Is this a coincidence? Bit creeped out.

[Drogonssmile]

Yesterday I was browsing in Sainsbury's on my own and picked up a bottle of E45 with evening primrose to have a look as I'd not seen it before and normal e45 works well on my husbands dry skin. Didn't say a word just read the back and put it back on the shelf. I was on my own so wasn't talking.

Didn't think anything of it and have not mentioned it at all. This morning I open the amazon app and up pops an advert for this specific e45 I was looking at yesterday! Of all the millions of things on amazon. Weird!

I was thinking about something the other day. Just thinking, not talking about or searching for, and I got a YouTube video on my recommended list about it the next day. It was something very unusual as well.

Horrifying 🤯

I have just read this thread on my iPad while flicking through fb on my phone and a sponsored ad for E45 is on my feed.

It may be semi-coincidental.

Not so much that your phone camera was looking over your shoulder, but that you exist as a billion data points - some of which link you to your husband and the things he uses / buys. It happened upon a suggestion that stuck with you because it was at the front of your mind.

My MN ads are for things I was looking for earlier (Thameslink in this instance), things I recently bought - Nissan car, and oddly co-op sprouts, which I have no interest in [are you listening, no sprout ads!!], I'm guessing it knows that the shop i frequent the most is the local co-op, even if others get bigger spends from me.

@justanotherlurker - it starts with keywords, then machine learning adapts to what works for each incoming data stream in predicting and prompting behaviour. The data storage is already being paid for, so writing AI to financially weaponise this is the only logical thing to do with it. Even at 0.01p, factor that up by a couple of billion people.......

I've just read a really good book called Everything About You, by Heather Child. It's a novel set in the near future when we are all plugged into 'helpful' tech the whole time. Food for thought!

@AdamNichol

I know how it works thanks as I work in the field for one of the companies mentioned here, trust me if you think Google et al are monitoring you 24/7 just to target ads at you then I have nice new bridge to sell you.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing as they say.

@just...
I work in the industry too. What I said was there is a logical choice to leveraging existing data to manipulate/prompt/predict behaviour. The tools now exist to do this at scale, and people are only too willing to feed the reservoir.

Your phone isn't spying on you. Its alled the Baarder-Meinhof phenomenon or frequency illusion.

For example you go to look at a certain type of car. Then you start to see that type of car everywhere. There aren't more of those cars, you are just suddenly notcieing them.

You see loads of ads every day, and could quite easily have had an ad on fb before and not noticed or remembered. (they've don't studies in this too). But when something is in your mind because of a recent conversation then you will notice it.

Tis part of life. We either embrace it or go off grid and live in the woods.

It's not a part of my life and I would prefer to live in the woods, so I only have a £15 PAYG mobile that does nothing other than make calls and text. It's bad enough when googling for something on my laptop, ads then pop up on MN. I need to start wiping history.

This is nice. I’m looking for a jumper for my DB.

Darn it forgot the photo of the ad