Author Topic: This forum being snooped upon?  (Read 2370 times)

This forum being snooped upon?
« on: 06 May, 2021, 01:19:37 pm »
I am having u tube video links appear which seem directly linked to very recent conversations/posts in various threads in this place and verbal conversations elsewhere. For example which navy would win a future war the UK or France  (the Channel isles and fishing today POBI) and similarly the battle of Crecy which I have discussed via Team Speak very recently with someone.  This, to put it mildly, feels very spooky indeed. What does the panel think? Coincidence, associated web searches or something else?
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

ian

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #1 on: 06 May, 2021, 01:48:12 pm »
I assume the site gets crawled by Google and other spiders, it's public. That's how the internet works.

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #2 on: 06 May, 2021, 01:54:51 pm »
I don't see how posting on a subject in a forum would lead to Google, YouTube, etc being able to associate a particular topic with a particular PC/user.

More likely it's Google passing on your search results.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #3 on: 06 May, 2021, 01:55:29 pm »
I think that the Channel Isles fishing is all over the news today and for the past couple of days...
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ian

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #4 on: 06 May, 2021, 01:59:28 pm »
Assuming they run the sort of algorithms we do (and they have better, bigger ones), it's surprising what can be clustered from what appear to be disparate data points.

Of course, it might be a nice worm reporting to its masters.

Or the usual human pattern recognition, where you pick up on stuff like this, but ignore all the unrelated.

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #5 on: 06 May, 2021, 02:25:07 pm »
You have an interest in military history and YouTube is recommending you stuff related to military history?  Omg!

Even if you haven’t specifically watched videos related to a particular thing, if you’ve watched any videos at all there’s a fair chance other people who watch those videos also watch videos about other (sometimes related, sometimes unrelated) topics you might also be interested in.

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #6 on: 06 May, 2021, 02:41:28 pm »
What I don't get (except I probably do) is why teh tubes thinks that I should want all the right wing nazi-ganda and insists that I have to keep searching for all the lefty wokeness. It doesn't recommend caravanning crap because I occasionally watch camping content nor non-running fitness stuff because I watch some running content.

I personally believe that it is purely based upon monetisation.  As the rancid right pay the most in my opinion we will be flooded with their bullshit.

Chris S

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #7 on: 06 May, 2021, 02:44:04 pm »
Anyone coming to this thread with any element of surprise or doubt, has clearly not watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix.

Also...

Is your phone listening to you all the time? Of course it is - how else can it respond to "Hey Siri" or "OK Google". My son and I once had a completely random conversation about heat pumps when he was visiting one weekend, and from then on, we both had ads for heat-pumps in social media feeds, each in our local areas.

The folks who own/run/monitor Big Data know more about you than you do, simple as that.

ian

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #8 on: 06 May, 2021, 03:26:09 pm »
I don't, by-the-by, think they are taking the data from listening devices – that's an element of coincident patterning, you've been talking about something, then you see something related to that, and make the connection (that isn't really there). To complement that, you elide all the things that you talked about but didn't appear in your social media feeds etc so you are just left with the connections.

Some of the big community-detection algorithms are quite scary/amazing in what they can bring together, now computation has caught up with the theory.

Chris S

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #9 on: 06 May, 2021, 03:29:52 pm »
My youngest is currently doing a masters in AI; so this kind of crap will be his fault  ;D

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #10 on: 06 May, 2021, 03:32:33 pm »
No one actually knows how Youtube is selecting video recommendations for you any more. It's deep AI learning and beyond human unravelling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSpAWkQLlgM
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

ian

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #11 on: 06 May, 2021, 03:40:57 pm »
It's true. I'm often asked why is such-and-such? I don't know. The data scientists don't know. No one knows. It just is.

woollypigs

  • Mr Peli
    • woollypigs
Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #12 on: 06 May, 2021, 03:41:57 pm »
Chris S do tell him to fix it before it takes over and becomes sentient.

Cause I'm tried off having the various AI's on the various social media I use. Think that one, yes only one, click and not even a "like" means that I loved it and want to watch 1000+ more of it or stuff like it. Learn and look in my clicky history that I have clicked many more 1000s times on many many more 1000s subjects and it would be rather nice to see what I have enjoyed for years again, instead of random shite I don't enjoy watching. Hint:  did I watch it in full or did I "like" said subject/post, did I heck !!!

sorry for the rant, but I for one welcome our new overlords ...
Current mood: AARRRGGGGHHHHH !!! #bollockstobrexit

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #13 on: 06 May, 2021, 03:43:56 pm »
A lot will depend on how you're viewing the forum. If, say, you're using Tapatalk on your phone, it's quite plausible that other apps on your phone (eg Youtube) are monitoring your activity.

Apple's latest iOS update has changed it so the default is not to allow this kind of tracking - you now have to explicitly opt in. Mark Zuckerberg is not at all happy about this, which should tell you all you need to know. Although Apple's reasons for doing it are not entirely altruistic.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Chris S

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #14 on: 06 May, 2021, 03:47:39 pm »
@woolly

Oh, the AI is waaaaaay beyond clicks. Think more in terms of latency on views - if it thinks you looked at an image/video longer than others, the AI will notice that, it knows exactly what you are paying most attention to, even without you clicking. My son has already mentioned to me that AIs can track your eye movements too (given access to the camera - have YOU allowed your phone browser to use the camera in your phone? Many have...) so they know very precisely how you're perceiving a page.

ETA: BTW, my other son is doing a degree in Human Psychology. Can you imagine what a scary team his and his brother will make?

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #15 on: 06 May, 2021, 03:54:26 pm »
Cause I'm tried off having the various AI's on the various social media I use. Think that one, yes only one, click and not even a "like" means that I loved it and want to watch 1000+ more of it or stuff like it. Learn and look in my clicky history that I have clicked many more 1000s times on many many more 1000s subjects and it would be rather nice to see what I have enjoyed for years again, instead of random shite I don't enjoy watching. Hint:  did I watch it in full or did I "like" said subject/post, did I heck !!!

Facebook calls this 'affinity' - it's extremely reductive, and I can't help feeling that it will be counter-productive for Facebook in the long run, because they will end up not showing you stuff that you're genuinely interested in, because it doesn't fit their algorithms, and you'll just get bored of Facebook and stop using it and/or your feed will become so swamped with stuff that you're not interested in that you can't be bothered to filter through to get to the stuff you actually want, and will stop using it.

Wowbagger mentioned in the local elections thread that he's now getting loads of stuff about Bristol. Same here. I reckon it's because I clicked on a story shared by Angry People In Local Newspapers, so Facebook now thinks I'm especially interested in Bristol. The AI is pretty advanced these days, but it still has a long way to go before it can truly understand your intent when clicking on a link.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

nicknack

  • Hornblower
Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #16 on: 06 May, 2021, 04:09:35 pm »
Faceboak appears to think I'm interested in football.  ::-)
There's no vibrations, but wait.

ian

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #17 on: 06 May, 2021, 04:10:43 pm »
That's where it falls over, the machines don't understand intent, so when you ironically click all those Rogerzilla links about dogging in Swindon, you'll start to get adverts for local beauty spots and outdoor 'activities.'

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #18 on: 06 May, 2021, 04:12:46 pm »
Quote
My son and I once had a completely random conversation about heat pumps when he was visiting one weekend, and from then on, we both had ads for heat-pumps in social media feeds, each in our local areas.

Quote
A lot will depend on how you're viewing the forum. If, say, you're using Tapatalk on your phone, it's quite plausible that other apps on your phone (eg Youtube) are monitoring your activity.

Quote
(given access to the camera - have YOU allowed your phone browser to use the camera in your phone? Many have...) so they know very precisely how you're perceiving a page.

They're doing enough completely overt creepy shit without having to do easily-disprovable secret shit.

ian

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #19 on: 06 May, 2021, 04:16:08 pm »
Faceboak appears to think I'm interested in football.  ::-)

In my experience, most of the world seems to think I should be interested in football.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #20 on: 06 May, 2021, 04:26:28 pm »
I don't, by-the-by, think they are taking the data from listening devices –
A couple of years back Huawei admitted that some of their devices were listening and sending audio data back to <I can't remember> without users' knowledge. Possibly this was in a "China's taking over the world" context rather than a marketing one, I cannot remember.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #21 on: 06 May, 2021, 04:44:20 pm »
Cause I'm tried off having the various AI's on the various social media I use. Think that one, yes only one, click and not even a "like" means that I loved it and want to watch 1000+ more of it or stuff like it. Learn and look in my clicky history that I have clicked many more 1000s times on many many more 1000s subjects and it would be rather nice to see what I have enjoyed for years again, instead of random shite I don't enjoy watching. Hint:  did I watch it in full or did I "like" said subject/post, did I heck !!!

Facebook calls this 'affinity' - it's extremely reductive, and I can't help feeling that it will be counter-productive for Facebook in the long run, because they will end up not showing you stuff that you're genuinely interested in, because it doesn't fit their algorithms, and you'll just get bored of Facebook and stop using it and/or your feed will become so swamped with stuff that you're not interested in that you can't be bothered to filter through to get to the stuff you actually want, and will stop using it.

Wowbagger mentioned in the local elections thread that he's now getting loads of stuff about Bristol. Same here. I reckon it's because I clicked on a story shared by Angry People In Local Newspapers, so Facebook now thinks I'm especially interested in Bristol. The AI is pretty advanced these days, but it still has a long way to go before it can truly understand your intent when clicking on a link.

When I was on farcebook Mark Sillybugger's platform kept telling me stuff I wasn't interested in and didn't show me the stuff that I was, such as friends and family posts.  I had my location set as "Lands End" but when the bad news re the Grenfell Tower hit I got lots of farcebook notifications telling me to tell my contacts that I was safe - I hadn't been in London for about a year so something was completely screwed.

This dislike of AI telling me where I am and what I want to see is one of the reasons I deleted my farcebook account.

woollypigs

  • Mr Peli
    • woollypigs
Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #22 on: 06 May, 2021, 05:25:05 pm »
you'll just get bored of Facebook
Now that's was why I got bored of farcebook, their constant changing how the feed is shown and security changes and risks they pose*. And deleted my account a little over 2 years ago. Don't tell me what I want to see, show me what I want to see. I follow X, Y and Z because I want to see their stuff and not sportsball or ladies in next to nothing etc. And if X, Y and Z are having a few days off, I'll understand, I can wait until they are back and posting stuff, so don't dump random stuff on me that I didn't ask for. Don't worry if I get bored I know many rabbit holes on the internet I can get lost in, I don't need any help :)


ETA: BTW, my other son is doing a degree in Human Psychology. Can you imagine what a scary team his and his brother will make?

Boy, that book and later movie and TED Talks I would love to see, erm I mean I would love to have a natter with them, see I got plans with the carbon life forms on this planet they call home :)


* Yes I used whatsapp a little longer but their resent change to their policies got me to stop. And yes I use instagram, but I have learnt my lesson from the their master and don't put anything personal etc on there. It is enough that I have signed my life away to Google since 2004 :)
Current mood: AARRRGGGGHHHHH !!! #bollockstobrexit

Re: This forum being snooped upon?
« Reply #23 on: 06 May, 2021, 07:21:58 pm »
Assuming they run the sort of algorithms we do (and they have better, bigger ones), it's surprising what can be clustered from what appear to be disparate data points.

Of course, it might be a nice worm reporting to its masters.

Or the usual human pattern recognition, where you pick up on stuff like this, but ignore all the unrelated.
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How did you find out I do that >:(
Move Faster and Bake Things