Lurking here a lot will do that to you my friend. There's good information here beneath the oil slick on the pond but it can burn you out. Spend a little time with stories that restore a sense of wonder and hope. It's dark out there but we are not without light. Be not afraid.

Oh, and definitely delete the FB app and if you have a headset jack on your phone, you might be able to stick a dummy plug in it to bypass the mic. Airplane mode the damned thing when not using. These stories are all too common.

Best advice here.

Also want to suggest getting off Facebook. I know that sentiment has been demonized to be hipstery and self-congratulatory, but one can live without using the site. This coming from someone who lives across the planet from most friends and family, too, so I get it.

Boycotting is one of the strongest and most effective tools we have. We should use it as often as we can towards companies with nefarious motives. I've personally made a list of all companies that are on the nix list. Google is next, and as soon as this laptop conks out my new one will be configured to avoid their sites and services as best as possible.

Hear hear

I love the idea of this shitlist and I'd like to do the same if you're keen to share it.

Sure. For me personally it's a pretty easy list so far, mostly because I eat and make my (plant-based, organic) food from scratch, and buy locally made stuff like toiletries. Just doing that knocks out most of these guys, but on the days that I deviate from the above I still check that it doesn't hail from these:

Nestle

Monsanto

Coca Cola

Johnson & Johnson

WalMart

Nike

Unilever

PepsiCo

Danone

General Mills

Kraft

Kellogg

Any fast food or meat company (by default)

ConAgra

Mars

Lots more to do, though. One is to look over my financial portfolio and get my advisor to remove the investments in companies that aren't contributing to the well-being of the planet. To negate the petrol issue, my house is going solar soon but I acknowledge shying away from energy companies isn't easy. I also hate clothes shopping but when I do I need to be more cognizant of buying higher quality stuff from ethical companies (cue rash of apparel brand boycotts). I also need to evaluate tech companies and I'm quickly wondering if Amazon needs to get axed (which would be damn hard for me personally).

So, lots more work to do.

One is to look over my financial portfolio and get my advisor to remove the investments in companies that aren't contributing to the well-being of the planet.

Good for you for reading beyond the info the company itself provides. There's far too few ethical investors out there. How do you feel about index funds in that respect?

I also need to evaluate tech companies and I'm quickly wondering if Amazon needs to get axed (which would be damn hard for me personally).

Been wondering this for awhile now too. Bought in before the first tech bubble burst. It was trading over 1000 a couple of weeks ago. I think it's still got plenty of upside potential, but Bezos worries me with the CIA-cloud contract and the WashPo purchase.

It's minor but indicative that I walk this fine line between wanting to post or upvote news on this sub about his shady dealings with the CIA in the name of speaking truth to power, and wanting to downvote and encourage radio silence on those stories for my retirement portfolio's sake.

Been thinking about getting into Tesla (I must have a thing for potentially evil geniuses), but then Musk started cozying up to Trump.

It is just a roll of the dice trying to invest in an oligarchical system.

Financial markets are hard. The entire structure is designed to support the elite, plain and simple. Navigating around that is really hard.

I've looked at the individual stocks comprised in my mutual fund and there are some that need to get traded out in the name of ethics. I've highlighted a few and need to have a sit-down to get them swapped with something else that's equally safe... assuming the fund isn't one instrument altogether, but my understanding is that it's an amalgamation of stocks paralleling the index. I work with a small firm so I expect they're flexible about these things. I hope. Because mutual funds naturally make up a large part of my pie.

I am invested in a green fund that's doing well, but there's of course part of me that recoils at the risk of investing in new tech given that the tech may be great, but the firms themselves are more vulnerable compared to well-known behemoths. Personally I don't mind Tesla. CEO may be questionable but I'm positive the roads would be better off with electric cars compared to gas-guzzling ones.

In truth... I'm considering the radical idea of spending most of my discretionary funds ethically and charitably, rather than saving/investing in corporations. I look at money like water and the more one hoards what they don't need, the more they're taking it from others nearby who desperately need it for their survival. This is actually feasible for me but it requires overcoming psychological hurdles that are hard to dismantle: scarcity, "what if"-doomsday scenarios, thoughts of what to pass on to potential kids, spouse, etc. But we're the only species on the planet that take far more than what they personally need, and I think that creates a lot of the problems we see today with poverty. If I can recognize that I have enough and freely give the rest--including financially--it to me feels like the right thing to do.

I look at money like water and the more one hoards what they don't need, the more they're taking it from others nearby who desperately need it for their survival...If I can recognize that I have enough and freely give the rest--including financially--it to me feels like the right thing to do.

Agreed! But I'm not so sure that "thoughts of what to pass on" constitutes a hoarding mindset, so much as just generational planning. If it is a psychological hurdle, it's a tall one.

But we're the only species on the planet that take far more than what they personally need

This is a fallacy. It reminds me of the vegan line "humans are the only ones who drink milk from other species"... it's just not true. You can be sure a predator isn't letting that go to waste when it scores lactating female prey.

Ever have the experience of a fox or canine getting into your chicken coop? They take everything they can just for the sport, the sheer pleasure of the kill.

Also, bees. I keep bees. They "hoard" as much honey as they can to get through the winter, usually (hopefully, for the beekeeper) way too much.

I'm not advocating a predatory or hoarding mindset any more than I am suggesting eating our young as a form of generational financial planning. Just pointing out that there's a uniquely human level of abstraction that occurs with money and the ability to plan ahead that makes drawing parallels from nature somewhat useless.

Fair enough with the analogy, but just as humans are capable of doing (thanks to technology and mental prowess) we take vices to exponential proportions.

Cool that you keep bees. This coming from a vegan as well, who does indeed point out that we have a unique tendency to feed kids animal milk with greater frequency than anything else in the animal kingdom.

But back on point, at the end of the day, I absolutely want to keep a healthy amount in savings but I truly believe in passing on most of it to the community... especially because I believe any economy is best served when its middle class and lower are engaging in a robust exchange of goods and services rather than the wealthy passing it between themselves in the form of financial investments to corporations.

You could simply disable microphone access to the app.

A good first step, though a company that obfuscates its practices will surely have a backdoor.

Are you referring to Facebook or Apple?

get off facebook? facebook rottens your mind and soul. yes, they spy on you and so does the reddit app. if the service is free, you are the product.

I always think of this meme when people talk about FB being free. https://www.ethannonsequitur.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/facebook-and-you-pigs.jpg

this video comes to mind

Nobody is truly safe from targeted marketing, my friend. While many of the mainstream media sites claim Facebook "isn't recording or listening to your conversations" I do believe their software picks up on key phrases (both audibly spoken [somehow] and messaged or logged) that will later be targeted to you. I noticed this a few months back when I was joking about living off the grid with a friend, and ads for home gardening, tents, and solar powered lights began popping up the next day. I hadn't searched anything that would even remotely trigger these kinds of ads, besides maybe the solar powered lights. It has happened again and again but much less on audible conversations after I uninstalled the official facebook app & messenger. That would be a good choice if you wanna escape their marketing.

Confirmation bias

Oh please...

watch and learn

Sign out of facebook.

apparently the mics still work etc to track us :(

Um.... Fuck Facebook.

http://imgur.com/kIlusOE

Life is full of coincidences. Causation has a lot to do with this because things you have recently seen or events that you have recently experienced will remain in your short term memory so you will see them more often. That being said.. Fuck facebook. Why are you still on facebook?

Within the past month, I was suspecting things along the same lines, when I would sit down (desktop) and type in a search, and Google's autofill would seemingly read my mind, giving me exactly the site or info I was looking for, but hadn't done so before (not in browsing history). It hasn't been frequent or serious enough (or about sensitive topics) that I did more than cock my head with a quiet "WTF?" – e.g., restaurant locations or other un-noteworty shit. I would then try to remember mentioning it in a phone conversation or email, and I believe that I had in most instances, which is shitty enough without actual mind reading.

Yes, I've ruled out Google knowing my location, purchasing habits, etc. It's so fucking great that it knew I was looking up the phone number for someone my wife is interviewing with, with very few letters typed in. I've notice that kind of prescience around 5 times in the last couple of weeks.

I get constant reverse osmosis filter advertisements on Reddit.

The same happened to me. Except I was discussing arugula recipes with my ma. I certainly never searched for any, that's for damn sure. Open facebook, see an ad for, of all god damned things, cooking with arugula.

nice try metrodeal/jumpyard or whoever wants to see people type these unique strings

reddioot facebork twoot are supercomputers and corporations, who are not your friends and will set up shop in your arsehole if you are dumb enough to let them

odd thing is the more privacy you seek, the more curious they are about you

so lines have to be drawn, some day soon redoot may be too dangerous to go to

have you ever had police set up a scenario specifically for you based on a speculative reddoot posting you made? its happened to me, and i think that is a lot more freaky.

secret police with your entire internet history, or what they think is your internet history even if their shit is incompetent for whatever reason, is some real wild shit

this 23 year old first year fbi agent has read all your emails going back to 1998 and she's trying to push your buttons

land of the free, lol

The other day I was talking about improving my math skills and math app ads showed up five minutes later. Same thing happened with tires a while back. My dad says it's happened to him too.

Your friend searched jumpyard. Google/facebook have you linked as being connected to them. They want to show you the ad, because if they know you have friends doing an activity, you will be more likely to click the ad for the same activity.

This actually happens and you can recreate the effect just by testing the same scenario.

Myself and several friends have tested and confirmed this easily.

Sorry duder.

Just gotta be careful about what you've got running around you these days if you value your privacy.

It's all connected. Social media aren't just different platforms on the internet, they share your information routinely.

Not just stuff like cookies, but other data tracking associated with accounts. And they jumble it in embedded scripts in such a way that the sites aren't usable until you allow those to side-load into the page anyways. Not much in the way of mics and stuff like that needed, as similar happens when using Linux computers - and users have more control over that.

Only thing I'd wonder about listening in on stuff is the Comcast cable box. Wouldn't put that past them, since they have that voice lookup feature as it is anyways.

I have a kind of freaky Facebook story.

Years ago (before Facebook) I worked for company X. While there I built that company a website, contracting company Y. Within company Y was a coder from Nepal that I dealt with from my Australian office via Outlook email only. I never met the guy personally. I never phoned him. I don't know him. I don't know anyone who knows him. I certainly don't know anyone from Nepal.

Eventually I quit company X.

This year I returned to company X into my old position. The website I built years ago was still running but the contracted company Y had shut down. I still needed backend coding help though so I decided to email (Outlook) my old Nepalese contact to see if he could still help. He answered that email and we started corresponding again.

That same night Facebook "friend suggested" me that Nepalese guy.

Explain that.

Do you get work emails on your phone or have your work address book on your phone? I do and customers always pop up as Friend Suggestions because Facebook scans your address book.

So facebook knows your real name and your alias and is spying on you.

something very similar has happened to a friend of mine, he was talking to his parents on the phone and he mentions a tourist area where his parents could make a night stop. The next day he receives an email with different hotels from that location. really spooky

Google can listen to you if you don't disable that, and it's not only Google listening. I've spoken words or people's names that aren't all that commonly used, and then see those same names or words used as senders or subject in my junk email. I spend a lot of time viewing animal videos, blogs, etc., and especially those showing cats. Then at the store (CVS) I get coupons for cat treats. I haven't had a cat for a long time, but CVS targets me as a cat owner. They probably get that info with tracking cookies(?). Corporations are able and allowed to get into people's computers for profit and profiling.

Also your computer webcam is a spy-eye, and you can disable it in device manager and cover the lens with a piece of tape.

Step 1: Get off Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube.

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Profit!

This same thing has started happening to me as well. I don't search for something but I talk about it with my phone near me and I start seeing ads a day or 2 later.

The only way to avoid this is to live off the grid. Everything is connected now and they are listening. Might as well accept it.

facebook and google. I'd suggest having at the very least a separate google account used only for your phone.

I'm not sure about for things I've only spoken about but they absolutely show ads for other products I've looked at using Chrome or on different computers entirely while on the same network. I want to say I've also noticed things from my email coming up on ads such as emailed receipts leading to ads for the same product but I'm not positive. I've also had FB turn off-wifi data back on and turn auto-play back on, possibly as part of an update though.

They very much listen...i was discussing getting my album mastered, and now i see ads for mastering all over the place on FB and other sites. My mic is off by the way.

Happened to me too a few times! Last week I was talking about a restaurant with my friends and an hour later the add for the restaurant shows up on a news site I visited from my Mobile. I haven't searched for the restaurant and I haven't been there either. Never seen the ad before that day either. Creepy.

Have you talked about JumpYard with anyone on the facebook or messenger app? I'm pretty sure it's been confirmed that your messages are scanned for key words that can be used for ads. This happens to me almost on a weekly basis. For example, I was talking to my friend about a mutual friend who got engaged, and I had engagement rings ads on my facebook wall for days afterwards.

Ever see that viral pick of Mark Zuckerberg in his office beside his desktop with a taped up cam? This was maybe 2014. That was a big hint.

This happens to me often enough, it is fairly spooky I'll admit it. Get out of my life internet megacorps