About an hour ago, I heard a strange noise outside and looked through my window to see some light moving in the grass. I did a quick recording from my phone but it was blurry because the camera kept focusing on the mosquito net, so I grabbed my headlamp to go outside to investigate.
It turns out my landlord got a real fancy lawnmower robot that was almost completely silent moving the lawn.
I go back in to watch some Youtube videos. About half an hour in, a lot of whacky channels start popping up recommending me videos of UFO sightings.
Coincidence or is it because I made a video with blurry lights while saying “What is this?”
I lean towards the first option because I avoid pseudo science channels like the plague and I didn’t give the algorhythm any starting point. You know, like when you accidentally watch a basketball video and the whole feed turns into basketball until you train it that you’re not a basketball Fan to make them go away.
Now I have to do that with all the UFO videos and weirdly enough sasquatch that got into the mix as well.
I think I have to degooglefy way more serious than I already do. I always have camera and mic deactivated in the system unless I get a call or take a picture/video, so I should be good during the day. I do that for over a year now and the coincidential recommendations that mimic some random stuff you talked about a couple hours earlier stopped completely. But sometimes I need those functions and I don’t like some company using it for evil.
Screenshot of the first Video I took:
Define “looking”. They probably have your video, and keep it for 30 days or per some SLA that you signed for nest purposes. Now, I highly doubt anyone is sitting there watching you.
But, running constant analytics on the video feed? Using AI to read any text it sees, grabbing random frames and asking what is in there? That’s a whole different story. Storing and watching video is expensive - but analyzing and grabbing data about it is relatively cheap. That can tell them are you home, how many people are home, what is your routine, what’s on the TV, etc etc etc. That sort of data is a goldmine for advertisers.
So, they’re probably not “watching” or “looking”, but they are definitely grabbing data constantly.
I didnt upload a video, I just made one on my Android phone
the media itself doesnt get uploaded. the google app analises the file, and sends the basic data
Do you have google photo cloud sync?
Doesn’t that automatically back it up to Google’s servers in most cases?
My friend unloaded photos of receipts into a gmail to send to somebody, just an empty email with the receipt image, some time later he was getting ads for the product listed on the receipt…and he had not presearched the items before buying.
This is pretty well known. It is in their privacy policy that they use all mails for marketing
Yes.
Full stop.
Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is either an idiot or stands to gain from your willful ignorance.
Storytime:
A couple of years back, I walked up to a few friends that were chatting about something (waiting for our group to show up for the movie we were all going to at a tiny cinema), and I barely caught that one of them was finishing up reminiscing about some random housewares catalog (small, regional brand I’d never heard of) that her mother used to get in the mail, back in the early-90s when their family lived in a small, rural town on the other side of the continent.
Understandably, I completely forgot about the topic that had nothing to do with me or my childhood, personal interests, et al in the slightest — until that month’s copy arrived in my mailbox less than a week later… and it all clicked into place.
My phone was in my pocket the whole time they were talking, and then we went to the flick. I didn’t take my phone out for ~3hrs, and it was all but forgotten while we were hanging out.
It’s always listening, watching, logging every single bit of data it can. 🤢
What app did you use to record the video? Which apps have permission to access the area of your filesystem where the video is stored?
I recordered it with the stock Android camera.
The only Apps that have permission to my camera besides the system Apps are discord and picsart.
Definitely triggered by the “I made a video of blurry lights asking what is this”. That screams UFO sighting in the algorithm so it served you more like it
The concern is how did the algorithm even see the video?
Google Drive, if they have automatic backups, otherwise maybe Google Photos on their phone
I don’t use any cloud services, and didn’t send it to anyone.
Heres my permission list
I definitely didnt use or even opened picsart in the last 24 hours. I guess it has to go besides being the best photoshop App available.
I use WhatsApp for the family chat, my biggest weakness besides having a Google OS. I hate that I still use it.
Apparently Google hides when it had access and only shows it on 3rd party apps.
Sounds like you have your answer
