The same YouTuber dove into the persistent myth that our phones are listening to us.

The conspiracy theory is persistent because the true answer is worse than most people would guess.

Your data is being broadcast to thousands of companies constantly in real-time bidding auctions.

It's an emergent, omnipresent surveillance machine that can be co-opted by any entity willing to bid for ads.

People in the tech industry often chuckle to themselves about how misguided those non-tech-literate users are… but they miss the disturbing emergent machine they're a part of.