Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 87 posts

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

#51

Post by paulcole »

logicallee wrote: post #43
paulcole wrote: post #10

The people who believe it’s listening would never accept even the most ironclad “proof” that it’s not. This is a hallmark of conspiracy theorists. So why bother?

I believe it's listening based on an overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence reported all over the Internet. (Where there's smoke, there's fire.) Including by intelligent, scientifically-minded people. At the same time, it wouldn't take much at all for me to believe otherwise: a simple blinded test where some people leave their phones in a room, researchers come and talk about some subject (absent the owners), then…

>an overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence reported all over the Internet

This is exactly why I believe pizzagate, am a 9/11 truther, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

#52

Post by superbrama »

ricardobeat wrote: post #26

The lack of actual responses to your question here is a bit entertaining. "Of course they are not", "it's not possible", "iOS/Android is safe" etc. Almost like it is offensive to ask. I can't help but remember my incredulous reaction to ECHELON in the 90s and how it turned out to be not just true, but much worse than the original "conspiracy theory". A very relevant example: https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handl…

That’s not what’s happening. There’s no hard evidence and it’s not really a fair comparison between detecting government snooping on networks out of your control, versus a spyware mechanism hidden in plain sight, entirely in your pocket.

Nobody seems to be doubting the feasibility of building such spyware but rather are asking where’s the hard evidence and how could they get away with it (not legally necessarily but in terms of detection)?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

#53

Post by cryoshon »

burningion wrote: post #49

I think this is really something even more nefarious than background listening. Facebook and Google are using machine learning and massive data sets about the mental worlds we inhabit when we think nobody is looking. And these algorithms are optimizing for clicks in so many vectors of psychological need and vulnerability that it’s already become incomprehensible for how they can know the things we haven’t yet underst…

for those of us who are digital natives, even if we spend great effort in covering our tracks, they likely know more about us than we know about ourselves.

they use this information to employ a system of psychological levers which results in us willingly handing their proxies our money.

is it a good business practice. certainly. is it simple theft? my instinct is to say no, and instead ask:

is this new mastery of knowledge about peoples behaviors and the ability to affect other behaviors on a mass scale the most terrifying form of feudalism that mankind has known?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

#54

Post by pbhjpbhj »

notatoad wrote: post #33
joshfraser wrote: post #22

I was at lunch with a couple friends and they were making fun of Juicero. I hadn't heard of it at this point. I didn't look it up on my phone, but at least one of my friends did. That afternoon I started seeing Juicero ads non-stop on Facebook. Was Facebook listening or did they connect the dots that my phone was in the same restaurant as friends who were Googling Juicero and figured we had been talking about it? Ano…

>Guess what pops up on Facebook moments later? An ad for Wendys! Were they listening? If you saw an ad for Wendy's in any other context, would you have been surprised? I saw an ad for Wendy's shortly before coming to comment on this post. Are HN's advertising algorithms predicting the future, or is it just a coincidence due to the overwhelming volume of fast food advertising?

"Feynman's Grandmother"!

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

#55

Post by cryoshon »

chmike wrote: post #38

Facebook may only need to recognize a few keywords. The one that companies had payed for. It wouldn't be that many. An approximate recognition is good enough. So processing and data transmission could be small. As long as there is no uncontestable proof, the doubt must benefit Facebook. The testimonies are not uncontestbale proofs. Considering the million people uisng the facebook app, there will always be a small se…

>As long as there is no uncontestable proof, the doubt must benefit Facebook.

they have a history of privacy violations

they have an incentive to snoop further

i see no reason to offer the benefit of the doubt to either hypothesis, as anecdotes do not constitute data

but for what it's worth, my hunch is that there's some extra snooping going on that has yet to be unearthed. might not be audio, necessarily.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

#56

Post by superbrama »

notatoad wrote: post #2

Install the facebook app on lineageOS, open up privacy guardian, and see for yourself exactly how often it uses your microphone. It's definitely not listening to everything you say.

Just pointing out that this is far from a conclusive invalidation technique. Too many ways such spyware could still exist or operate.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

#57

Post by momeunier »

readhn wrote: post #27
Techonomicon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably wouldn't do that sort of processing constantly on device. Battery intensive

is it possible that there are tools available that do the job with minimum energy consumption but they are not out in the open yet? i wonder what tech military has that we dont know is even possible today?

What do you do about multiple languages? Hiding a speech-2-text dataset in English in the app is one thing, hiding several in multiple languages would make the app bloat.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

#58

Post by phpnode »

maxfurman wrote: post #32

Every one of my friends, including me, has a story about how they used a phrase in conversation that they don't typically say ("Renaissance Faire" in my case, which I have never attended and generally have no interest in), and then seeing an ad for it on either Facebook or Instagram right afterwards. This is purely anecdotal, of course, but it is creepy anyway. The only way to stop this "myth", if it is one, is for F…

Is this repeatable though? It seems like this could be explained by a combination of the Frequency Illusion / Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon[0] and the Birthday Problem[1].

That is - it is possible that the reason you were discussing the topic is the same reason that advertisers were targeting that particular phrase at that time. The Frequency Illusion could explain why you noticed that particular ad and why you were surprised. Also you presumably discuss topics all the time that you don't see ads for, but the probability of seeing an ad for any of those topics is quite high (the birthday problem).

[0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/153166/what-is-t...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

#59

Post by cJ0th »

enraged_camel wrote: post #9

I personally find the alternative far creepier: that Facebook can figure you out and predict your behaviors even if it doesn’t actively listen.

There certainly is a double standard. I.e.: it is creepy when FB listens to you conversations. But if they use AI to derive their knowledge about you that somehow makes it alright.

For me personally, the fact that they can learn so much about me is what's creepy and reason enough to not use their services. The how is merely an interesting bit of trivia.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

#60

Post by joshfraser »

notatoad wrote: post #33
joshfraser wrote: post #22

I was at lunch with a couple friends and they were making fun of Juicero. I hadn't heard of it at this point. I didn't look it up on my phone, but at least one of my friends did. That afternoon I started seeing Juicero ads non-stop on Facebook. Was Facebook listening or did they connect the dots that my phone was in the same restaurant as friends who were Googling Juicero and figured we had been talking about it? Ano…

>Guess what pops up on Facebook moments later? An ad for Wendys! Were they listening? If you saw an ad for Wendy's in any other context, would you have been surprised? I saw an ad for Wendy's shortly before coming to comment on this post. Are HN's advertising algorithms predicting the future, or is it just a coincidence due to the overwhelming volume of fast food advertising?

I can't remember seeing one before & haven't seen one since.
Post reply on HN