I have this feeling it’s more like a mentalist mind-trick.

We are fed so many inputs from so many sources, we don’t notice the influence, but we end up thinking about such and such, maybe talking about it with other people and suddenly, lo and behold! the algorithm presents us with an ad for the very subject that was on our mind! Mind reading! Magic!

But just like a Derren Brown subject, we just picked the card he wanted us to pick from the beginning.

I reckon the only thing preventing us from being completely subjugated is the amount of actors trying to influence us simultaneously, as we flock through our attention grabbing sources.

Which is why the consolidation of media is such a worrisome phenomenon. One dude controlling an entire network of sources means you are constantly under the same influence.

And then you get MAGA.

I wonder what’s next?

I wish it was that way. Soo many ads are completely irrelevant. The only platform where I get good ads is google news (the swipe left on Pixel). It’s filled with Adafruit ads. I’m cool with that.

I see the debate happening in here, and I honestly think the way this really works is a lot weirder and at a bigger scale than what most of us might imagine. We’ve had pretty strong machine learning for quite a while… we still don’t know exactly how it works, but these models have reasoning, pattern recognition and the ability to classify data which improves every day.

The likes of Google ingest all manner of disparate data points, buying and selling them to each other, responding to the push and pull of markets and trends. These players have a realtime profile on every single person who touches their platform. Users touch that platform with almost everything they do. These touch points where data get gathered are not just users’ own personal devices, either. They increasingly happen via corporate and state-controlled devices and networks out in the built environment.

We feed these entities continuously with our actions, whether we know it or not. They continuously map all the intersections of millions of data points across billions of profiles, theoretically getting as granular as needed. It’s picking up patterns that humans would never think to look for, modulating, and feeding it back to us. Generative agents fit into this framework, hand in glove.

At this scale, these entities can derive trends, interests, motivations. They create massive feedback loops, driving trends that suit them as they observe, predict and influence what we’ll do, wear, buy, eat. Where we go online, and IRL. And what we search for.

This is a massive, largely invisible, endlessly adaptable machine they’ve created. No one person can fathom the entirety of it. Even for the engineers who contribute, they only know their one small piece, and they may be unaware of how it contributes to the whole or how it ultimately is used.

The only ceiling to it is data storage, compute, and access/adoption. They’re obviously working to massively raise that on all fronts.

This is becoming the mycelium beneath our forest floor. Like trees, we find it convenient and practical to know each other’s statuses and whereabouts, to converse, and to get things. We eat from it, or it feeds us. Meanwhile, it shapes the environment itself, deciding who rises and falls, spreading, terraforming the earth and transforming the substrate of above-ground life according to its own alien logic. Unlike a mycelial network, it has our own hubris reflected and embodied. It’s not self-limiting, not in a way that means anything to the well-being of most of us. The end result here won’t exactly be balance and homeostasis in the ecosystem.

They don’t need our microphones.

That might be useful.

It’s more like, you buy a pair of boots online.

FB and Chrome for the next week and a half BOOTS!! BOOTS HERE!!

Stories of these companies listening through everybody’s mics are like modern day ghost stories. It definitely totally happens every single day but nobody ever manages to get a piece of hard evidence. Maybe the algorithms can sense wireshark like ghosts sense cameras

I’ll have two number 9s, a number 9 large, a number 6 with extra dip, a number 7, two number 45s, one with cheese, and a large soda.

And Alexa, of course

Mate I’m its even worse than we could possibly imagine by now.

~20 years ago, when smartphones were new and super expensive, I arranged to meet my friend using Facebook chat. I did not have a mobile phone at all, I used desktop PC to access it. While I was in his car we were talking about possible careers and I said i would probably enjoy being a teacher. When I got home and logged back in, every single banner ad was for teaching courses, teach English abroad, teachers wanted.

It definitely used his smartphones microphone to hear that there were 2 people in the car, and used the chat log to figure out it was me, and this was a long time ago.

It might be the other way around too though… You might be thinking of buying something, because Facebook or google have convinced you that you need it

That said, I had to create an account in FB due to work and studies. I did some research and decided to run it only on a browser and use a seperate browser only for FB. Along with some strict privacy rules.

My account was flagged within 30 seconds of creation. They asked for a selfie ID that they got and they did a manual assessment but banned the account nonetheless for not following community guidelines

You can’t even read their community guidelines without accepting their cookie policy

…superPAC dedicated to funding policies that hold IT organizations liable for the consequences of their actions.

I talk about Kendal Mint Cake whenever I think I might be around an open mic.

I and my wife constantly get adverts for it on Amazon and in other places.

None of us have ever bought any.

Hashtag confusion to the enemy, or something

Wish tech companies respected my privacy they’re awful people to interact with.

What is with the trope of using a glass to listen through a wall or door? Surely it doesn’t work, right? Do all of these people have glasses with no bottom?

It’s like when you see in TV/movies when someone gets tied up and “gagged” by just putting a sock in their mouth with no tape or anything. As if the person couldn’t literally just spit the piece of cloth out.

Takes me out of it completely, every time.

What did I miss? Facebook has done this for well over a decade, but how does Google illegally listen in now?

Sometimes I dream about a nonprofit mega platform (like a web search with social media and a shopping platform included) that clearly communicates it‘s users that it will share all the knowledge with everybody that is interested in it for free in a privacy respecting way. Making this information basically worthless. Just to fuck with google and all the big players in the ad business.

A platform that is financed by donations and ads that have some sort of fair use pricing where small advertisers are even allowed to advertise for free (but the usage of ads is only allowed to compensate money that is missing to keep everything operational) A platform where small players can sell their stuff for free. A platform with social media, without any algorithms. Fuck it, let‘s even include a video platform and some sort of business platform just to make it complete.

As I said it must be a nonprofit. So it would basically have no intention to earn more than enough money to keep everything operational, making it the cheapest option for everybody and destroying all the mega corps out there that just can’t get squeezed enough revenue out of it’s users. This way we would be brought back to the golden ages of the internet 10-20 years ago.