Yesterday was election day for Brazil and I decided to do a little experiment.<p>I asked someone to purchase 2 different types of food at the supermarket, bag them so I could not distinguish what they were and put each in one of my pocket, separately.<p>I went to vote as normal, without smart devices on me, as the law prohibits bringing them to the ballot box.<p>I then picket one pocket at random, draw the content and proceeded to eat it while casting my vote.<p>After exiting, I got rid of the content on the other pocket without looking at it.<p>Back at home using my phone (which I didn't take with me), didn't take long for LinkedIn to start showing me related content: as what I ate was a cookie, LinkedIn suggested content about "browser cookies" with a big splash image of a cookie. The irony being that it was an article about privacy.<p>Twitter showed me ads for a drink brand with cookies on the background.<p>On news websites, while checking election results, I got ads for competing brands of cookies.<p>I am tempted to conclude that Big Tech's spying likely lets them know on who I voted and the only reason it isn't explicit that they do is because all political ads are prohibited on the day of the election, otherwise I would have seen ads for the candidate I choose.
Will your "Institute Legal Voting" organization[0] be publishing any data on this experiment? Do you intend to draft a research paper with your findings, or have any documented proof of this happening?<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32096234" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32096234</a>
Single data point with a spotty read of the outcome should not be enough to put any weight behind a theory.<p>Chances are "big tech" advertises popular brands, both items in your pocket are likely to have fit into that category.