Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

Phone Listening vs. Data Correlation

• Many commenters agree with the article’s core claim: major ad platforms don’t need live microphone snooping because cross‑app tracking, location data, social graphs, and data brokers already enable “creepily good” targeting.
• Others remain convinced phones are listening, seeing that as more intuitive than accepting how powerful correlation and behavioral profiling have become.

Anecdotes, Experiments, and Confirmation Bias

• Numerous anecdotes: people discuss obscure topics (products, TV clips, vacation ideas) and later see highly relevant ads or content.
• Skeptical replies stress coincidence, recency bias, and invisible links (someone else at the table Googled it, shared IP/location, same Wi‑Fi, or being in a highly targetable demographic at the right season).
• Several note that controlled tests and traffic analysis have not found persistent background audio uploads for ad targeting, but conspiracy‑minded users dismiss these as incomplete or compromised.

Technical Feasibility & OS Protections

• Arguments against constant listening: high compute cost, battery drain, bandwidth, and difficulty hiding CPU/network usage; modern OSes also surface microphone usage via indicators and permissions.
• Counter‑arguments: keyword spotting and on‑device transcription are cheap, can log just short snippets or word clouds, and upload tiny text payloads that would be hard to detect.

Screenshots, Smart TVs, and Other Surfaces

• Discussion of research showing many Android apps (often via embedded SDKs) can capture their own UI as screenshots or screen recordings and send these to third parties; APIs for this often need no explicit permission.
• Commenters highlight “smart” TVs doing content recognition and sometimes sending screen snapshots; some unplug TVs from networks or block them after initial setup, noting TVs may still monitor even on HDMI inputs.

Permissions, ROMs, and Privacy Hygiene

• Android permission design is criticized as too coarse or easily abused; some want per‑use prompts plus fake‑data sandboxes.
• Others advocate GrapheneOS, Lineage, /e/OS, or iOS with careful settings; but note these don’t stop in‑app tracking SDKs, only OS‑level telemetry.

Malware, State Actors, and Real Eavesdropping

• Several point out that while adtech may not be listening, targeted malware, commercial spyware, and intelligence agencies absolutely can and do turn phones into listening devices; for most users this is unlikely but technically routine.

Adtech Power and Legal/Trust Issues

• Many see the “more disturbing truth” as adtech’s ability to infer interests from metadata, location, and social proximity, not audio.
• Settlements over Siri recordings and push‑notification metadata erode trust and fuel belief that “they’re obviously listening,” regardless of debunkings.