Subj : Re: I am thinking...
To   : unixl0rd
From : Adept
Date : Wed Dec 27 2023 23:50:21

 un> You are correct. Actively listening to users would require an insane
 un> amount of bandwidth and processing power. What app developers do instead
 un> is they include a third-party library into their code base. Once loaded,
 un> the library collects information and relays it to the ads server. It's

I do think that a lot of the, "I was just passing by x, and then they gave me an ad for y" is well-explained by, "advertisers get your location data on a regular basis".

Because, yeah, everyone with a phone is getting actively surveilled constantly (but just by the phone companies and anyone (police) who can easily get access to it), and it doesn't take a whole lot of additional permissions to send along location data to advertisers. Or even just Google going, "here, let me find all the ads for things in your current area".

And the advertisers/app makers/Google do their best to get us to agree to give up the information, generally without realizing that that's what we're agreeing to.

So, yeah, no need for any conspiracy theories when there are entirely plausible (if still awful) ways for various things to happen without much data or much human intervention.

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