Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Consumer Surveillance
Consumer tech companies’ surveillance programs might be more sophisticated than I realized.
While watching The Witcher on Netflix, a mention of “the Law of Surprise” prompted me to look it up, without pausing the show. I had typed only “law” into Google’s search utility before its top recommendation was correct.
Maybe the Netflix show is extremely popular right now and that is the top search of anything related to law. I doubt it. Even with the impeachment hubbub going on?
Or maybe Google knows exactly what I’m streaming on a separate device. I have a YouTube app on the smart TV, by which I am signed into Google. Perhaps that app gives Google access to everything I do via other apps on the TV.
Or perhaps Google now adjusts search results according to each particular user’s habits. “This guy’s a high fantasy nerd and Netflix subscriber. He hasn’t listened to the Law Talk podcast in ages. Let’s give him The Witcher results.”
As I’ve argued before, such surveillance of consumer habits does not greatly concern me because (1) software rather than people is actually looking at the data and (2) the data has thus far been used only for pitching consumers other products and services. If any company or its employee uses such data to publicize a customer’s habits or otherwise abuse the data, it would be catastrophic to the company’s public relations. Company profits depend on trust.
Even so, this experience struck me as a little creepy.
Are tech companies finally getting better not just at collecting data but at applying it?
Published in Science & Technology
All I’ll say is that I am getting different results, but I use DDG, not Google.
Or so you believe.
I tried Duck Duck Go briefly and wasn’t satisfied with its search results. And I was still tied to Google in a variety of other ways, so oh well.
I have DDG, but its image search results are awful, so I go to Google for some things. I don’t trust them though. And it isn’t new. In about 2006, I was emailing a friend from gmail about my new puppy, and I joked that I wished there could be a puppy boot camp I could send her to. Before I’d even finished typing the sentence, up popped Google ads for “Be All You Can Be! Join the Army!” and other military topics.
And recently I was emailing a friend about Billie Eilish, and he replied “Who is Billie Eilish?” and he said he instantly got popup ads for therapists and depression.
And that smart TV? I wouldn’t recommend speaking too freely in front of it. From CBS News :
That would only be creepier if it were voiced by Douglas Rain, and said “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t answer that question.”
And the Ring Doorbell is a gateway to WiFi hackers:
https://www.cnet.com/news/rings-smart-doorbell-can-leave-your-house-vulnerable-to-hacks/
A boyfriend of mine tried to give me one a few years ago – I posted about it. I thought it seemed like an odd Christmas present so I googled it, and found that it can be programmed into more than one phone. That’s when I knew he was going to connect my doorbell to HIS phone and spy on me. (I’m not seeing him anymore)
On the news the other night, my neighbor and I saw a story about a pedophile who had hacked into a Ring Doorbell and was talking to their little girl in her bedroom. They played the recording, and it was so creepy. He was saying “Hi! I’m your best friend,” and the girl was screaming for her mommy, it was so disgusting. She looked about six years old. I think maybe the modern conveniences are starting to make me miss the good old days of being inconvenienced.
Thankfully, my TV includes neither camera nor microphone. The remote control is old fashioned too.
But my smartphone is another story. I never use “Hey Google”, but that hasn’t prevented Google from recommending something based on a conversation I had offline.
On the bright side, YouTube does very occasionally recommend something I’m actually interested in.
If such practices morph into plain statist censorship and intimidation, it will be time to burn the whole thing down anyway.
No, no. Life is better now in every way. I heard it right here on Ricochet.
More than a little creepy.
You can find plenty such videos on youtube.
Alexa’s voice can be changed to the voice of Samuel L Jackson for a dollar. Call her creepy now. I dare you.
But will she use Samuel L. Jackson’s vocabulary?
It’s rated Mature for “dynamic content”.
I find that Bing has the best image search, believe it or not, so that’s where I go when DDG doesn’t give me the results for which I’m looking.
In fact, I’ve occasionally read from users online that Bing tends to be underrated in general, and somewhat less creepy than Google because Microsoft doesn’t have the same incentive to squeeze every last bit of revenue out of their search engine since they have so many other sources of revenue.
Can Alexa’s voice be changed to GlaDOS?
@aaronmiller you are correct in your assumptions and then some – yes – they hear you, are recording and keeping all info. I am reading Don’t Be Evil by Rana Foroohar, How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles – and All of Us. I’m only a third of the way through, but it worth reading. She leans liberal as you will gather from some comments, but is highly qualified, an insider with quite a resume. It just came out this year and its jaw dropping. Read about it on Amazon, who she also singles out, as well as Netflix, Facebook, pretty much all the tech giants.
I feel this is info that needs to be known and I am thankful she wrote it – I feel like it ties into a bigger picture for the coming near future – it makes the story of Babylon dim in comparison….
I’ve read that SmartTVs have a setting where you can disable the spying stuff, and you think you’ve stopped it, but you haven’t, and they’re still spying and listening to the room and watching you with the built-in camera. I always say I’ll never get one, but how long will it be before that’s the only kind of TV they even make? I’ve had black tape over the built-in webcam on every computer I’ve owned since 2003.
By the time it morphs into statist censorship and intimidation, it will be too late.
You need to throw Google a curve ball every now and again. Spend a weekend researching every possible aspect of Bauxite production in Uruguay, or the mating habits of the Olympic Scrub Cicada sometime.
I do that sort of thing naturally. 😒🙄
The worst is when you read an article by The New York Times or ABC News because they have the only report on something. Google then decides you are ready to be converted and bombards you with hippie claptrap for weeks.
The problem is not [only] that they’re spying on you. The problem is that the algorithms are so ineptly stupid.
Buy any big-ticket/non-consumable items on any of the big shopping sites [a toilet, or something]. Then watch as you get bombarded with ads for more [toilets] over the next few weeks. Because that’s clearly something I’m still going to be in then market for…
Big brother isn’t scary if he’s retarded.
That is what prompted this post. The algorithms are usually sloppy and inefficient. This one nailed what I wanted… at the price of knowing what I was doing in a separate app on a separate device.
Tech privacy is always a tradeoff between convenience and security. Most consumers favor convenience. But that preference is only by degrees.
The effectiveness of surveillance-born marketing influences consumer choices. If the results are clumsy, they are waved off as a nuisance. If the results are accurate and helpful, spying will be endured. Only when the results feel manipulative and constraining will consumers forcefully object to surveillance.
Of course, it’s hard to refuse a company’s services when all its competitors are equally manipulative and insane.
We have a google activated smart TV, which I studiously avoid being logged in to, although I did go through a slightly onerous process to reactivate an existing account. It was required to be able to turn on the TV’s internet, but luckily I was finally able to figure out how to connect my laptop HDMI input, and I use DDG for all my searches on the laptop. I didn’t want google to profile me while using their Youtube browser; I think it limits my search results when it conflicts with their mercantile priority and collecting of info in support of that objective.
Recently, the YouTube app on my TV started asking “Who is watching?” upon startup each time. I had to select either my profile or the Guest profile.
That’s what I was supposed to do. Instead, I clicked the X to close the prompt, since I was signed in anyway and had access to my subscriptions.
Google updated the app to eliminate that option. Now I must select a profile. That probably means many users shared my annoyance at the prompt.
Again, it’s only developing a marketing profile. An opportunist could use such a profile to libel someone. But it will never be more accurate than a psychologist who can explain what a person does without ever fully understanding why. Tyrants don’t need personal data to lie or to coerce.
If you were web surfing while somebody else was still logged in, why wouldn’t you select that person’s profile? (Evil laugh)
Does anyone know anything or have comments about the fire stick? It was discussed at Christmas and its an option to eliminate satellite or cable TV and stream using Wifi?
Separate of security concerns (I’d guess that major streaming devices are generally equivalent in that regard),I recommend a Roku device over an Amazon Fire TV stick. Amazon doesn’t include access to Vudu. A Roku stick or Roku TV gets you Vudu, Amazon, Netflix, Google, and Apple TV.