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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1079 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 7, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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By now that claim about smartphones passively listening in 24/7 for ad targeting is quite old. Any conclusive evidence either for or against?

My cousin works for Verizon and says no. He says that what's going on is that Facebook is just showing you the same ads as your friends, which could happen if they search for something you were talking about and you don't. There's selection bias here, too; nobody accounts for all the times they talked about something and weren't shown an ad for it.

OK thanks for this because I was convinced they were listening to me after an incident. My friend is a whiskey snob and wanted to try this one specific whiskey, but only one bar in town was serving it and it was too much money to justify buying a whole bottle. So he took me there and we mentioned the brand a bunch and the next day I got ads for it. I was absolutely paranoid about it because I had never heard of this alcohol before and couldn't think of any way the algorithm would have decided to target me beyond listening to my phone. My friend looking it up and facebook making a connection makes way more sense.

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