The problems with this 'psychological explanation'
1. It is just as unscientific as saying that Facebook MUST be listening, without finding any evidence in the workings of phones, app source code, etc. Almost by definition, there is no experimental evidence for the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.
2. It posits that everyone who has experienced this is unsophisticated and ignorant about cognitive distortion. Clearly, some people who believe that Facebook is listening to them talk also believe that there were no planes on September 11th, etc. However, many many people today have a good understanding of psychology, are well aware of (basic) cognitive biases, have thought about these experiences. People also have experiences of unlikely events but which have well understood or easy-to-estimate probabilities, which didn't occur much historically. Lots of people can distinguish quite well between their own illusory biases and events which are coincidental, but not 'in the mind'. Some of these people seem to also believe their speech has found its way into advertisers' profiles.
> 2. It posits that everyone who has experienced this is unsophisticated and ignorant about cognitive distortion.
Not really, it just suggests people aren't perfect statisticians and perfect at recording information. Which we aren't.
> People also have experiences of unlikely events but which have well understood or easy-to-estimate probabilities
The probability of seeing a relevant advert is not something we can easily estimate.
> Lots of people can distinguish quite well between their own illusory biases and events which are coincidental,
I would be shocked if this was even a reasonable percentage of people. I am certainly not a perfect innate statistician with perfect recall, and I think most other people are not either. Humans are just bad at this stuff.
> which didn't occur much historically.
I'd be shocked at anyone with a very solid recall of all the adverts they see.
Without strong evidence, this seems like a perfectly reasonable base view. It'd be a complex, expensive, power and data hungry way of targeting adverts, extremely controversial and possibly illegal. There's no evidence they're actually doing it, no whistleblowers, and many of their adverts are just terribly targeted.
People here are bringing up examples like a young couple being advertised a pregnancy test. Hardly requires invasive monitoring of a billion people to achieve.
I would disagree with that phenomenon. In direct contrast, my awareness of these ads kicked into overdrive after seeing them for the first time, so I was hyper aware and looking out for them afterwards, which is why I noticed they disappeared a day or two after popping up.
Since then, my feed has been a bland sea of adverts for mattresses, knives etc. that almost all of my friends complain about seeing.
I don't use ad blockers, due to my development work in web apps etc. I like my browsers to be as stock as possible, and I do actually at least glance at nearly all ads I see in FB etc. just to see how their targeting is being skewed by my search history or messaging online.
These were two quite distinct cases of ads that I've never seen before, which popped up within 24 hours of me talking about (but not doing anything else online related to them) and then disappearing soon after.
Sure, an anecdotal sample size of 2 could just be pure coincidence, but something about it still doesn't sit right with me.
It would be weird if that sort of coincidence never happened. Two incidents of this happening to you ever doesn’t sound like much. Maybe even a bit low.
If they really are using audio for ad targeting like they do with search history, then it should be easy enough to prove it by experiment.
Sure. I am used to, nay, I _expect_ ads for software tools and music gear given my work and hobbies in my life, as I frequently talk about those things to my friend on FB and IRL all the time.
But wiper blades is so off the charts for me, that I was totally surprised to see about 3 ads for them the day after I had a discussion in the car. I don't even go to sites remotely associated with the automotive industry. Not even locality based, as it was a full 4 months out of the real 'wet season' we have later in the year. (NOTE: Not even in our wet season did I see random ads for wiper blades).
Having said that, I won't be surprised to see more wiper blade ads now that I have been talking about it on HN - who knows if they have linked up the data from online forums back to FB etc.? The handle I use here I tend to use on nearly all online forums I belong to.
> I don't use ad blockers, due to my development work in web apps etc. I like my browsers to be as stock as possible, and I do actually at least glance at nearly all ads I see in FB etc. just to see how their targeting is being skewed by my search history or messaging online.
You are doing yourself a disservice. Have two users (or at least two browsers), one for work, which you keep ad-blocker free, and one for life, which you shouldn't.
Just a note, not trying to pick your anecdote, but the experience of something seemingly occuring frequently out of nowhere is exactly the baader-meinhof phenomenon. You’d need to demonstrate a causal link to firmly disprove it, which would assumably be difficult in this case.
