Why You Sometimes See Ads for Something You've Recently Discussed First of all, Mosseri also wanted to emphasize the fact that if they spied on their users, "it would be a serious violation of privacy; it would drain your phone's battery, and you'd realize it. In fact, you'd see a small light at the top of the screen alerting you that the microphone was on." However, the Instagram CEO is fully aware that these explanations aren't enough to refute the theory that large technology companies like Meta or Google access people's devices to obtain information without their knowledge. Therefore, he listed a series of cases that justify the fact that you may have seen ads for a product you had just discussed with someone. These are: 1. You could have searched for or clicked on that product on a website before the conversation. It's very likely that you've previously searched for the product you're talking about and don't remember. The advertisers Meta works with share information about which users have been on their websites to try to target ads to those people on Meta's platforms. 2. Meta shows you ads based on your interests... so it can accurately match your conversation topics. Instagram is based on your interests, the interests of your friends, and the interests of users with similar profiles to yours. Therefore, "it could be that you were talking to someone about a product and that person had already searched for it before, or that, in general, people with similar interests were doing exactly the same thing." 3. You may have seen that ad more than once, but not realize it until you talk about the product. Social media dumps buckets of stimuli, information, and content on us, which can mean that at the end of the day we don't remember everything we viewed. However, this doesn't mean that our subconscious hasn't internalized some of this information and brought it up at any time in the future. Well, this is what Mosseri explained: "You may have actually seen that ad before having the conversation and not realized it. We browse quickly, we quickly flip through ads, and sometimes you internalize something from that, and that really influences what you talk about later." And these are the explanations Mosseri gave to try to put this issue to rest once and for all. Although, as he himself acknowledged: "I know some of you just won't believe me, no matter how hard I try to explain it." What do you think about it?