Am I Being Listened To...? Mystery Of Mobile Phones, Social Media And Suggested Content
Science/Medical/Technology
Sunday 25th, February 2024
This article delves into social media suggested content, mobile phone advertisements and the underlying cause of how your phone 'knows' what you're talking about to dispel the incorrect notions that someone is spying on you and you alone.
My Phone Isn't Listening To Me, Is It...?
Lets say you've been out and about one day talking to many people about many different things, and lets say one of the subjects you discussed with a friend was about your hair-dryer breaking that morning and then later on that evening while scrolling on social media, low and behold you notice advertisements to buy a new hair-dryer.
Strange, right, not really.
Now this might spook a lot of people but there isn't anything magical or scary, nothing scarier than what you agreed to when you setup your phone and agreed to the terms and conditions or when you agreed to the terms and conditions of any social media site when creating your account.
What is actually going on with these strangely targeted advertisements or content, well that's exactly what they are, TARGETED, based on many different factors built up into a profile about you by each social media site over time, taking input from many different sources and using many different techniques.
One of the most common forms of data gathering about you comes from your smart phone, despite what you might have heard or believe about the microphone being on all the time, well this is actually kind of true. The phone is actively listening for 'wake words' to trigger Siri or Google Assistant etc. and to do this it needs to actively listen to everything being said near the phone.
Now the phone isn't recording (at this moment in time we don't believe phones are recording based on the evidence available to date, except for that one time Apple recorded Alexa device audio), the phone builds up a picture of what you talk about and this picture is called meta data. Meta data is basically data about data, so data about what your phone heard around or near it.
This meta data is built up by your phone, but when you install an app/application on your phone and click ok to everything to get the app running as quickly as possible, you are, in a lot of cases agreeing to let this new app access this meta data on your phone.
The app then grabs this meta data and does some processing on it so then a couple hours later when you're scrolling your favorite social media site it shows targeted content or an advertisement about new hair-driers on sale, simply because you talked about them earlier in the day.
So in reality your not going crazy if you think you phones listening, because it is.
'Your wrong, Ice Cream Won The Election'
We have seen very polarised opinions over the past few years and with this division being seen we have learned a lot more on how someone can be pushed a certain way by tweaking what they see on social media.
On most social media websites or apps you will have a feed, or reel or wall or whatever the social media site calls it. It's your homepage and the main place you will see what others are posting.
But what if what you are seeing isn't everything that your contacts or connections on the social media site are posting, what if you're only seeing the posts and content that align with what the social media site thinks you already agree with or you believe to be the truth.
This is unfortunately the case the majority of the time, social media sites build up a profile on every user using 100's to 1000's of different data points from the very first second you start using the social media site. As time goes on and you use the social media site more, the social media site builds an increasingly more accurate picture of who you are and what you like and don't like, who you support and don't support, if you like vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream, basically everything about you that makes you unique and you.
Based on this profile you will only see what content and posts broadly align with your profile, so if you like vanilla ice cream you'll see every post for vanilla ice cream from all your contacts and friends but most likely wont see any posts that talk about chocolate or strawberry ice cream, and this is by design.
So next time you get into a heated debate about someone on social media saying everyone loves strawberry ice cream when all you are seeing are posts about people loving vanilla ice cream, take a step back and understand that you are both correct and both of you are seeing very different views of the world through the lens of social media and again, this is all by design.
We hope that these two very basic examples of how mobile phones, websites, apps and social media sites know things about your previous conversations, which you previously couldn't get your head around how and why you are getting very specific and targeted content and advertisements.
My Phone Isn't Listening To Me, Is It...?
Lets say you've been out and about one day talking to many people about many different things, and lets say one of the subjects you discussed with a friend was about your hair-dryer breaking that morning and then later on that evening while scrolling on social media, low and behold you notice advertisements to buy a new hair-dryer.
Strange, right, not really.
Now this might spook a lot of people but there isn't anything magical or scary, nothing scarier than what you agreed to when you setup your phone and agreed to the terms and conditions or when you agreed to the terms and conditions of any social media site when creating your account.
What is actually going on with these strangely targeted advertisements or content, well that's exactly what they are, TARGETED, based on many different factors built up into a profile about you by each social media site over time, taking input from many different sources and using many different techniques.
One of the most common forms of data gathering about you comes from your smart phone, despite what you might have heard or believe about the microphone being on all the time, well this is actually kind of true. The phone is actively listening for 'wake words' to trigger Siri or Google Assistant etc. and to do this it needs to actively listen to everything being said near the phone.
Now the phone isn't recording (at this moment in time we don't believe phones are recording based on the evidence available to date, except for that one time Apple recorded Alexa device audio), the phone builds up a picture of what you talk about and this picture is called meta data. Meta data is basically data about data, so data about what your phone heard around or near it.
This meta data is built up by your phone, but when you install an app/application on your phone and click ok to everything to get the app running as quickly as possible, you are, in a lot of cases agreeing to let this new app access this meta data on your phone.
The app then grabs this meta data and does some processing on it so then a couple hours later when you're scrolling your favorite social media site it shows targeted content or an advertisement about new hair-driers on sale, simply because you talked about them earlier in the day.
So in reality your not going crazy if you think you phones listening, because it is.
'Your wrong, Ice Cream Won The Election'
We have seen very polarised opinions over the past few years and with this division being seen we have learned a lot more on how someone can be pushed a certain way by tweaking what they see on social media.
On most social media websites or apps you will have a feed, or reel or wall or whatever the social media site calls it. It's your homepage and the main place you will see what others are posting.
But what if what you are seeing isn't everything that your contacts or connections on the social media site are posting, what if you're only seeing the posts and content that align with what the social media site thinks you already agree with or you believe to be the truth.
This is unfortunately the case the majority of the time, social media sites build up a profile on every user using 100's to 1000's of different data points from the very first second you start using the social media site. As time goes on and you use the social media site more, the social media site builds an increasingly more accurate picture of who you are and what you like and don't like, who you support and don't support, if you like vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream, basically everything about you that makes you unique and you.
Based on this profile you will only see what content and posts broadly align with your profile, so if you like vanilla ice cream you'll see every post for vanilla ice cream from all your contacts and friends but most likely wont see any posts that talk about chocolate or strawberry ice cream, and this is by design.
So next time you get into a heated debate about someone on social media saying everyone loves strawberry ice cream when all you are seeing are posts about people loving vanilla ice cream, take a step back and understand that you are both correct and both of you are seeing very different views of the world through the lens of social media and again, this is all by design.
We hope that these two very basic examples of how mobile phones, websites, apps and social media sites know things about your previous conversations, which you previously couldn't get your head around how and why you are getting very specific and targeted content and advertisements.
