I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

Whether microphones are used for ad targeting

• Many commenters argue large platforms are not secretly using always‑on microphone data for ad targeting.
• Others are convinced it happens, citing repeated personal anecdotes where niche spoken topics quickly show up in ads or even postal spam.
• Some suggest a middle ground: if it happens, it’s more likely rare, experimental, or via smaller players/SDKs than a pervasive, coordinated system across major OS vendors and ad networks.

Technical feasibility and constraints

• Several adtech and big‑company insiders say privacy processes, legal risk, and organizational controls would make a secret, large‑scale audio‑to‑ads pipeline extremely hard to deploy and hide.
• Others counter that on‑device keyword spotting is easy and cheap: wake‑word chips, song ID features, and modern low‑power audio ML show it’s technically feasible to listen for many keywords and upload small tags instead of audio.
• Debate over power use and bandwidth: some say continuous rich speech recognition would kill batteries and be observable; others present rough power budgets indicating limited keyword spotting plus selective processing is plausible.

Alternative explanations for “creepy” targeting

• Frequent suggestions:
  • You or a friend recently searched for the topic; co‑location, shared IPs, and social graphs propagate targeting.
  • Location and demographics (e.g., living on an island → kayak ads; public housing → “aspirational” luxury brands).
  • Smart TVs and other devices doing automatic content recognition or voice‑assistant logging.
  • Classic cognitive effects: confirmation bias, Baader–Meinhof/frequency illusion, misremembered browsing, and selection bias in which stories get told.
• Some argue that these non‑audio signals are powerful enough that users feel like their phones must be listening.

Evidence cited: lawsuits, decks, and leaks

• Apple’s Siri lawsuit and $95M settlement: commenters note it showed inadvertent recording around false wake‑words and problematic QA use, but no proof of ad targeting.
• “Active listening” pitch decks (e.g., from Cox Media or similar): widely debated; many see them as vague, aspirational sales material, not confirmation of large‑scale smartphone eavesdropping.
• No one in the thread can point to a clear packet capture, reproducible experiment, or credible insider leak proving continuous microphone‑based ad targeting.

Privacy attitudes and implications

• Several worry that fixation on the “phone is listening” myth distracts from documented abuses: extensive location tracking, data brokers, cross‑device profiling, and smart‑TV surveillance.
• Others argue that, given incentives and history (surveillance capitalism, past scandals), it’s rational to remain suspicious even without hard proof.
• Some note broad public fatalism: many people believe they’re being surveilled yet change no behavior, which weakens pressure for real privacy reforms.