this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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I already get "random" ads for things that were only part of a verbal conversation that happened to be near the phone.
What I want is a physical kill switch for the mic and camera, less surveillance not more.
That's been happening for well over a decade now, and while "respectable security researchers" call it bullshit... there's simply too much anecdotal evidence for it to happen organically.
The reality is they don't need to listen.
They have so much data on users.
It just goes on and on and on.
People think they are unique but they are not as unique as they think.
You're right that they don't need to, but in reality they do whether they announce it or not.
In 2017 I tested this at home alone in my apartment in by myself using my smarphone by finding a site with lots of banner ads, monologing next to my phone about a topic with no relation to my current life at the time for about a minute, then refreshing the page. To my horror, the exact thing I was monologing about showed up on every single banner ad. Nothing in my life was going on related to that topic and the only thing connecting me and the topic was my own vocal words.
That was the moment I decided to avoid Google/big tech for the rest of my life.