There's a new bout of "Facebook are listening to you through your microphone to serve targeted ads, no really we have proof now!" discourse, and I'm revisiting my long-term hobby of trying (and failing) to convince people that this isn't happening
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There's a new bout of "Facebook are listening to you through your microphone to serve targeted ads, no really we have proof now!" discourse, and I'm revisiting my long-term hobby of trying (and failing) to convince people that this isn't happening
It's fascinating to me how hard it is to talk people out of believing this one - there was a podcast episode about exactly this challenge back in 2017 and it's still true today https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hlwr
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Simon Willisonreplied to Simon Willison last edited by
Here's one thread on Lobste.rs - triggered by a new story about that thing from December last year where an ad sales team at Cox Media Group were caught lying to their customers about having "active listening" technology that targeted ads based on recorded audio: https://lobste.rs/s/mf7guc/leak_facebook_partner_brags_about
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Simon Willisonreplied to Simon Willison last edited by
Here's the ad sales pitch deck in question - my "this is a total scam" antenna were vibrating like crazy when I read it https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25051283-cmg-pitch-deck-on-voice-data-advertising-active-listening
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@simon please recognize that both things can be true.
Facebook may not be listening... someone may at some point. Maybe a police state.
Their ad models are so accurate that they're creepy as hell, even without audio. This is a privacy invasion either way.
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@mterhar on an iPhone there's an orange indicator that shows up any time an application is using the microphone. Understanding that fact is what prevents regular users from being spied on by a police state!
This is why I care so much: for people to truly stay safe they need a fighting chance at understanding what's actually happening and what isn't
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@simon I think people just can't fathom how much data Meta have amassed, and how the ads could possibly be so targeted.
From what I've heard, they do have some super spooky abilities, like take any device MAC address (e.g. from shopping mall Wi-Fi) and be able to both identify the owner as well as their interest cohort
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@benschwarz right - people would be shocked at the amount of information that genuinely gets aggregated about them, so it’s not surprising that they believe the bits that aren’t true considering how much more complex (and opaque) the stuff that’s true is