"Tech companies are spying on us" is a truism at this point. Endless articles and investigations have ensured that everybody is aware: they are spying on us, they listen to our conversations, they know more about us than we know ourselves, they know you're going to be fired or become pregnant or become depressed before it happens...
I have never felt anything close to that.
I get shown ads for products I just purchased. All this spying, machine learning, big data result in "he bought a mattress, show him more mattresses". Here, I literally just opened a random website with no adblocker, and I see a purple gamepad I recently purchased, with two other gamepads:
When listening to personalized playlists on Spotify and YouTube Music I skip every single electronic track with vocals. I listen to a lot of techno and related genres, and the moment someone starts singing I skip the track. I've been doing it for years. None of these advanced algorithms have ever noticed this simple pattern.
Using Google Chrome, logged into my Google account, I searched for info about Google AI plan usage limits, got an AI-generated response with a link to the help page, clicked it and ended up, logged out, on a Finnish-language landing page (because I'm located in Finland).
My user account, system locale, browser locale, and keyboard settings are all set to English. I am logged into Chrome and all Google services.
I travel to Germany every few months, and lots of services that I've been using for years suddenly decide I speak German.
The PlayStation online store is in Finnish, while some menus are in English, and even if I switch the website language to English (via a hidden, clunky selector), it resets back after a few clicks or after opening a new tab.
Here's an ad for some smart home wellness system. I click on it: they don't deliver to Finland.
A full page of repeating ads for industrial-grade light-curing, methacrylate-based resin designed for 3D printing. I don't have a 3D printer and have no idea what this is.
I clicked on that ad; now I keep getting other 3D-printing-related ads.
Here's an ad for an email/WhatsApp marketing tool. I never needed any marketing tool, nor do I own a WhatsApp business account.
Now it's a Helsinki hotel. I live in Helsinki, I haven't searched for local hotels since 2014 when I first arrived here.
A fucking asphalt cleaning tractor.
I searched YouTube for installation instruction for a specific appliance "AEG CCS84751", watched a couple of relevant videos and the next day saw my homepage populated with more videos about random ovens and stoves. OK, so, let's see, a user searches for installation instructions for a very specific, concrete model. What could we machine-learn from this, what are the options here?
- The user is into ovens
- The user is into installing appliances
- The user needs this one particular instruction for this one particular oven because the user maybe bought that oven and wants to install it, once, maybe?
My bank keeps sending me offers for car insurance. I have car insurance with that bank. Have had it for years.
An airline, when reminding me of an upcoming trip, send info about visas and border crossing laws which don't apply to my citizenship. They literally have a scan of my passport.
Netflix on Apple TV asks me to select a user every time I launch it. I've had this account for 15+ years, and never had more than one user on it. I always select the only option there is to select. There is no setting to disable this screen.
My mobile provider keeps sending me discounts for children's products and events from their corporate partners. I don't have children.
HBO keeps recommending me foreign movies and shows which I cannot watch as they don't have English subtitles.
I have no doubts that a lot of information is being tracked, stored, and sold. Since that's already done, could you guys at least use some of it?..