this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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in each of the studies i've read, if you dig past the popsci headlines reported in the media, and into the actual academic claims being made. everyone i've read has been quite upfront about the limits of the study and how they've been unable to achieve full scope to absolutely rule it out. if you know of any absolutely conclusive full binary analysis please link.
tbh i don't mind people saying they think its not happening, or that its unlikely etc
saying it's absolutely not happening is a very different thing. and a very difficult assertion to justify.
it's always something like "it's impossible cos its too much data to record everyone 247/365" when even a tiny bit of common sense, (even if one knows nothing about computers, networks or even audio) could quickly conceive of the idea that some simple mechanism might detect noise thresholds and not need to record 24/7. you don't even need to be technically minded to work that part out.
i could go on and dig into the actual technical aspects, but the main point is it's always some unbelievably contrived scenario. basically fabricating low hanging fruit which is so low its underground. and then declaring that not only is everything 100.000% safe, but its actually a peeve that you even wondered.
Yeah I'm not familiar with any particular research that completely rules it out.
I don't think it's so much that it would be impossible to conceive of them being able to record you in short bursts. It's more so, the amount of computing power to process even small amounts of audio data on a large scale.
And beyond that, not that I think it's not possible for that to be done either, but understanding that these are capitalist systems that will engage with whatever is most profitable.
It has already been shown that it is quite easy to track people through all of the other methods already in place and serve those advertisements very well, which is probably much more cost effective than the audio stuff.
Although with the progression of some of these machine learning models, the equation may look a little different before too long.
that's exactly my point. if there's an argument to be made over a technical aspect, why undermine it with some nonsensical requirements? imo it really suggests an emotional desire for it not to be true, which just compromises the integrity of any subsequent technical analysis.
as for the actual technical analysis, i'm always up to discuss each aspect of it :)
regarding the computing requirements for audio, this is something well worth looking into.
human vocal frequencies are quite narrowband compared with the audio most people think of with their music, gaming and movies/episodes.
CD quality audio is 16-bit 44.1 kHz sample rate, modern 'high fidelity' audio is in the realm of 24-bit 96 kHz or 192 kHz sample rate.
compare with even ancient voice codecs where bandlimited sampling requirements are only 6.6 kHz and 8bit samples can produce an effective 12bit response! that's almost half a century ago btw!
the telecommunications industry has put considerable effort into understanding the human voice and the kinds of margins they can use to be profitable. they can even estimate the differential energy footprint based on different choice of words and tones in a conversation, this stuff has been studied quite a bit, for decades.
therefore the audio computational requirements are quite a bit less than i think alot of people realise. but we can ofc go deeper with the technical analysis into a variety of subdisciplines for the computational requirements to be substantially reduced even further.
regardless of the reduced costs alluded to above, i think the capitalist system is another insight for us to examine. they are boundlessly greedy, nothing is ever enough.
there's always been the argument they 'have enough data already', (and that is a good argument, because they do have enough).
but when has 'enough' ever been sufficient for these systems? they already had cookies, but they wanted tracking pixels. and when they had tracking pixels, they devised browser fingerprinting. but that still wasn't enough, so they started devising audio beacons, but that wasn't enough, then they started spying on shopping center wireless traffic. etc etc
it's never ever enough. when we demand infinite growth on a finite planet, it will never be enough.
and imo it doesn't actually need to be directly profitable in effect, only to be marketed as such to feed their bottomless appetite. especially when correlated surveillance is highly prized, and an additional channel or medium adds value to the existing gathered surveillance.
exactly, imo its not a matter of if but when.
and imo if its finally revealed. some people will say "no shit", some powerless people will be upset. but most people will say "i'm not doing anything wrong so i don't care".
and i'm willing to bet a bunch of the people currently telling us "its impossible", will unironically switch overnight to saying "i always knew they were doing it and it never bothered me"
You make an awful lot of compelling points. I very much appreciate your analysis 😊 thank you