Google Is Listening...
With so much happening around the world recently regarding such things as data security/leaks, privacy concerns, government & corporate distrust etc, it will surely drive the masses to use/seeing the benefits of using these decentralized platforms.
Although data is indeed open to anyone on the blockchain, it is however truth, it is uncorruptable and forever. It can be used by anyone, yet cannot controlled by anyone.
De-monetization of YouTubers, mass data mining by corporations *cough Google, Facebook, Amazon etc*, privacy intrusions etc. It's madness. Yet the most intense privacy intrusion by these big corporations I've personally experienced is as followed...
I mean in the past year to 6 months, I've experienced it multiple times, and definitely more often within the past 3 months or so...
I'll basically be having a conversation with someone , it could be about anything, one example I distinctly remember was a conversation that included the name of a brand of coffee, (i don't even like coffee!!).
The brand was a random foreign company in which I certainly had no prior knowledge of, and I can't think of anything relatable that would link me to this particular brand of coffee other than this conversation.
My girlfriend at the time was given a packet of said coffee as a gift from a colleague, I picked her up from work and she just said something like, "Look at this!", I looked at it and said the brand name out loud.
The next day I had Instagram friend suggestions for said company.
I also had a strange amount of ads related to coffee for the next week or so.
I'm guessing said company simply had an advertising budget as normal, and if Google Voice Assistant is active, it's expected that the microphone will be constantly listening to some extent. For example you can see the voice data that Google holds on you by logging into your account and visiting https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_source=help&product=29, whether this is a full collection of what they actually have I do not know.
The creepy thing is Google is potentially using microphone input data as a source of advertisement research etc (I have an Android phone, not had any experience with Apple devices long enough to notice anything significant).