Why ban them? Just tax them as luxury items like what Singapore does and slap tolls on all roads like what Japan does. Tokyo has wonderful roads and very little traffic for such a large city.

You sure about that? because if it’s Google, that particular method of doing this would be easily discovered.

Also, the scary part isn’t that they could do this by listening to your phone, the scary part is that they DON’T need to listen to your phone to do exactly that. Much easier to identify multiple devices coming from the same network (both physical and social), and then figuring out query interests, and then send ads down the same pipelines.

Wait til we get gen AI-based reviews. It will literally become indistinguishable unless there is some sort of purchase verification, and even then, what’s to stop sellers from using services to spoof reviews by purchasing their products?