of it. Imagine your friend wants to show you a meme or something, and you suddenly see an ad with an LGBT couple on it on his/her phone. If that was me I would immediately think they're being targeted with that ad for a reason. And like, I don't have a problem being part of the LGBT community, but this thing could out me to everyone without me being ready you know? What if I want to play a YouTube video for my family and I get a targeted recommendation? That would be a problem for me.

Lmao

Gotta protect those nudes.

Very true. I was more just predicting what inevitable gets said with posts like these.

The US can barely even put sidewalks where it’s convenient. I have very little hope for our local governments to add bike lanes to it.

My head isn't inside an fMRI machine, nor is my phone connected to one, so they still can't read my mind with my phone.

Fear not though:

Jerry Tang, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-author, said: “We take very seriously the concerns that it could be used for bad purposes and have worked to avoid that. We want to make sure people only use these types of technologies when they want to and that it helps them.”

they’re taking it seriously

Yeah, that's not even remotely reassuring. The instant it becomes feasible to read minds on a large scale, it will be immediately put to use for government surveillance and commercial exploitation. No one will give a single [expletive] about the objections of some college students. My only hope is to be dead before then.