Ask HN: Is YouTube Listening to Private Conversations for Recommendations?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42365414

by deepak057 • 2 years ago

3 4 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Recently, I experienced something unsettling. My wife and I were having a heated discussion about our neighbors (offline, no phone or device usage during the conversation). The discussion involved their habits of wasting water in front of our house and parking cars in front of it.

A few hours later, I opened YouTube and was recommended a video titled "How to fix neighbors who trouble you".

I hadn’t searched for anything related to this topic online or discussed it over text. It was purely an offline verbal discussion.

This left me wondering:

Could YouTube (or Google) be using microphone access to listen in for personalized recommendations? Is this just a wild coincidence, or do algorithms really work this well with indirect indicators like past searches, location, etc.? What are the best practices to safeguard privacy in such cases? I’d love to hear thoughts from the HN community. Have you had similar experiences, and how do you ensure privacy from invasive recommendation systems?

abahuguna• 2 years ago

I have also experienced this a couple times. Once I read in a newspaper (offline/paper, I live in India) that a certain accomplished classical dancer with a great career died recently... I did not do any google search on it... same day I saw a prompt related to that on Quora about classical dance etc. It was eerie. Another time a similar thing happened. I still try to tell myself that maybe this was chance or coincidence but things seem weird for sure.

theGeatZhopa2• 2 years ago

If a classical dancer with a great career dies, then for sure, you're not to only one clicking on the news. The more clicks, the more the content is of interest and the more it will be pushed - and then comes you and such content is pushed to you.

Events of public interest, whatever others in your neighborhood have googled, watched or clicked on, might also be of interest for you. Hence, it's pushed to you.

That's just statistics for predicting what might be of you interest:

"A similar community is often interested in similar things"

theGeatZhopa2• 2 years ago

.. it's a coincidence.

YouTube is like:

Some other YouTubers, who watch the same videos as you do, also watched "fix your neighbor" - but you didn't. Let's push it to you.

Or, some in your neighborhood also have problems with your neighbor, so the googled it. Now Google thinks, you also might have something in this area...

There's so many factors and data for the statistics - it's insane.

deepak057• 2 years ago

yeah, that sounds reasonable!

Ask HN: Is YouTube Listening to Private Conversations for Recommendations?

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