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It did something very similar to me and really made me second guess myself, but there is no other explanation other than it used my microphone to listen to my conversation at work. I felt so paranoid about it and was very weirded out.

My backpack zipper broke when I was walking to work. When I arrived at work I told my coworker I needed to buy a new backpack. She and I talked in her office about what type of backpacks her son liked, did they have enough pockets, are the zippers strong. I never used my phone to google anything about backpacks, never looked anything or searched for a new backpack online. That same afternoon- boom backpack ads in my facebook feed. Totally creepy.

2 comments

> but there is no other explanation other than it used my microphone to listen to my conversation at work

You'd have not noticed if you saw a backpack advert at some other time. Just how many adverts do you see that aren't standing out? Huge amounts, probably.

This could be quite easily explained by the frequency illusion.

Perhaps your coworker googled about backpacks after the conversation, and facebook knows you spent some time together just before that and put two and two together so to speak.

I'm sure most of the time their algorithms make guesses like that it doesn't result in anything relevant, but you don't notice those ones.

If this cross-referencing of other people's searches is something that they're doing, though, that's concerning too. I don't want my partner to see ads for a gift I'm surprising her with because a facebook algorithm is guessing she might be interested in ads about things I've googled.