Google Pays $68M Because the Thing Was, In Fact, Listening
Description
A dark-mode X screenshot. User 'terminally onλine engineer' (with a Dragon Ball 'BADMAN' Vegeta avatar) comments: 'this is so funny because everyone was like "this thing is listening" and it turned out it was listening'. They quote Globe Observer (@_GlobeObserver): '🚨 BREAKING: Google has agreed to pay $68 million for allegedly secretly listening to its users.' The quoted post shows two images side by side: the colorful Google 'G' logo and a photo of stacked bundles of $100 bills. The meme lands on the long-running 'your phone is listening to you' privacy suspicion - dismissed for years as tinfoil-hat paranoia about voice assistants - being vindicated by an actual settlement, for an amount that is pocket change relative to Google's revenue
Comments
18Comment deleted
$68M for always-on listening - congrats, the hot mic was the only Google product to escape the graveyard
The wake-word matcher apparently shipped with `.*` as its fallback.
Who woulda thunk Comment deleted
IIRC this was the voice hotword detection picking up false positives, causing the assistant to activate & record audio. Apple was sued for the same thing Comment deleted
that's a good excuse Comment deleted
i mean it is how these systems work. Comment deleted
Well, it's even worse start talking about something you haven't talked about with interest while holding your android phone in hand then open youtube or google you'll see the flood of content that is related to that topic you just talked about Comment deleted
Yeah, but it's ALSO a great disguise for surveillance. "Oh, it was activating on accident" is a wonderful defense for collecting data on your users because it's so hard to disprove. Comment deleted
data and battery life would add up quickly Comment deleted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBnDWSvaQ1I Comment deleted
That's what the AI co-processors are for! They can transcribe everything you're saying all day very efficiently on device and then send nice summaries back home to the mothership. What's that? You thought it was there so you could get advice on where to point your camera or which items to add to a grocery list? Hahah Comment deleted
It's for targeted ads innit? Comment deleted
It's for kidnapping people named IEP Esy Comment deleted
Well, they pretty much maybe paid taxes at best in the amount their paying (and to who?) so this would definitely discourage them from just doing it again right? Imagining they got paid well beyond this anyway Comment deleted
If I'm pretty comfortable with that, where do I get my monthly compensation? Comment deleted
Everybody will get a cent🥳 Comment deleted
I tested it myself and proved it btw who are they paying to? I mean, we were the ones being evesdropped on, so aren't we the ones who should be payed? Comment deleted
Where should I send the invoice for compensation? Comment deleted