Comment by simonw
1 year ago
We're specifically talking about Apple here, based on Siri wake words. Do you think Apple are running this kind ad of targeting?
1 year ago
We're specifically talking about Apple here, based on Siri wake words. Do you think Apple are running this kind ad of targeting?
My post is limited to pointing out what I think is a flaw in the reasoning. I am not taking a stance on the larger question.
why are you limiting your argument to wake words? It's comparatively trivial to serve ads based upon what's spoken after the wake word.
And as we know from the lawsuit, it seems that there's been a lot of data gathered accidentally too.
The story here is about Apple paying a settlement because Siri was sending audio snippets surrounding invalid wake word activations back to their servers without users realizing it.
In the story, there was an implication that these audio snippets had been used for targeted ads. This is very clearly not true.
A separate issue is whether Apple take audio from opt-in full hey Siri sessions and sell that advertisers for targeting.
I very much doubt they do that, but even if they did that shouldn't be part of the "your phone is secretly spying on you through your microphone" conspiracy theory because of course your phone is listening to you if you just said "hey Siri" and started talking to it.
None of this is in the realm of "conspiracy theory." We aren't talking about the Earth being flat. Your phone is very clearly listening at all times, and sometimes activates and sends that data to servers. Given that, we can debate all day about what happens with that data - hopefully it's being treated properly - but the point is that it isn't clear, there isn't enough transparency, and there are occasionally scandals.
The problem is that the infrastructure to harvest all of this data clearly exists, and the only reason we shouldn't believe that it's being mishandled is whatever degree of faith we have in these companies to behave ethically, comply with legal requirements (or face a slap on the wrist), and most importantly, have developers that don't inadvertently make any mistakes. I really don't have faith in the latter point in particular.
The point is that maybe this data improperly ends up being used to serve ads, or maybe it doesn't, but in light of all the above, entertaining the idea is in no way akin to thinking that the moon is made of cheese.
EDIT: clarified "recording" to "listening".
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