YouTube user demonstrating how Facebook listens to conversations to serve ads

I turn off microphone accessibility for all Facebook owned apps... Ever since I turned them off (FB, messenger, instagram, WhatsApp), I no longer receive ads that were so obviously from my oral conversations.

My friends and I did a semi-scientific test, where we pooled up our 4 phones, and 1 "control" phone with all accessibility turned off. everyone had longstanding FB accounts, everyone had Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp installed. We chose topics that we have all never talked about previously (orally or text), and that no one had internet searched anything related to it (to take out cookies variable)

Topics chosen: hand cream: talking about dry skin, etc.

Electric guitars (the instrument)

Gay nightclubs

Lindt chocolate

We set all our phones in the middle (with WiFi) and just started casually talking about each of these subjects for about 45mins- 1h We pick up our phones and start scrolling through our feeds and each of us found at least 2 out of 4 of the topics in the form of ads from companies that produce those products... even page suggestions from gay clubs and bars in europe.

We then started rambling about how Facebook is spying on us for 10-20 mins, and guess what? We started getting page suggestions "They're watching you" "The govermenent is listening to your conversations", "Privacy" "VPN" ads and "Anonymous" related topics

All of the topics showed up as ads and suggestions on at least one phone, nothing appeared on the "control" phone. None of us ever talked about or searched anything about these things.

It became so annoying that it would pick up on small random things id talk about with family at dinner.

And ever since I turned off all microphone access. IT ALL STOPPED, Sometimes I turn on mic. for messenger video chat and if i forget to turn it off again, I start getting ads.

TL;DR Performed a semi-controlled test, turned off microphone access and it all stopped

/r/videos Thread Link - youtube.com