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Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

bbc.com

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Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#71

Post by sp527 »

objclxt wrote: post #66
sp527 wrote: post #15

Once happened while remarking on the Fruit Loops shake at Burger King. Opened Facebook minutes later and got a Fruit Loops ad. I assure you I don’t message, post, or in any other way remotely suggest an affinity for Fruit Loops. Commenting on it at Burger King was the definition of a one-off incident. I guess another possible explanation is some very sophisticated combination of location tracking and Kellogg’s target…

> then listen in through ANY one of the apps you have installed If there was some third party ad library that was installed across multiple apps that streamed audio and/or performed local speech recognition on everything you said don't you think somebody would have a) noticed by now, b) a security researcher figured it out, or c) everyone's battery's would be running red hot all of the time. Teams at Apple and Google…

Presuming Facebook has some sort of totally encompassing omniscience is a little foolhardy in light of e.g. the Russia issues, isn’t it? I tacitly admitted they may at worst suspect but not know that third parties are targeting in this way.

I’m not sure I trust that security researchers can be relied upon to catch everything. There are so many flagrant abuses of user privacy that go unchecked or remarked upon and nevertheless ignored that such an avenue of prevention seems highly unreliable.

Also you’d be surprised at what people are willing to do when you define a certain culture and incentive structure. While you may dismiss it, I find it frankly astounding that the NSA program managed to metastasize into the behemoth it became before it was finally outed to the public. And even a cursory reading of behavioral psychology will help to explain how that can happen.

I also know that Facebook perversely prioritizes metrics above pretty much all else. And it means they’re perfectly willing to indulge in dark patterns if the numbers line up.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#73

Post by denzil_correa »

> "I run ads product at Facebook. We don't - and have never - used your microphone for ads. Just not true," Mr Goldman wrote.

Personally, I am so used to corp speak and word play by major companies that it is difficult to take anything at face value. Therefore, I think the nature of the question asked to Facebook should be different. It should be on what they do rather do they do X. So, here's my question - "What does Facebook use data gathered from user microphones across any devices for?"

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#74

Post by 5ilv3r »

They don't at all deny listening to conversations in this article. They only deny using that information for advertising.

Now about the confirmation bias thing, it seems more likely to me that your credit card history or the store member card purchase history is being mined.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#75

Post by tensor »

ceejayoz wrote: post #72

I'm inclined to dismiss it as confirmation bias, but I've had this experience personally - a conversation followed shortly by an extremely specific advertisement on FB shortly thereafter.

I wonder how likely it is that this sort of thing happens without a mic being involved. Consider that Facebook already mines all sorts of Facebook data, as well as data from websites you visit. They much have a pretty good profile of people's interests.

Given that, it's fairly probably that you will be shown ads about things that you are interested in, and it's fairly probably that you'll talk about these topics with friends. Given this and the number of people that use Facebook, it's probably not that unlikely that your experience happens simply by chance fairly frequently.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#76

Post by Overtonwindow »

I think the risk versus reward for Facebook and other companies is very high. All things being equal, I think it's more likely than not they will record things, will listen for words you say, and use that. The risk is enormous if it comes out with proof, but let's say they only listen a small percentage of the time, that kind of AI analysis is priceless.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#77

Post by glenstein »

denzil_correa wrote: post #73

> "I run ads product at Facebook. We don't - and have never - used your microphone for ads. Just not true," Mr Goldman wrote. Personally, I am so used to corp speak and word play by major companies that it is difficult to take anything at face value. Therefore, I think the nature of the question asked to Facebook should be different. It should be on what they do rather do they do X. So, here's my question - "What doe…

I was about to leave an extremely similar comment, but I was going to frame it in terms of the NSA "direct access" story. I got the impression from that story that immediate denials from tech companies, which seemed categorical, turned out to hinge on which magic words were used.

In this case, when I read a sentence like "We don't use your microphone for ads" I end up doing that game where you re-read the sentence over and over and emphasize a different word each time, trying to guess which one is the magic word.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#79

Post by teraflop »

ceejayoz wrote: post #72

I'm inclined to dismiss it as confirmation bias, but I've had this experience personally - a conversation followed shortly by an extremely specific advertisement on FB shortly thereafter.

As suggested in the comments on Reddit, there's another possible explanation for this -- someone else in the conversation does a search based on what you were talking about, clicks on a result that sends tracking data to Facebook, and then the ads are retargeted to you based on a shared public IP address.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#80

Post by noobermin »

ceejayoz wrote: post #72

I'm inclined to dismiss it as confirmation bias, but I've had this experience personally - a conversation followed shortly by an extremely specific advertisement on FB shortly thereafter.

I worry about facebook and all that and the state of privacy in the modern world, but a lot of these stories sound a lot like confirmation bias to be honest.
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