Mentioned needing a new spatula at a BBQ in Reno and now my feed is full of $90 titanium grill tools
I was at my buddy Dave's place in Reno two Saturdays ago and made one joke about my spatula breaking on a burger. By Tuesday my feed had ads for a $90 titanium grill set, a $45 mechanical tong, and some laser thermometer I never asked about. The crazy part is I fixed my old spatula with a screw I had in the junk drawer. Has anyone else noticed the ads show up way faster when it's a tiny problem you already solved?
The trick is that voice data doesn't care if the problem got solved. You said "spatula" out loud near your phone and that word went into the ad machine either way. Fixing it with a junk drawer screw doesn't matter to them, they just know you're a guy who talks about grilling. What works for me is going into my phone settings and turning off mic access for any app that doesn't truly need it, plus killing personalized ads in the Google settings. It's not perfect since they still track what you type and where you go, but it cut down the creepy stuff a lot for me. Next time just text Dave about the spatula instead of saying it out loud, sounds dumb but it helps.