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Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

bbc.com

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Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#121

Post by flashman »

rickhanlonii wrote: post #103

They're listening, but not to your voice or with a microphone. Facebook is listening to your data--to all of our data, all at once. They have locations, searches, clicks, messaging, photos, hashtags, and any other form of browsing patterns for everyone in your country, everyone in your neighboorhood, everyone in the same room as you. They have enough data with such advanced analysis that on occasion they can get real…

> Turing test

Sorry to 'actually' you but that's phrased like Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#122

Post by keketi »

madeofpalk wrote: post #95
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…

How could they respond to remove all doubt they're listening? Edit: https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11854860/facebook-smartpho... In a statement issued on June 2nd [2016], Facebook said it "does not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed." That's pretty fucking clear to me. Original comment: If they had said something like "We don't use microphones to gather data to drive p…

Modify their apps to not request microphone permission.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#123

Post by Spooky23 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #95
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…

How could they respond to remove all doubt they're listening? Edit: https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11854860/facebook-smartpho... In a statement issued on June 2nd [2016], Facebook said it "does not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed." That's pretty fucking clear to me. Original comment: If they had said something like "We don't use microphones to gather data to drive p…

“Facebook does not use microphone input for ads, user interest assessment or for any purpose other than facilitating a single user initiated transaction.”

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#124

Post by zionic »

trophycase wrote: post #114
glenstein wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ov…

"We don't serve you advertisements through your microphone."

My favorite is "WE" don't, but our partners do.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#125

Post by noonespecial »

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 just assume that they hire a 3rd party to do it and just incorporate the processed "external data source". Now they don't use the mic, just a text stream purchased from Acoustic Magic Analytics Inc.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#126

Post by madeofpalk »

austinhutch wrote: post #113

I was skeptical until I experienced an ad in my feed which in my estimation could only attribute to data captured by a conversation had hours earlier. Of course there is the possibility of coincidence but I find it hard to believe. I took advantage of the option to see why I was shown the ad, and was told demographic information, as well as a data partnership with DLX. I would like to know if others who see and ad th…

How many conversations have you had around your phone?

How many ads have you seen on FB that matched a conversation that happened earlier?

Isn't this the exact definition of confirmation bias?

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#127

Post by dsharlet »

cooper12 wrote: post #100
Overtonwindow wrote: post #76

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.

I doubt it will make a difference to most people. The staunch pro-privacy stance really only exists on tech-savvy forums like HN. Go on reddit sometimes and observe how people will say "so what if Google has all my info, it's useful and free". If Zuckerberg calling his users dumb fucks for trusting him didn't get them off the platform, a "small" privacy violation like this won't either.

This reddit post is the very top of /r/all right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user...

And the general sentiment appears to be very far from what you claim. I think it's possible that this issue is going to come to a head this time around. I don't know what the outcome will be. Just saying it's confirmation bias (the likely real explanation?) may not be enough to satisfy people.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#128

Post by crucifiction »

diego wrote: post #107
gt_ wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We don't gather data using microphones"

But they most likely do. Voice corpora are extremely useful to train voice recognition systems, for one.

Its only useful to train if they also have the transcript by a human. Eavesdropping conversations and having armies of people transcribing them seems like a very expensive and illegal way to get that data when there are probably millions of available samples, TV shows, etc that have both voice and transcription available already off the shelf.
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