Is It Possible for Social Media to Hear What You Think?

Try out this little test to see how your thoughts show up in your news feed

This will sound exciting to some and scary to others. Social media has an incredible ability to track our interests, and how it can do that is getting more sophisticated and less boundaried.

It started with a search engine’s algorithm tracking general search history to serve up suggestions based on what other people have searched for. This is the basis of Google’s autosuggest.

The next level of sophistication came when Google would utilise an individual’s search history to deliver relevant ads that fit certain demographic profiles.

Remarketing took this to another level again where a platform would keep cookies based on actions to remind you of very specific brands or products. None of this is new or even scary these days, although perhaps a little annoying.

My first experience of remarketing was when I bought a yoghurt maker on Amazon. Then, for the next three months I was served ads for a yoghurt maker. The thing is I only had the need for one yoghurt maker, so it was a waste of the advertiser’s money.

I get that it makes sense for other products or brands. I personally find it annoying though and have turned off certain brands for their pervasive advertising approaches.

Can social media hear you talk?

This is contentious. Some people dismiss it outright until they have had the personal experience of seeing ads based on something you have never searched for.

Here’s a little test you can try for yourselves:

Pick something obscure you have never searched for or spoken about. The odder the better.

A friend and I had never been to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I lived in Minneapolis, and she lived in Kansas City. We decided to start talking about wanting to go to Tulsa without making any searches in our phones.

We wanted to test whether our phone could hear us talk and how long it would take to serve up ads about Tulsa.

Sure enough, each of our Instagram feeds had ads for Tulsa within three hours.

Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself and see what results you get.

The theory is that Meta (I still can’t stand that business name) uses Messenger to “listen into” our conversations. I am not a techy person and have no idea how it all works. I just know what the outcome is.

If you know how it works, please leave a comment.

It gets weirder . . .

Can social media hear what you think?

The other day I went into a health food store where they had a display of bracelets with little sayings based on the kinds of stones they use.

I was intrigued by them and started to try them on. I didn’t speak about them or even purchase one. I have no history of searching for, purchasing, or even talking about bracelets.

Then, within two hours, these ads appeared in my Instagram feed:

What the actual . . . ?!

What do you make of this craziness?

From a “spiritual” (struggling to find another word) perspective, this is kinda neat. I believe karma is the rebounding effect of our thoughts, words, and deeds. If I believe this can be true in a spiritual sense, then surely this can manifest technologically.

Yet at the same time, if I look at it from a purely surveillance perspective, this is truly scary.

Truthfully, I’m glad the bracelet ads showed up. I might even “like” them. It’s a welcome reprieve from Grammarly ads and stupid ads about wanting to be a TED speaker.

If an ad becomes annoying, I tell the algorithm it doesn’t relate, even if I am legitimately interested in the topic. I then allow and encourage ads that a fun and unrelatable. It’s my way of giving the bird to advertising fools.

The boundaries between the human world and technology are getting fainter to the point where they will soon be invisible. I am intrigued by the new world that’s being built around us without a full collective understanding of the consequences of these shifts.

I have already been lulled into this new reality. It no longer scares me, even though it probably should.

My life is so entwined with technology that trying to remove myself from it is laughable. The only power I feel I have left in this space, it seems, is my ability to notice.

I admire and respect the idea of the right to be forgotten. Right now though, I’ll just confuse the internet by pretending to like things I don’t really like but because they are less annoying than other things.

Bring on more ads about cats and bracelets.