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Zuckerberg: Facebook Doesn't Use Your Mic For Ad Targeting (engadget.com)
During today's joint hearing before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees, CEO Mark Zuckerberg fully denied the idea that Facebook listens in on your conversations via microphones to display relevant ads. Engadget reports: Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) asked him to answer "yes or no" whether Facebook used audio from personal devices to fill out its ad data, and Zuckerberg said no. The CEO explained that users can upload videos with audio in them, but not the kind of background spying that you've probably heard people talk about. Peters: "I have heard constituents say Facebook is mining audio from their mobile devices for the purpose of ad targeting. This speaks to the lack of trust we are seeing. I understand there are technical and logistical issues for that to happen. For the record, I hear it all the time, does Facebook use audio obtained from mobile devices to enrich personal information about its users?"
Zuckerberg: "We do not. Senator, Let me be clear on this. You are talking about the conspiracy theory passed around that we listen to what is going on on your microphone and use that. We do not do that. We do allow people to take videos on their device and share those. Videos also have audio. We do, while you are taking a video, record that and use that to make the service better by making sure that you have audio. That is pretty clear."
Zuckerberg: "We do not. Senator, Let me be clear on this. You are talking about the conspiracy theory passed around that we listen to what is going on on your microphone and use that. We do not do that. We do allow people to take videos on their device and share those. Videos also have audio. We do, while you are taking a video, record that and use that to make the service better by making sure that you have audio. That is pretty clear."
They use it for other undisclosed purposes.
Zuck totally owned most of the Senators. Was not expecting that.
Number of lazy, repeat and "I'm a total dumb fuck" questions by people who could not be bothered to research issues in advance dominated the hearing.
Most amazing question was from Ted Cruz about the Palmer Lucky firing. It made the whole thing worth listening to. Had to rewind and play it back I was laughing so hard.
With runners up incompetently hitting on the cross site tracking dimensions and lost opportunities to expose Zucks phony ignorance on the subject. Someone I don't remember who did kind of get him to admit it but in an overly generous way.
On Microphone targeting the obvious follow up questions about data provided by third parties were never broached.
It never occurred to anyone to ask about end users ability to control and view data obtained by Facebook from third parties that work quite a bit differently from Zucks claims about "their data".
Zero questions on shadow profiles and tracking of people who don't even use the service.
No pushback on magical "AI" claims vs. thinking human adversaries. Apparently Zuck thinks AGI is 5 years out or he's full of shit. Either way he's full of shit.
Surprisingly there were people concerned with censorship aspects of the "hate speech" banning and calling out of cowards who think the first amendment is dangerous.
Was also impressed with TIA mention (How Zuck could never have heard of TIA strains any and all credibility) This business of government asking for social media handles for Visa applications and government asking for data was nice to get on record. However the obvious "third party doctrine" related issues were predictable never followed up on.
In all the Senate gets a D+ for dressing themselves and showing up.