Yes, it sounds like a conspiracy theory. But maybe our phones really are listening to us
404 Media, a tech-focused news site, recently got hold of a pitch deck from Cox Media Group (CMG), touting its “Active Listening” software, which targets adverts based on what people say near their device microphones. The presentation doesn’t specify whether this voice data comes from smart TVs, smart speakers, or smartphones but the slide where it extols “the power of voice (and our devices’ microphones)” has a picture of people looking at their phones.
It’s hard to know how widespread the use of this service is, but CMG’s deck lists Facebook, Google and Amazon among its partners – though this doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve partnered on this particular technology. Amazon, for its part, has said it has never worked with CMG, and Google removed CMG from its Partners Program after the 404 report. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said it is investigating whether CMG has violated its terms of service. While a lot of details remain murky, what’s clear is this: privacy died a long time ago. Nothing is off-limits for some advertisers – there have even been experiments with “targeted dream incubation” in an attempt to brand your dreams. The future is a meticulously personalised, highly targeted nightmare.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...ning-to-us
404 Media, a tech-focused news site, recently got hold of a pitch deck from Cox Media Group (CMG), touting its “Active Listening” software, which targets adverts based on what people say near their device microphones. The presentation doesn’t specify whether this voice data comes from smart TVs, smart speakers, or smartphones but the slide where it extols “the power of voice (and our devices’ microphones)” has a picture of people looking at their phones.
It’s hard to know how widespread the use of this service is, but CMG’s deck lists Facebook, Google and Amazon among its partners – though this doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve partnered on this particular technology. Amazon, for its part, has said it has never worked with CMG, and Google removed CMG from its Partners Program after the 404 report. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said it is investigating whether CMG has violated its terms of service. While a lot of details remain murky, what’s clear is this: privacy died a long time ago. Nothing is off-limits for some advertisers – there have even been experiments with “targeted dream incubation” in an attempt to brand your dreams. The future is a meticulously personalised, highly targeted nightmare.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...ning-to-us
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"