You know these algorithms are designed for predictive advertisement based off your previous activity. What is likely going on is this:
10,000 users who searched these terms also decided to search or want this “thing” next.
“Woah, it’s reading my mind! How did it know I was thinking about that?!”
It’s funny, nobody pays attention when the algorithm guesses wrong, we only notice it when it’s freakishly accurate.
Except when it’s YouTube recommendations, then they only pay attention when it’s wrong and not when it’s right.
What, you don’t want right wing misinformation shoved down your throat constantly despite reporting it every time you see it?
As if YouTube would ever get it right.
Certain products use algorithms that predict you’re going to stop using it before you’re even aware. This can trigger things to sent you emails, etc with some perk.
And that makes it better?
No, but confirmation bias is a real thing.
Bingo. This one gets it.
Absolutely, but understanding that doesn’t make it any less creepy.
You can fight this you know. There are a lot of great YouTube video tutorials by MentalOutlaw that will help you tighten down your security settings and make it more difficult to identify and track you across the internet.
Does this come at a high cost of convenience? Absolutely. Most of my security settings break websites by default since I restrict all 3rd party apps and JavaScript. It takes me a good couple minutes to play around and see what is causing the issue.
If I can’t figure out how read your site without handing over a bunch of access, I move to the 2nd or 3rd site that usually gives me what I want without changing any settings at all.
Understanding what is real is the first step to controlling what controls you
No, it helps you understand what it actually is so you can think of solutions based on information instead of fear.
You guys get ads?
mobile phones man
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?
Sometimes things open in-app and use Google to load the page, so even if I select “open in firefox” after, there’s still an ad. Plus ads in apps in general.
Brave browser app. Get it, thank me later.
Or simply firefox
Really excited for desktop extensions on mobile
Downvoters don’t know Brave is the best thing for iOS users.
Ya see, Android fellows, Apple forces everyone onto webkit in iOS, and iOS Firefox can’t use extensions.
Brave has its blocker built in.
Can I get it on F-Droid or is it only on Google Play?
Just go for Mull + uBlock Origin.
what about Firefox and Ublock?
That works too, but mull is more private. It’s configurations are what we call “hardened”.
You can get the FFUpdater app from F-Droid, then use that to install Brave to your phone. But at that point, you may as well just use FFUpdater to install the much better alternative, Firefox, which doesn’t indirectly support Chromium engine dominance and doesn’t have that weird crypto crap Brave has.
Edit: Someone else replied to you suggesting Mull, which is also downloadable through the FFUpdater app.
Currently using Firefox and Ublock origin on mobile now that they brought extensions over
Given all my adblockers, getting ads at all is what scares me
Yesterday my ublock failed me and I had to watch a full 5 seconds of ads for 3 times! Fortunately it seems to work after updating filters now
See, that right there is true horror.
Yeah, Idk why but ublock auto-nuked the filters I entered (that nice custom filter from Tumblr), i didn’t notice but I did after the satanic torture by yt (15 secs of ads I won’t get back) I fortunately went on the dashboard and noticed my filters weren’t there, immediately re-pasted them.
Stop accepting ads in your life, ffs. What is it with people and steadfastly refusing to install an adblock? Are you stupid?
Sometimes it’s the TV, and then I blame Jesus for stalking.
What’s a TV?
jesus sus, man
They either don’t know adblock exists or are listening to YouTubers like Linus, who claim that blocking ads on their videos is “stealing”
I don’t care. I’m not worried about it. It’s not that important. I’m not refusing, I’m just not giving two fucks about it. Why are you so militant about people doing the same thing as you do?
This does not come across the way you think it does.
Wait, did we go from being freaked out that our devices might be passively recording our speech to accepting it as the “good and normal” version of things? Cause I’m pretty alarmed at both.
I was going to say this! Just goes to show how dangerously effective mass conditioning by unscrupulous corporations is!
Hell, a lot of people think that caring about data privacy and -security AT ALL is for losers unless naked pics are involved 🤦
bUtItSfOrThEcHiLdRen!!11!1!
dOyOuHaVeSoMeThInGtOhIdE?11??!?1?
My favorite counterargument is asking these idiots if they close the toilet door. Because if they don’t want people to watch them shit, then they probably are hiding some suspicious stuff.
Yeah, it’s obvios they have something to hide if they want to close the door. They should make everyone see how they shit for the sake of our children
especially as it doesn’t even happen.
“oh yeah well how come I was talking about something mundane, common and extremely popular and then but 4 days later saw an ad for it?!?!?”
big mystery indeed
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.
deleted by creator
What are ads?
-pihole / uBlock / Brave browser user
Maybe addons, idk?
-adguard home / ublock / Mull browser user
did they mean ‘apps’? sounds kinda similar
-realizing that the reason we still have this broken economic system on the internet is because of fuckers like this guy^^^^
No ads
Fuck, forgot to seal the kilograms of coke in my luggage.
Drugs: tricking Americans into conditional use of a sane system since the 60s!
The real reason drugs are illegal: they need to figure out new methods for secret agencies to smuggle items.
I haven’t seen ads in years lol. I’m very aggressively adblocked on every layer possible. Even down to setting my router to use an adblocker dns as a final protection layer.
I’ve been doubting my sexuality lately and I freaked out when Google recommended an ad with LGBT couple on it. Not even my friends or family know that side of me.
Oh, it’s been proven Google and corporate social medias (and Walmart?!?) can figure out that stuff before you do.
you’re thinking of target, specifically telling dad that daughter is pregnant. its this store thats identical to walmart and sells the same stuff from the same sweatshops, but its kept slightly cleaner and so middle class people who want to feel better than the poors who shop at walmart shop there, but its basically the same store with a 20-30% markup.
Sometimes avoiding the Walmartians feels worth the markup
Yes, that’s the story I was thinking of.
I can understand being freaked out by that for sure. Think of it like this, you might like similar artists and articles that LGBT folks like. Maybe you click on more links on stories that affect LGBT folks. But also, lots of ads have LGBT couples nowadays, it’s what gets the red hats so upset. Either way, it’s nothing to be ashamed or worried about, and there’s at least a chance that you took something to be more deeply targeted at you than it really was. Chin up there, yeah?
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.
I’m going to push back against everyone saying that the algorithm knows. While not unthinkable, I believe it is much more likely that it is a coincidence, and what you’re experiencing is called the frequency illusion. Simply because your sexuality has been on your mind lately, you’re more likely to notice things that remind you of it - not because those things are more prevalent but simply because you, subconsciously, pay more attention to them.
That said, privacy is important and you should definitely try to maintain it - e.g. use a private browser window in a fresh browser instance to research things related to sexuality.
It’s hard to believe anyone missed this:
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.
If youve been looking around on search engines and stuff or various websites. Yeah. Theyll know. If youre talking to friends… Shhh its right behind you… Google is the monster under your bed. Dont forget to leave google some cookies. (Pun not intended) And ignore the scary red light that suspiciously looks like the red light from daedric portals.
I got a little silly part way thru but anyway. Have had similar things happen while looking for myself through my own lgbtq journey once in a while.
Don’t worry, those big platforms can read your thoughts. Those ads aren’t there because you thought of those things.
Because it’s the other way around. They want you to buy the stuff they have ads for so they manipulate you thinking about those things first.
it is genuinely possible op saw an ad, then they thought about it but forgot about the ad, then saw the ad again and frequency bias kicked in (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion)
So they have read AND write access to your thoughts.
The largest field for people with psychology or sociology degrees is advertising. They know how people think, how societies think, and are getting better at influencing both every day.
You get ads
😱
What’s really gonna bake your noodle later is if you’d have thought about that thing at all if it wasn’t something they were advertising…
Something something adblock
that doesn’t prevent them from spying tho
Very true. I was more just predicting what inevitable gets said with posts like these.
You get ads about things you have photographed. If you give Facebook image access, it will scan ALL of your photos locally. I had some photos of couches it started giving me ads for them.
Oh that explains the penis enlargement pills…
Lmao
Gotta protect those nudes.