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Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

bbc.com

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Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#281

Post by slashcom »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #250
madeofpalk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. Said nobody who understands law, language, or politics. It's absolutely fucking clear to everyone who reads with discrimination what this means. It means they are using your microphone to vacuum up your information. That they added…

They can’t say that though, because recording a video involves accessing the microphone. Otherwise Facebook Live and Stories couldn’t exist.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#282

Post by agildehaus »

Cacti wrote: post #229
photonios wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. People underestimate the amount of data Facebook (and companies alike) can and do scoop up. I’ve seen countless stories supposedly proofing that they’re listening through the microphone. However, most of them can easily be explained away if you consider the vasts amount of data they collect.

The idea that they're listening to your mic is rather ridiculous. I mean, we'd find out eventually, and the consequences of widespread illegal wiretapping would be severe for Facebook, they would really cease to exist. However, as you said, they don't need to. Localization and usage metrics alone can tell you an incredible amount of extremely detailed information.

Just looking at the Facebook iOS app, they don't declare the "audio" background mode in their Info.plist. So instantly we know that they're not recording anything in the background.

For foreground, I suppose it'd be fairly trivial to tell if the app was making calls to AVAudioRecorder.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#283

Post by Cacti »

jeffdavis wrote: post #254
Cacti wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say people will take a stand, but the vast and overwhelming number of us wont, we will just continue to help build the greatest surveillance system in history. And then tell each other how we’re unicorns that are saving the world, that we cherish freedom and liberty and the hacker ethis, when really we just want to get paid.

Nobody knows what stand to take. We stood and fought for open source everywhere, thinking that would be our salvation. But apperently there is more to it than that, and we aren't exactly sure what.

Sure we are sure, we just don't like it. RMS gets a lot of flack, but he's mostly right---this is not a technical problem with a technical solution, it's a political problem with a necessarily political solution. Most of us live in democracies, so if you want to fix the problem, it's actually quite straight-forward, it's just that people don't want to give up their nice job and nice hobbies.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#284

Post by Cacti »

maxscam wrote: post #279
Cacti wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say people will take a stand, but the vast and overwhelming number of us wont, we will just continue to help build the greatest surveillance system in history. And then tell each other how we’re unicorns that are saving the world, that we cherish freedom and liberty and the hacker ethis, when really we just want to get paid.

Oh my god stop being so dramatic, both of you. The vast majority of people are not actively contritubing to the sorry state of data privacy nor are they heroically working to fix it. Put the blame where its due.

Are you kidding me? HN is _built_ on startups that specialize in selling ads.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#285

Post by bonestamp2 »

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…

> and any other form of browsing patterns for everyone in your country

Definitely. Basically every major website has facebook code on it for social sharing and for "analytics". Facebook surely uses this analytics data to track you from site to site and know exactly what you're looking at. If your browser is signed into facebook, they know exactly who you are too.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#286

Post by vita17 »

According to this post on Reddit, Apple gave Uber access to a private API. He's speculating that Facebook might have access to a private API and is using it to spy on its users. Does anybody have more information about this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user...

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#287

Post by kevinmchugh »

oh-kumudo wrote: post #115

From a technical perspective, it is not very likely that they will listen to people's voice to push advertisements. They needs to listen to you ALL the time, collecting your voice from all kinds of noisy environment, uploading to their server for further analysis. And in order for this service to be profitable, they need to train model to extract the part of your conversation that hints a shopping intention. This req…

My expectation is that they could sell advertisers activation sounds on TV ads. The Facebook app would be programmed to listen for a small handful of sounds (like "hey sir"), but which correspond with eg a car ad. Then the advertisers can track consumer reach throughout the process. No speech recognition necessary, it's just another row in a database, recording an ad display.

No evidence that this is what they're doing, though.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#288

Post by UncleMeat »

vita17 wrote: post #286

According to this post on Reddit, Apple gave Uber access to a private API. He's speculating that Facebook might have access to a private API and is using it to spy on its users. Does anybody have more information about this? https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user...

It would be trivial to decompile the app and see if they were using some hidden or undocumented API.

Why has nobody ever been able to find actual evidence in the code?

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#289

Post by ravenstine »

imron wrote: post #268
null0pointer wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar anecdote. Girlfriend was having some symptoms, we briefly talked about it then walked to the pharmacy and bought a pregnancy test. Maybe 30 minutes after purchasing the test we watched a youtube video on her phone. The ad on the video was for the exact test we bought. I figured that youtube got the credit card info from the purchase but I was shocked at how quickly that translated into something show…

Advertisers are suckers. Facebook and YouTube are selling ads to people who have already bought their product.

In a sense, they are suckers. Plus, as another story on HN suggested, their abandonment of advertising you things you don't need right now(but you may find you want later in life) proves counterproductive. A heck of a lot of things advertised to me on Facebook are things I already searched for and either purchased or already decided wasn't worth buying. I don't believe that modern internet ads are as valuable as the industry seems to think, which may be a sign of an impending bubble burst.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#290

Post by emodendroket »

brad0 wrote: post #97

> "At work, happened to me though earlier this year. Working as a barista, got a burn, talked to my partner in person about it, went to Target, bought the burn cream, and saw an ad on FB for the exact product I purchased. Never searched for product either," wrote Brigitte Bonasoro. Facebook has data sharing agreements with many, many companies. It's most likely that the cream was bought with a card then linked togeth…

I'll sometimes see ads for products I bought at Costco, so that makes sense. But then again I get a lot of ads I don't understand -- Facebook has me pegged for a drug addict considering divorce who loves Urdu-language television, but where it came up with those ideas I don't know.
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