Waterworld!
Delirium - Lauren Oliver
@CuddleHugs01234 - My guess is that the Facebook & Instagram apps are collecting and sharing your data which is resulting in the things you have been experiencing. Go into settings, the Privacy & Security, then look through all your resources (camera, microphone, contacts, calendar, location, etc.) one at a time and look at what apps have access to each resource. Turn off access to any app you don’t want to have access to each resource.
Companies like Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook) want access to EVERYTHING on your phone to learn as much about you as they can. This helps them identify your “digital twins”.
Big Tech companies have access to personal data from literally billions of people. They have algorithms to characterize everyone by determining their age, sex, marital status, number and age of children at home, hobbies, religious affiliation, employment status, approximate income (based on surveys users have taken and/or the average price of a home in the user’s neighborhood), online shopping habits, real world shopping habits (based on the GPS locations where the user’s phone goes on a regular basis), etc. etc.
A digital twin is someone who is very similar to you based on X number of the criteria above. If a 28 year old, divorced, Catholic woman with a 2 year old son and a 5 year old daughter in a middle class home is searching online for “XX”, then there is a good chance other women just like her would also be interested in “XX” and will start seeing ads for that product or service on their social media feeds.
It is not a perfect system but it can be scary accurate at times. The same system can also be used for manipulation. What type of news would such a person need to be exposed to in order to get them to message friends about some event or change their opinion on some political topic? The level of subtle manipulation on social media would shock most people.