[ellyagg]

I've been keeping a running gag with my acquaintances over YouTube's recommendations for a while now, because they're so improbably and time-sensitively on the nose.

Yesterday was the worst one yet. We were driving and my daughter was filling out MadLibs by hand in a paper booklet in the backseat. One of the fill-ins we came up with was "pantyliner".

As soon as we got home from the event, I sat down and YouTube gave me an above-the-fold recommendation for a Japanese pantyliner commercial.

I've seen enough. This word never comes up in day-to-day conversation, it's not in my interests, and it's one of the least exciting topics imaginable. None of me, my wife, nor my daughter had hands free to search it up at that time, and besides, we were totally preoccupied with driving and our event until I got home a couple hours later.

For the record, we're an iPhone family and were in a Tesla.

I had been convinced by, I think, a Simon Willison article that this isn't happening. But he's wrong. This is happening.

[mgillett54]

I wonder if the sequence of online events that lead you to “organically” come up with pantyliner was also enough for the ad algorithms to do the same.

Maybe subconsciously in videos or other browsing activity pantyliner adjacent things were discussed.

Not saying companies aren’t using audio for ads, but it just feels like there would be more leaks from the big COs if it were ubiquitous in everyday life

[carimura]

This is what we've been gaslit into believing that's for sure....

[jonathankoren]

I also think there’s something weird going on with YouTube recommendations. The thing that I’ve noticed is that people I follow on TikTok are showing up in my YouTube recommendations, and I’ve never interacted with their YouTube accounts. Most times I didn’t even know they had a YouTube account.

I use the same email address on both accounts, but it seems weird that TT would export its follow graph to YT for any reason.

[echoangle]

How is that surprising? Maybe you just get recommended the same stuff on multiple platforms because it reflects your interests? If I am interested in Retro computing and get the 8-Bit Guy in my recommendations on multiple platforms, would you conclude that the platforms colluded? Occams Razor tells me what’s the more likely conclusion

[chrisco255]

Are Google's cookies / ads / analytics used by TikTok? Does TikTok send notifications to your email address (is it Gmail?)? Do the TikTok accounts embed YouTube / related links in their profile anywhere? Quite easy for Google to get tracking info. So many ways that metadata gets leaked.

[robocat]

Maybe Google are listening to you use Tiktok?

[Dibby053]

I suspect tech companies spy us in ways they don't disclose, but anecdotal evidence like this is not useful. The most likely culprit is cognitive bias: if you hadn't heard that word, you wouldn't have noticed the recommendation. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

[weikju]

I do believe in this. I had this experience last year where I suddenly started thinking of a pillow product I had first seen 5 years before (and had never looked into since then).

In the following days, I started noticing the ads for that product everywhere -- in the physical world! Not online, not in my browsing, but in shops and buses and street signs.

Got me wondering which came first, the ads, or me thinking of the product? Probably the ads....

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"The most likely culprit is cognitive bias..."

His family is surrounded with microphones, cameras and sensors. The company has a long track record of unwarranted surveillance.

In the most recent case against Google for wiretapping, all claims survived the dismissal and summary judgment stages. Google settled instead of showing a jury that what the company does is not wiretapping. Why would anyone trust this company, except out of necessity.

Anecdotes are not proof, but are anecdotes needed to form a reasonable suspicion of Google conducting unwarranted surveillance.

For some reason, HN commenters will oppose the notion of Google/Meta using microphones for data collection but how much does that matter when we already know Google uses any available means it can get away with.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I've seen similar things ... except that the internet-connected device in the situations where I become aware of this does not have a microphone that could be used by software. So I suspect that the cognitive bias explanation mentioned by others is more likely.

[djtango]

Your anecdotal experience mirrors mine too. Could just be some selection bias but it is really uncanny...

[jaredhallen]

It is happening, and has been for a long time. When my first daughter was a baby, so around 2015, my wife and I were discussing options for helping her prop herself up, and came up with the idea (on our own, as far as I know) that a horseshoe shaped pillow would be perfect. I picked up my phone, opened the Amazon app, and typed the letter "h". The app autocompleted "horseshoe shaped pillow" based on just the one letter.

[chrisco255]

These are common baby items. If you searched for baby stuff on Amazon or anyone in your household sharing your IP did, and especially if you purchased baby stuff on Amazon, they're going to recommend baby stuff more often. It's called an a priori algorithm. It looks at what other people purchased that have purchased similar things as your search/purchase history and recommends based on that.

[fmajid]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

[carimura]

Would Apple (or Tesla) have to be colluding here if it was in fact using the iphone mic to listen in?

edit: found some info on this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38688101

[api]

A ton of this data goes to data brokers that integrate and resell it. No direct collusion is needed.

The data broker industry is huge, shady, unregulated, and in many cases offshore.

[averageRoyalty]

A long time ago, my friend bought a Hyundai Getz. We used to play the Getz game - nothing complex, but whenever you saw a Getz you'd yell "Getz" and get a point.

After playing for a few days, we were seeing easily 20-30 per day. I'm sure I'd seen them many times before (they were one of the most popular cars in Australia for a few years before that), but I'd never really noticed them. I've played the game with a few other car models with friends since, and it always results in a comment like "Wow, there are so many X on the road".

I understand why your story feels chilling to you and how it would convince you, however it's more likely that:

a) in the 100+ ads you see per day[0] you've seen panty liners before but it was never relevant to you (like a Getz) or

b) you've seen ads for panty liners recently but not conciously taken it in, resulting in the inverse of what you thought happened - your MadLibs suggestion was due to an ad.

I'm very confident many companies would be happy to spy on you via microphone if practical, but outside of malware I'm yet to see anyone proving this actually happening. We have billions of smartphones in the world and millions of tech people, many who would have to be keeping the secret all these years and many others who somehow couldn't find evidence of this. Occum's razor just doesn't add up here.

[0] https://www.thedrum.com/news/2023/05/03/how-many-ads-do-we-r...

[FLT8]

Haha... I'm surprised to learn my wife and I aren't the only people playing the "Getz" game! We started around 15-20 years ago, when every second hire car in Queensland was a Getz.. they're a little harder to come by now, but I still get a little thrill from calling one before she's seen it :)

[kbelder]

I'm worried about falling prey to conspiratorial thought, but I'm in the same boat. I can't think of any other reasonable explanation that would explain the advertising.

[barkbyte]

You don’t notice the thousands of ads that don’t seem suspicious.

[hallway_monitor]

It's happening and we are being gaslit by people saying oh it would never happen. Apple and Google would never allow it to happen. They're both capitalist corporations driven by profit alone. There's immense profit in this. It's happening and it makes me want to throw my phone in the river.

[cassianoleal]

> Google exec says you should warn guests about your spy speakers

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-exec-nest-owners-shou...

They've been warning us themselves.

[VelesDude]

There are a few acquaintance over the years that have been involved in various sectors of social media and various 3 letter government agencies. The one thing they have always said is, just assume they doing to most morally questionable things to get data - they just won't public admit until it is absolutely vital to do so.

Slightly off topic but I did like one of them being so frank about Linux and open source. They worked for a while with the NSA, all they said was "Linux has 100 million lines of code. You have to fooling your self to think we didn't slip in hundreds of backdoors onto that thing". The same can be said of almost any other system though.

I have long suspected that the gaslighting thing of "it is just subconscious coincidence" is just a very neat cover for these things. There might be a slight influence but it is nowhere near as powerful an effect as they would like you to think. With advertising swaying people, they can move a few percent of people a few percent in one direction but it doesn't really target individuals effectively in guaranteeing results. Only as an aggregate.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> They're both capitalist corporations driven by profit alone. There's immense profit in this.

This is exactly why I hate this dumbass conspiracy theory. You're totally correct, they are both capitalist corporations driven by profit alone. And the fact is that if they were secretly recording us in direct opposition to what they have said on the record it would be an absolute disaster for their bottom line.