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."

Comments

"We do, while you are taking a video"

[hcs_$reboot]

"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"

Not clear at all.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[Anonymous Coward]

He's just saying they also record audio while you're recording video, because most people expect audio with their video. And by taking audio with your video, they're making the service better because a service that did not record audio with its video would be a lesser service compared to the Facebook service which does record audio with their video. That is pretty clear.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very clear. They record your audio. He just says they don't do it for ad targeting. Anybody who believes his denials is a damn fool.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[Opportunist]

Are you sure?

Zuck is beyond getting the benefit of doubt. If it looks like he's weaseling out of a question, he's weaseling out of a question.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[Restil]

Sounds like he's making the point that when the user records a video, audio is likely included with the video, the audio is in fact recorded in that situation and submitted to facebook, and facebook might use the audio from that user submitted recording for quality control purposes. Quality control purposes may or may not include targeting more reasonable advertising.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[Pitt64]

trumptard: seems fair

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[Pitt64]

SuperKendall: seems fair

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[gweihir]

Why are "they" recording audio when "you" record video? Something is not right here....

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[tinkerton]

As soon as lawyers are involved it becomes hard to avoid weaseling. I see two places. I understand his statement as "we won't record behind your back but as soon as you record anything or share it, it's ours to scavenge." This may already lead to surprising end user scenarios. The other weaseling is in 'better service'.
I imagine that at some level of implementation they do voice to text conversion and feed that in to the text processing algorithms. The voice to text doesn't have to be perfect for that and it's a standard feature in youtube by now . More data could be mined if they see potential use for it, even if this potential use comes in the form of 'there are always idiots who think more data means more value'. The NSA has for a very long time logged voice patterns which they can match fairly well with recordings to identify people automatically. To use a simple example, any recording of Bin Laden would have said anywhere would have been detected automatically. I assume it exists at least in an experimental stage on the market as well.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[jellomizer]

I guess after every few seconds of taking a video we want to switch to a wall of text.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[umafuckit]

Are you sure?

Zuck is beyond getting the benefit of doubt. If it looks like he's weaseling out of a question, he's weaseling out of a question.

Not really. There was nothing stopping the obvious follow-up question: "Do you mine data from recorded audio uploaded to Facebook". That question was not asked.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[gnasher719]

Why are "they" recording audio when "you" record video? Something is not right here....

That's pretty idiotic. The age of silent movies has been over for more than 90 years. Any application recording video will also record audio. That's what anybody without a persecution complex would expect.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[rtb61]

Facebook absolutely do not listen in via the microphone, they contract that out and then feed in the meta data ;D.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[stealth_finger]

The video is better by having audio with it.

Re: "We do, while you are taking a video"

[Anonymous Coward]

He was not under oath. He is lying to you.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[omnichad]

Mojo Jojo, is that you?

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[Stan92057]

Think about it, why would FB need to record AUDIO when its your DEVICE that's doing the recording Video/Audio? . YOU upload the video with the audio recorded by the device..so why should FB record audio when its already being done by the device? Trust baby, easy to loose very hard to gain back slight wordplay by a proven lair..By his own words again he is mining audio. what i didn't get to see is he still data mining people after they have signed off.

Re: "We do, while you are taking a video"

[gnick]

You can go to jail for lying to Congress even if you're not under oath. I completely believe that Facebook is scraping audio from recording for advertising, but not eavesdropping on us otherwise.

Re: "We do, while you are taking a video"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't notice it, then again I never bothered using the app or most of Facebook's "features"

I don't understand the outrage, I thought everyone knew everything they did on facebook was mined and didn't care. Now, there's this swarm of sudden outrage because, surprise, their information was used in a way they didn't like.

We're not at a situation in society where Facebook is a necessity. Internet arguably is, so complaining about ISP terms/abuses is quite valid, but complaining about some silly service that isn't adding much, if any value, is mass stupidity. Stop using the service, it's that simple.

The issue is an inactive locked phone in the room where the discussion happens about a topic, will cause Facebook to show ads on that topic a few minutes later.

I have only seen it happen with an Android phone, however the phone (not mine) was sitting on the couch when the conversation happened, and a few minutes later on a desktop computer (with a different Facebook account) got the ads. On the same wi-fi connection.

The phone was not "recording for facebook" at the time, but the FB app may have been open. It did have the "OK Google" voice activated stuff, but again it was locked, and not being addressed at the time.

The fact that _someone_ is doing _something_ like that is not up for dispute, I have seen it happen several times just like what thousands of other people have reported.

Simply "using facebook" or "audio in video" is not what is happening so you are misunderstanding what people are saying is happening... or you are whitewashing it.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[Killall -9 Bash]

What he's saying is: Are you using "FACEBOOK" to record video on your phone, or the built-in app? How or why is facebook gathering data from this app? Why does it say it is recording audio to make sure you have audio? I don't even know where the mute audio button in on my Androids video recording app.... does it even have one?

Re: "We do, while you are taking a video"

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol.

It doesn't get harder to weasel your way out once lawyers are involved. It gets EASIER. Because they constantly look for excuses for everything and roundabout ways to accomplish their tasks.

At that point you literally don't hold back. You just start using every trick in the book and invent new ones if needed.

The only thing that makes it complicated at all, is that you can expect the other side to be doing more or less the same. And that they'll be trying to figure out ways around or through your games.

Otherwise, it's more or less even more of a farce than it was before.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[Anonymous Coward]

google did/does something like this. When you say "Okay Google" it records, analyzes, and tries to match. When it gets stumped or isn't sure, that request is saved and handled by "Real Humans" who listen and try to piece together what was said to help with future requests.

Source: My GF was one of the "Real Humans" doing that for awhile. Work from home. Pay was meh, but if you have a few hours a week to kill on something like this, it beats doing nothing.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[jriding]

Actually he only said they don't scrape audio from your mic to sell adds.
He NEVER said they don't scrape audio from your mic either during idle time or during phone calls.
He just said that he "currently" does not sell that for add purposes. He may sell that for customer awareness or psychology profiles, just not adds.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[gweihir]

Ah, that makes sense. As I neither have an account with them, nor normally record video, I had no idea that they offer video recording from within their app.

Re: "We do, while you are taking a video"

[torkus]

Normally i don't subscribe to this kind of conspiracy thing, but i've recently had a very clear example of it.

Discussing a type of product X with someone. Not something typical for me in any way to buy, use or be around. No way in a million years would they target me for X advertising. But...it came up in conversation through unlikely circumstances. In-person audible conversation.

about two days later, what pops up in my feed? yep, ads for X. It was strange enough (targeted advertising usually works well) that it stood out and i remebered the conv. no way they could have known if they weren't listening in as i never posted, txted, whatsapped, googled, or DM'd about it.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[MichaelSmith]

and use that to make the service better

Literally anything Zuckerberg wants it to mean.

Re:"We do, while you are taking a video"

[MichaelSmith]

Okay but does facebook use google to select their advertisments? These are FB ads we are talking about.

Re: "We do, while you are taking a video"

[ayesnymous]

"I completely believe that Facebook is scraping audio from recording for advertising, but not eavesdropping on us otherwise."

There is an otherwise?

Except they do

[Anonymous Coward]

They really do, at least on Android devices. Everybody can test that at home.
Install facebook messenger and the facebook app on your phone. Talk about a brand that you otherwise don't talk about.
You WILL have ads for that the next day you open up a webpage.

Re:Except they do

[Pitt64]

no tanks: thanks for playing

Re:Except they do

[TheRaven64]

New Statesman did that and wasn't able to show any change in advertising as a result of talking near the phone. That said, this doesn't mean that they won't use recorded audio in the future and it doesn't mean that they didn't temporarily disable this feature when it started to get a lot of press.

Re:Except they do

[Anonymous Coward]

They really do, at least on Android devices. Everybody can test that at home. Install facebook messenger and the facebook app on your phone. Talk about a brand that you otherwise don't talk about. You WILL have ads for that the next day you open up a webpage.

Interesting, I'm pretty sure that it was my atheistic rants that caused me to haunted on YouTube by an end-of-days preacher talking about the anti-Christ but I shudder to think what it was that I said to trigger the Japanese cartoon barbie commercials or the voice that informs me in a thick american accent at regular intervals that I need to buy an 'IllumiBowl Toilet Light (As Seen on Shark Tank)'.

Re:Except they do

[asylumx]

I tried it. It didn't work. Myth debunked?

Re:Except they do

[kaitsu]

There is no way Facebook listens users. There are hundreds or thousands security researchers and hackers constantly monitoring what the app does and no one has found any evidence. It would be a PR disaster for Facebook to get caught on listening users, so they can't risk it. And they don't need to, they get all the information they need from our clicks and likes.

Re:Except they do

[Zocalo]

That gaming of the system does seem to work on Android at least some of the time (it's definitely not guaranteed that it will - I'd guess my success rate is 50:50), but there are a lot of variables so the testing methodology would need to be pretty good to pin down exactly who is going what. Google is almost certainly listening as well - even if only for the "OK Google" keyphrase - so you'd need to do a series of tests with various permutations of apps and services with microphone access enabled/disabled, then monitor which ad networks and data brokers are actually serving the ads related to whatever you talked about to try and game the system. Don't forget that there is a massive web of resellers at work here too, so it might not be at all obvious that a given ad served from a third-party server was targetted based on Google's data, Facebook's data, or some other source entirely.

Re:Except they do

[jellomizer]

Hmm a brand I don’t normally talk about... let me google some of these. There we go. Now I will speak the words of the brand.... oh I am now getting adds. Facebook!!!

Re:Except they do

[rmdingler]

New Statesman did that and wasn't able to show any change in advertising as a result of talking near the phone. That said, this doesn't mean that they won't use recorded audio in the future and it doesn't mean that they didn't temporarily disable this feature when it started to get a lot of press.

Zuck's outfit is certainly not alone in this, but the fact The Facebook has the ability to listen when they deem it appropriate is troublesome enough. At this point, we basically have to trust an information-gathering juggernaut not to use this ability to ever gather information about us.

As others have wisely pointed out, listening all the time to everyone is not technologically feasible, yet the threat of a targeted listening campaign looms very possible and extremely likely to occur.

Re:Except they do

[AmiMoJo]

The "OK google" and similar trigger phrases are processed by a special low power DSP. The main phone OS does not constantly listen, only the DSP does and the DSP does not contain any recording capability. It's designed for low power, always on operation.

To record constantly would consume too much power, and would also need to either transmit a lot of data or do power-hungry processing. Voice assistants don't do speech recognition on the device, they use a cloud service because it is more accurate and can bring more processing power to the task.

In any case, there is no need to speculate. Simple traffic analysis will tell you if recordings are being transmitted. Simple power analysis (power spike when talking to decode the speech) will tell you if the phone is transcribing your words.

Also, it's quite hard to hide anything in an Android ROM. If there was any audio collection mechanism it would surely be discovered, just like Apple's "accidental" recording of location data was, just like HTC's plain-text fingerprint storage was.

It's just too implausible.

Re:Except they do

[omnichad]

If you click the brand web site, you might hit that site's own tracking and remarketing system. And if that brand site has a Facebook like button or pixel, then you're easy to tie together.

Re:Except they do

[cyberchondriac]

Not to mention Zuckerberg was not under oath at that hearing. If he lied, the legal ramifications will have been neutered.

Re:Except they do

[jae471]

Was your wife facebook friends with any of those coworkers? A possible non-recording explanation is that one of those coworkers looked up the restaurant (either during or after the meal), and then FB pushed the ad to said coworker's friends (or maybe just those who it knew had been in close proximity over the last couple of days).

Re:Except they do

[kriston]

Absolutely false.

Try using the scientific method next time.

Re:Except they do

[jittles]

it doesn't mean that they didn't temporarily disable this feature when it started to get a lot of press.

Probably this exactly. Facebook got some press for using the speaker in your phone and mic in other devices to send out inaudible tones used for ad tracking purposes. Facebook says they’ve stopped allowing this and, true to their word, it stopped happening for about a year or so. Now? I can be listening to something on my phone, open up facebook and scroll for a bit and then all the sudden my audio stops playing. When I pull up the hidden toggle to see audio status it is playing an inaudbile track from facebook. That started happening sometime in the last few weeks and does not happen every time I use facebook.

Re:Except they do

[ctilsie242]

Because what he does impacts the US economy so greatly, he basically is given the same treatment as a head of state. He was never put under oath, so he is free to say anything he wants.

Re:Except they do

[MichaelSmith]

Android needs a permission called record audio under the control of an app or something similar. Maybe a permission prompt for recording audio at all which expires quickly.

Re:Except they do

[EETech1]

This just happened to me two days ago, one of my friends was over, and she was on Facebook while I was finishing up work.

I'm not on Facebook, and she was not on my WiFi.

I was talking about work, and mentioned the raspberry pi. She had never seen nor heard about a raspberry pi, so I went and got one of mine, and was talking about it for about 2 minutes (foreplay lol) and our conversion ended when she got an ad for raspberry pi starter kits!

A couple hours later, we were talking about birth control, and I brought up a condom that broke years ago.

The next morning (yesterday) she was getting ads for Plan B.

She finally realized it was time to delete her Facebook profile.

Re:Except they do

[bingoUV]

It is implausible, but not for all the reasons you state. Hence constant vigilance is required more than you make it appear.

To record constantly would consume too much power

The GP didn't say "constantly", nor "always". User trust is broken even if it record once without permission. It could record opportunistically when there already a power usage spike.

and would also need to either transmit a lot of data or do power-hungry processing

Not immediately transmit. Steganographically transmit when it is transferring something else with user permission. Local processing is unlikely - but again, their decision. If they do decide to do local processing, they could hide it opportunistically when there is some other processing power spike.

Simple traffic analysis will tell you if recordings are being transmitted

Steganography renders it less simple.

Simple power analysis (power spike when talking to decode the speech) will tell you if the phone is transcribing your words.

Opportunism renders it less simple.

Also, it's quite hard to hide anything in an Android ROM. If there was any audio collection mechanism it would surely be discovered, just like Apple's "accidental" recording of location data was, just like HTC's plain-text fingerprint storage was.

Yes, that is correct. It gets easier to hide things the less open the architecture gets, but currently it is hard to hide things. But only from smart investigators. Who investigate only because they don't believe your other untrue arguments for implausibility.

If they only do it once in every 100 OS / phone / app builds, they could sow a lot of disagreements in casual testers. If this keeps changing in a downloaded app, all the better. Any whistle blower discredited is a win for Zuckerberg.

Also, do you have any evidence that "listening" more than they are allowed by the user will harm their bottomline in any significant way ? Any significant case history where privacy violation led to losses for big companies or jails for rich individuals ? By the laws we are making and upholding, are we even telling them to stop violating privacy , except in empty words and rhetoric ?

Re:Except they do

[AmiMoJo]

It could record opportunistically when there already a power usage spike.

That is the most likely mode of operation. Record when the Facebook app is open.

Also, do you have any evidence that "listening" more than they are allowed by the user will harm their bottomline in any significant way ?

Well, senior staff going to jail might negatively affect their stock price. Any brands caught up in it might not look too good either, and would likely pull their advertising.

Re:Except they do

[bingoUV]

That is the most likely mode of operation.

Likelihood computed how ? Gives them good chances of escaping attention ? Gives better quality audio ? Simpler to code ? You have seen the code and suspect this happens there ?

It could record opportunistically when there already a power usage spike.

That is the most likely mode of operation. Record when the Facebook app is open.

When the Facebook app is "opened" - there could be a power usage spike from the I/O, CPU usage etc. to open it. But when it is "open" - one doesn't expect a power usage spike all the time it stays open. Intermittent power usage spikes are easy to envisage - from checking updates, processing user input etc.

Also, do you have any evidence that "listening" more than they are allowed by the user will harm their bottomline in any significant way ?

Well, senior staff going to jail might negatively affect their stock price. Any brands caught up in it might not look too good either, and would likely pull their advertising.

Yeah, "might" vs "evidence". Gives a whole new meaning to "might is right".

Re:Except they do

[AmiMoJo]

Likelihood computed how ?

That would be the easiest place to hide it.

Yeah, "might" vs "evidence".

I was being sarcastic. If they were in fact clandestinely recording audio then some of their staff would definitely go to jail. It's a crime in multiple countries. Not to mention that it violates the Play and App Store rules, and there would be great pressure on Google and Apple to remove the app and remotely delete it from devices.

In fact it would probably be one of the biggest crimes ever committed, in terms of number of victims and number of individual offences. The only bigger one that comes to mind are the billions of crimes committed by the NSA and GCHQ when they illegally spied on people.

Re:Except they do

[bingoUV]

So, no evidence, more conjecture.

And you agree that you were greatly exaggerating the implausibility of it all, as you have not replied to the problems I raised with all but one of your arguments about implausibility.

Re:Except they do

[AmiMoJo]

Sorry, I'm kinda busy so don't always have time to post detailed responses.

It's not totally impossible, but consider what they would have to do to make it work:

- Hide the recording code in the binary somehow, and you can bet that binary gets pulled apart a lot to look for exploits.

- Keep power consumption low enough that it doesn't give the Facebook app a reputation as a battery hog.

- Exfiltrate the data somehow, either as audio or as processed keyword info. Again, the traffic is under heavy scrutiny and HTTPS is easy to man-in-the-middle if you control the device.

- Break multiple privacy/bugging laws around the world and convince every engineer involved to both incriminate themselves and not whistleblow, in a post-Dieselgate world.

- This this is all worth the effort when they already have legal methods to do pretty much the same thing. In fact those methods are so good they cause people to start wondering if their phones are listening to their conversations.

It's not impossible, but it's moon landing conspiracy level stuff.

Re:Except they do

[bingoUV]

Ok, you are busy enough to not read what you are replying to.

not lying

[houghi]

They do not use it, but theu do listen in. Otherwise he would have stated they do not listen in and thus are unable to use it, because they do not have the data.

Re:not lying

[gweihir]

Pretty clear, yes. He may also have lied more directly here, wonder what his deniability strategy is. Maybe he ignored his lawyers and just hopes nobody follows up on this.

Re: not lying

[denis.goddard]

The NSA, however, DOES listen to everything , records and archives everything, for purposes a lot more sinister than just advertising

Re:not lying

[edtice1559]

Or maybe Facebook really doesn't do this and doesn't want to listen to your audio because they already know so much about you that they wouldn't glean much more information.

Re: not lying

[edtice1559]

Posted by a guy who logged in from a Facebook account! :)

Re:not lying

[gweihir]

Unlikely. It is possible they are not using the data at the moment, but they are gathering it, or he would have said they do not.

Re:not lying

[edtice1559]

I listened to his answer and read the transcript. Although he did point out that you can record video with audio, he did seem to categorically deny the constant microphone monitoring. But given how long this conspiracy theory has been around, the complete lack of supporting evidence, and the questionable value of the activity, occam's razor says that this isn't happening. Not that I expect the conspiracy theory to go away.

Re:not lying

[gweihir]

Yes, "he did seem" is exactly it. Why not a clear, clean and completely unambiguous denial? The only other option I see is that he was not sure. I don't see how that would be any better. Now, I do not actually think they do this monitoring permanently, but they seem to be doing something and the Zuck seems to be unwilling to tell what that is. It may be that they even only listen in if you actively record. That would be bad enough.

Re:not lying

[edtice1559]

Probably because he was in a high pressure situation where he was trying to be overly precise. They certainly *do* evaluate the audio if you upload a video. Try uploading a video of your kid doing something like roller skating with music in the background. They will identify it and ask you if you think it is fair use. And they probably pull keywords out as part of this. But at minimum they may infer your taste in music. I have no idea why anybody would expect anything different if you've ever actually recorded/uploaded a video!

They don't use your microphone for ads

[viperidaenz]

They use it for other undisclosed purposes.

Re:They don't use your microphone for ads

[gweihir]

You mean like building some kind of model of your behavior and environmend that then is used for ads?

Re:They don't use your microphone for ads

[f00zbll]

go to privacy settings -> microphone and turn off facebook. Better yet, delete facebook app. It's not that hard.

Re:They don't use your microphone for ads

[TheFakeTimCook]

Facebook pays a shitload of money to Apple, for example, to get their login information as one of the defaults on iOS. Same with Twitter.

Nice try, Hater. You're an idiot.

Apple REMOVED Facebook and Twitter Integration from iOS 11.

Do try to keep up.

https://www.axios.com/apple-re...

While we're on the subject, Tim Cook's little "we don't steal your private data" thing he's on right now, is hilariously hypocritical. They do not have a-user-for-sale-to-advertisers model, true, but absolutely have a history of selling the user's experience and likelihood to interact with such models to the highest bidder, e.g. their switch from Google to Bing, the etc. This is super recent as of iOS 11: https://www.theverge.com/2017/... [theverge.com]

Your linked Verge article was about Apple REMOVING Facebook and Twitter Integration from iOS 11, much like my linked Axios article, above. How in the FUCK does that prove your argument?!?

Idiot moron Apple Hater.

Go the FUCK away.

Re:They don't use your microphone for ads

[TheFakeTimCook]

Are you fucking retarded?

Saying they removed those things in iOS 11 is exactly what I fucking said. The point is up until very recently they did the exact same thing as _EVERYONE ELSE_, but now Tim Cook is on some high fucking horse saying "oooh your privacy isn't for sale at Aaaaapple", which is bullshit. They've just been using a different sales model.

KYS,

Read your post again. It is nonsensical at best.

Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[Karmashock]

The whole concept of facebook... using your real name... instant fail.

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[hcs_$reboot]

using your real name

I thought that's mandatory on the Internet, like on /.

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[Opportunist]

It is.

Out of curiosity, do you pronounce your first name h'cs or hc's?

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[hcs_$reboot]

opp't'ni's

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[Mashiki]

I thought that's mandatory on the Internet, like on /.

Only us crazy people who were against mandatory names on the internet don't do it.

Please pick up your:
You are a terrorist, psychopath, sociopath, nazi, next unibomber t-shirt and card here. Dues are payable to the treasurer the 3rd Tuesday of every month. Potlucks are on the 11th and 22nd. Meetings to chuckle at the media for calling you crazy are held on the 7th and 28th of the month.

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[TheRaven64]

Do you really think that it's difficult for Facebook to figure out your real name if you don't provide it but do, for example, have friends that give it access to their phone contacts? I've had a couple of people post my real name in response to Slashdot posts even though I never use it here, and that's without the aid of a massive data mining machine.

Re: Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[Opportunist]

Looks more like Chiss to me.

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[Opportunist]

Ah, so it's like French, you write one thing and say another.

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[Karmashock]

youtube started out as a video dating service... it doesn't matter... these things are not run by machines but people... the buck cannot be passed.

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[Karmashock]

a screen name is not your birth name... and there is more than enough evidence concerning full anon sites to prove my case. 4chan is a good example.

Everything is hypocrisy if you never recognize the difference in anything. Then statements like "imprisonment is the same as kidnapping" start happening. ... ignore differences and you could say that a balanced diet is the same thing as over eating or under eating... because if you ignore quantity or nutritional diversity then all sorts of positive and negative statements concerning diet become the same.

If you ignore differences.

Which is what you relied upon to make your argument.

Its textbook fallacious assuming you didn't know it was fallacious... and demonstrates bad faith and a lack of integrity if you didn't.

So... you're either ignorant or dishonest at this point... can't think of a third option. Your opinion on that matter is welcome but make an effort to not make another big mistake like that again. It reflects poorly on you.

Something which I can track to some extent because I know your screen name. ;)

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[Karmashock]

never provide your real name to these systems and they can't know it... I also like to provide false names.

I have five or six false names I use consistently when I want to poison a database so it thinks it has my real name.

Surrendering is a way to end an issue... but you end it by losing.

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[TheRaven64]

never provide your real name to these systems and they can't know it

They can't know it. Until you communicate with someone who has your real name in their contact details. Or you buy anything from a shop that has a data sharing agreement with Facebook and they provide the name from your credit card to associate with the cookie that Facebook set. Or someone tags you in a photograph with your real name and someone else tags you with your Facebook name. Or they identify your home IP and associate that with your entry on the electoral roll. Or one of a dozen other ways in which they can get your real name.

I have five or six false names I use consistently when I want to poison a database so it thinks it has my real name.

Thinking that you're actually doing that may make you feel better, but it's wishful thinking.

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[antdude]

Yep, they kicked others and me off for using fake names and datas years ago.

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[Karmashock]

One of the better bits of evidence is seeing if the ads you're subjected to reveal some knowledge about what you've bought, are shopping for, your buying patterns etc.

The ads targeted at me don't reflect my searches, my purchases, or demographic information about me as a user.

So... objectively... their databases are confused or empty.

Re:Anyone that trusts facebook is asking for it

[bingoUV]

You know the "solution" to the Target teen pregnancy detection scandal, right ? Target started sandwiching their suspiciously accurate recommendations / advertisements between unrelated ones. If you think your teen daughter is not pregnant and she gets advertisements for a goat cheese, baby diapers and sports shoes you might not worry a lot. But Target knows which of these advertisement will stick.

While the raven seems to be discouraging you, I am just encouraging you to fight harder :). He is also wrong about some things - Facebook likely knows you as 15 different people.

Conspiracy schmonspiracy.

[Anonymous Coward]

While this is a very slippery field and it's pretty easy to slid into conspiracy theory terrain, there's old precedent to audio fingerprinting of background noise -- https://www.theregister.co.uk/...">Peter Norvig was doing this at Google already eight years ago. So Zuck's dismissal of "all of that" as a conspiracy theory ("You are talking about the conspiracy theory passed around [...])" is disingenuous at best. Even if Facebook isn't doing it directly... how about allowing third parties to embed a Javascript fingerprinting thingie?

Browser "vendors" (and yes, Mozilla, tu quoque!) are in a race to implement more and more "APIs" to make this feasible. Access to audio? No problem. Accel data? Compass? Attitude? Location? Here you go.

Re:Conspiracy schmonspiracy.

[jellomizer]

You have a lot of faith in the power of JavaScript.

Smoke and Mirrors

[secondhand_Buddah]

It's really hard to tell what Facebook is actually doing. It has become clear that lying to congress is totally acceptable if it is to be regarded in the interests of 'National Security'. Government actors have been caught out time and time again lying to congress without consequence. If Facebook is indeed doing this, Zuckerburg would have some kind of protection in this circumstance. The more pertinent line of approach here would be to determine if Facebook receives revenue from Security actors

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[drinkypoo]

It's really hard to tell what Facebook is actually doing. It has become clear that lying to congress is totally acceptable if it is to be regarded in the interests of 'National Security'.

Almost all congress does is lie. Of course it's acceptable to lie to them if you can get away with it.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[DigiShaman]

Truth be told, most of congress backs what Mark is doing; surveillance and censorship to protect DC/Beltway (aka Deep State) from the rest of the plebs. Their anger however is rooted in it not being created out of legislation and thus under the direct wing of the Feds.

In all sincerity. This drag-out of the Zuck was nothing more than Congress putting their foot down as to making it crystal clear as to who's the boss. Mark probably now gets it. As such, expect FB to get a slap on the wrist, and life goes on as it always has. Exception - FB becomes the unofficial official mole to spy on the American public. I have zero doubt there will be a backdoor of analytics pulled and funneled back to the Feds. Oh hell, perhaps the next POTUS will get a monthly briefing on the heartbeat of America as outlined via FB.

Lying like Clapper

[DNS-and-BIND]

On March 12, 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress that intel officials were not collecting mass data on tens of millions of Americans. Snowden exposed him as a liar. He should have gone to jail for it. So Zuckerberg can just lie like a rug and get away with it. It just doesn't matter, Congress is toothless and Zuckerberg knows it.

Re:Lying like Clapper

[Subm]

> Congress is toothless and Zuckerberg knows it.

Congress has teeth if it wants to act. Choosing not to bite is not the same as not having teeth.

It's more spineless, or maybe coopted or corrupt. In principle, if enough of us motivate them, they could act in our interests.

Re:Lying like Clapper

[Mashiki]

Because one person lies, all people are?

Everyone lies at some point or another. Governments should be assumed to always lie. It's one of the reasons the US has the 2nd amendment, because government should fear the people not the other way around. European governments have basically forgotten the "awakening of democracies" back in the 1600, 1700's. People themselves are getting far more twitchy over those restricted rights. Compare simply the US to Canada, which has more european guaranteed rights. Speech is restricted "to what can be defined in law"(sic). Where in European countries, speech is restricted to "what the state defines as speech" vs speech is fundamentally protected, whether it be actual hate speech or being an asshole, in the US.

Re:Lying like Clapper

[jellomizer]

So why bother asking questions?
We will just need to live our lives following whatever conspiracy theory we think is happening. Because either things are exactly as we think, or people are lying about it.

When asked a question, we need to expect a truthful answer. Now truthful may not be correct, or colored for their own self interests. Yes people can outwardly lie, but often those lies will get found out, because the truth is often easier to prove.

I find that most peoples lives are busy enough to try to manage these grand conspiracies. The Illuminati haven't taken over the world yet, because the last century they were stuck in meetings discussing the font they should use for their letterhead.

Re:Lying like Clapper

[AmiMoJo]

In the post-truth worth the assumption is that everyone is lying all the time, the only thing that separates them is your ability to google a quote proving their deception.

Re:Lying like Clapper

[DigiShaman]

Our interests is not the same as theirs. Never forget that.

Re:Lying like Clapper

[DNS-and-BIND]

Clapper spied on Americans and lied about it. It seems like any politician could win re-election easily by putting him and his scumbag friends in jail.

But that won't happen, as because as must be obvious by now - the intelligence agencies devote a lot of energy to spying on politicians and don't give a shit if they break the law. Thus, if any Congressman wants to take them on, they just threaten him with either exposing inconvenient truths, or just making up lies and telling everyone they found it. This is how they do business, character assassination.

Re:Lying like Clapper

[DNS-and-BIND]

Trying to handwave globalists away is a fool's errand. These people really exist, they meet at places like Davos and Skull & Bones, and they do indeed have plans that harm us. For example, did you know that the USA offered gigantic bribes in the form of unequal trade agreements to win the Cold War against the Communists? We opened our markets wide with low tariffs. Thus the world could make a mint selling into our huge market. But when it was time to do the opposite, they put high tariffs to keep the money in their economies and employ their people. Then when the Cold War ended, we didn't end these ruinous unequal agreements. Why should they, they love the power the comes with it.

This isn't a loonie Illuminati grand conspiracy theory, it's what really happened. You think the American working class getting ruined was an accident? It's why we have these terrible, terrible trade agreements all over the world. The globalists agree to that America gets ripped off, and in return they get influence to play World Bully. Here's a great video by a non-conspiracy theorist that explains it.

This, but not that

[davmoo]

So why is Congress getting its collective panties in a wad over this, but they don't seem to give a damn about data breaches like Sears, Kmart, Best Buy, yadda yadda yadda. And don't forget that almost everyone in America got Equifucked. Could it be as simple as that currently Facebook is the popular thing to hate? Or that Facebook hasn't bought...er...donated to the campaigns of...as many Congresscritters as Equifax, etc? Nah, Congress would never be that biased.

Re:This, but not that

[Opportunist]

The difference is maybe that the data breech in those other cases was a damage to the ones losing the data, too, while Facebook's very business model is based on doing just what happened.

Re:This, but not that

[Anonymous Coward]

So is Equifax. Their whole and only objective is to collect that of everyone and sell that information to as many companies as possible, not just banks.

Re:This, but not that

[sad_]

because the 'leaked' data was used to influence an election?

We don't spy on you

[GeekWithAKnife]

Unless you use facebook; or things that link to facebook, or little facebook like/link icons that track which website you're on, or ads that link to facebook or companies that partner with facebook, or lovely facebook add-on to chat etc

But let's be clear, facebook do not spy on you at times that they do not spy on you. I hope that's clear.

Thank you Mr. Zuckerberg. It has always been apparent to me that I should never use facebook.

Shocking that people still think "I have nothing to hide, I don't put anything important on it I just stay in-touch with friends" -Seriously if you needed a wake-up call this is it.

#deletefacebook

Re:We don't spy on you

[Opportunist]

You left out "or have friends that use facebook".

Re:We don't spy on you

[Anonymous Coward]

# Block Facebook
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 static.ak.connect.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com

Re:We don't spy on you

[grub]

Do it in DNS.Way easier to block the entire domain.

They made him wear a suit

[Tailhook]

LOL

Re:They made him wear a suit

[Opportunist]

If you're giving fake answers you can as well look like a fake.

What a crummy hearing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What a crummy hearing

[gweihir]

Well, big egos small skills. Unless they start having actual experts ask the questions in these interviews, they are basically a circus event, nothing else. Gives the appearance of "doing something".

Re:What a crummy hearing

[Translation Error]

Totally owned is right. From Cnet:

All but nine of the 55 members on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have received Facebook contributions over the last 10 years, USA Today reports. Committee Chairman Greg Walden, a Republican from Oregon, received $27,000, and ranking member Frank Pallone, Jr., a Democrat from New Jersey, received $6,000, according to CRP.

Re:What a crummy hearing

[gweihir]

It is not possible to write questions for something like this in advance that reach expert-level. Experts always need follow-up and clarification questions and that needs the actual expert in the driver-seat.

Re:What a crummy hearing

[UnknownSoldier]

> Zero questions on shadow profiles and tracking of people who don't even use the service.

You're too early.

Mark Zuckerberg Denies Knowledge of Non-Consensual Shadow Profiles Facebook Has Been Building of Non-Users For Years

Lujan: Facebook has detailed profiles on people who have never signed up for Facebook, yes or no?
Zuckerberg: Congressman, in general we collect data on people who have not signed up for Facebook for security purposes to prevent the kind of scraping you were just referring to [reverse searches based on public info like phone numbers].
Lujan: So these are called shadow profiles, is that what they've been referred to by some?
Zuckerberg: Congressman, I'm not, I'm not familiar with that.
Lujan: I'll refer to them as shadow profiles for today's hearing. On average, how many data points does Facebook have on each Facebook user?
Zuckerberg: I do not know off the top of my head.
Lujan: Do you know how many points of data Facebook has on the average non-Facebook user?
Zuckerberg: Congressman, I do not know off the top of my head but I can have our team get back to you afterward.
Lujan: It's been admitted by Facebook that you do collect data points on non-[Facebook users]. My question is, can someone who does not have a Facebook account opt out of Facebook's involuntary data collection?
Zuckerberg: Anyone can turn off and opt out of any data collection for ads, whether they use our services or not but in order to prevent people from scraping public information ... we need to know when someone is repeatedly trying to access our services.

Re:What a crummy hearing

[Ol Olsoc]

Well, big egos small skills. Unless they start having actual experts ask the questions in these interviews, they are basically a circus event, nothing else. Gives the appearance of "doing something".

Perhaps there are other meetings that we don't know about where more pointed, accurate, and really, really interesting questions are asked. I don't know if there was a classified meeting yet on this issue with the baby oligarch, but I suspect he'll be having a chat with the big boy soon.

Re:What a crummy hearing

[Ol Olsoc]

Zuck totally owned most of the Senators.

In the big picture, that hardly matters. What will matter is what comes next.

Yes it does.

[generic_screenname]

It also links you to other people's devices. I started talking about a political viewpoint I don't have in front of a friend's phone, and I started getting ads for that viewpoint within the hour.

Can it be tested technically?

[swb]

Can it be tested technically? I would think that someone on Android at this point would have created some low-level way to monitor microphone use (not just "microphone accessed" but actually seeing data come from it) and would have caught Facebook monitoring the microphone.

I feel like there should be some way to check Facebook's access of the microphone at the hardware level.

Re:Can it be tested technically?

[gnasher719]

Can it be tested technically? I would think that someone on Android at this point would have created some low-level way to monitor microphone use (not just "microphone accessed" but actually seeing data come from it) and would have caught Facebook monitoring the microphone.

Since Tim Cook and Facebook are not best friends at the moment, I bet Apple has tried this out. I mean they are in control of the operating system and all the hardware; there is no way to hide it from them.

Re:Can it be tested technically?

[edtice1559]

Depends on how they implemented it. If they were streaming your mic to a server, that would be trivial to detect. It would also drain your battery and use a ton of bandwidth. If they just listen locally, pick out keywords, and then piggyback a small amount of meta-data onto an existing server round-trip, you may never find it. This type of audio processing, though, may use significant CPU cycles which would give a clue but you would still have a heck of a time deciding if that was audio processing or just some other inefficiency in the implementation. I tend to believe The Zuck here, only because I think that this feature would be a lot of work to implement and deploy for very minimal incremental value to Facebook since they already know so much about their users.

Re:Can it be tested technically?

[edtice1559]

But in that case, it was unintentional and there was no attempt to hide it. I pointed out in another post that an actual implementation wouldn't look like this at all.

Re:Can it be tested technically?

[LordKronos]

Can it be tested technically? I would think that someone on Android at this point would have created some low-level way to monitor microphone use (not just "microphone accessed" but actually seeing data come from it) and would have caught Facebook monitoring the microphone.

I feel like there should be some way to check Facebook's access of the microphone at the hardware level.

It would be a piece of cake for anyone on Cyanogen/Lineage to test. Privacy Guard can be set to prompt you any time the app tries to use the microphone. It also keeps a log of how many times and the last time access was granted. I'd test it out myself, but no facebook account here.

Honestly, I suspect all these claims of "I never search, but then I said it and started seeing ads" have another explanation. Perhaps you did search for it and don't recall. Random chance (show enough people enough different ads and someone somewhere is going to experience a suspicious coincidence). Perhaps a spouse or friend went and searched for it shortly after you discussed it (remember, facebook can definitely detect 2 people in close proximity, so when one person searches for something new, show the ad to people who were nearby in the previous day). Perhaps you previously saw the ad without realizing it, it subconsciously stuck in your mind, and that's why you ended up discussing it. I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to explain it using techniques we already know for a fact that they utilize. No need to invoke any conspiracy theories.

Re:Can it be tested technically?

[EETech1]

I'm to the point where I'd expect Facebook to analyze who they can safely do that to, and if they are even at all suspicious, it likely doesn't happen (much (anymore)) to them.

Senator, we run Ads.

[Martin S.]

And a new meme about technological ignorance of the political class is born. I guess we should be thankful for small improvements, c.f. a Series of tubes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Of course it don't

[Z80a]

But Zuck probably loved the idea and gonna implement it as soon he go back to his desk.

Zuckerberg will be a great politician some day

[adosch]

This is just typical snake oil salesman bullshit mixed with spy operative how-to-beat-a-lie-detector-test by saying a truth about something when hearing something else entirely.

I'm so tired of theater politics anymore. Anyone wanting to go look at my previous comments on other FB stories; feel free, I've said this numerous times: this changes nothing. When people you are in bed with are asking the questions (and pretty fucking formulated and ambiguous, btw) coupled with Zuckerberg preparing his ass off to say exactly the right things that can't confirm nor deny anything, why in the HELL was this done anyway? And why is anyone slurping this up as truth being disseminated?

This is about preserving national security in a degree we, as public citizens, have an idea that the Big Machines give our government hooks into this; jeezis, how could it go any better for them? We all willingly carry around our own surveillance system (e.g. phone) with us at all times; it's the first thing you look at in the morning and the last thing you look at before you go to bed. Then secondly, it's about preserving stock, shares and company who doesn't not want to see MySpace level abandonment, because I remember that and that was fucking staggering the drop-off. Because if FB doesn't have you, they don't have a business model what-so-ever.

Both parties know that this is nothing more than damage control and it's better to get wish-washy facts out, then have a leak, right? See, the government DID actually learn something from Snowdon: Don't let the know-all grunt share the real news, have a dog-and-pony show with the CEO who's so far removed from his own empire tell you how it's not like that at all... but it is.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Wait

[stealth_finger]

Do people actually think they're analysing the audio streams of every device waiting for people to say certain words/products so they can advertise that back to them? Real time analysis of millions of audio streams in many languages/accents? Yeah right.

Re:Wait

[chakan2]

I'm not sure why you think that's inconceivable (or hard actually). Lets say Facebook does client side translation, the packets Facebook gets would be minuscule (a few lines of text), then it's a minor big data problem to cross reference.

Even if they're sending audio in, using the right encoding, that wouldn't be a big deal either. If you isolate to vocals and send it in compressed, that's not a big network strain, or that difficult to decode server side. Maybe a few K per clip.

I'm not confirming or denying Facebook actually does this, but this is a relatively easy problem to solve.

Re:Wait

[edtice1559]

The problem would be that, even if they were *caught* draining the CPU, it could be just a bug or something inefficient. Scraping from the voice activation does seem pretty reasonable, though. They did suck up your call history and text messages, why not your search history?

Re:Wait

[stealth_finger]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

This is why I say that. Sure it will work fine for some people in some areas but reliably doing it across the entire userbase (that has enabled mic access if it even cares about permissions), plus all the other processing that will need to go on to isolate each voice and everything just so they can determine you mentioned nickleback and then it can advertise other bland rock to you or whatever product that may be (how many words/phrases are we even listening for here? Lots is my guess) just makes the whole scheme seem unfeasable in a effort/payoff ratio. Sure it's technically possible but why would they bother when they have all this other shit available to them?

Re:Wait

[Waccoon]

Doing things selectively is a great way to get reasonable sample data with the benefit of avoiding detection/controversy. Usage habits may flag some people as better candidates for extra tracking than others. How many times have you heard someone complain about a problem, only to be bombarded with comments similar to, "I've never had that happen! It works fine for ME!"

Refer to Microsoft's tactic of staged roll-outs and treating users like guinea pigs while having minimal (if any) options to opt in or out. If something goes wrong and the company can't claim innocence, they can just say, "It only affected a small number of people."

As if...

[bjoeg]

Based on true events (location and persons have been edited for sake of privacy):

So one evening I said to my partner -
Me: "You know what darling, should we consider taking the Catalina Express instead of taking a chopper?"
Darling: "No, Catalina Express is more expensive and takes longer, let's stick with the chopper"

The partner opens Facebook on tablet and suggested ad is "Great deals on Catalina Express".

Dear Zuckerberg, is Facebook using my mic from my tablet to target ads for my profile?
Or should the question rather be:
Dear Zuckerberg, is Facebook scraping data from other sources using my mic on my tablet to target ads for my profile?

Re:As if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Zuckerberg, is Facebook scraping data from other sources using my mic on my tablet to target ads for my profile?

Honestly, I don't think they are. I think the truth is much worse and embarrassing.

There are people in this topic that **insist** this has happened to them. I think that, in each and every one of those cases, those persons (or their known close relations) fed just enough data to facebook so that it can occasionally get a really good target.

Has your significant other ever called you out over subtly reacting to something emotionally, and you thought you had a perfect poker face? Your partner knows you so well that they can read you... sometimes before you realize how you're actually feeling.

The truth is, Facebook has so much data on you, they can predict what ads to target to you. It seems like magic, so people blame secret recording. But, no, it's just that people have shoveled so much data into facebook that it can get targeted hits. Facebook -- a data aggregation and ad company -- is doing this, and somehow people are shocked that they get it eerily right sometimes?

But that truth is too embarrassing. Embarrassing to the person who willingly gave away all that data for free, and embarrassing to facebook haters that facebook is actually really, REALLY good at its mission. So we end up getting conspiracy theories that they're listening all the time.

No, dumbshits. They're not secretly listening. You're just willingly giving them everything they need.

Re:As if...

[dave562]

This is extremely wide spread. I think it is Google that is doing it.

It happened to my wife and I. We made one random mention of buying something for the house. The next time she logged into Amazon, she saw an advertisement for what we were talking about.

I drive for Lyft on the weekend and I have had multiple riders bring this up. I had one couple this weekend that mentioned it happened to them with Hulu, multiple times. They noticed that it takes at least 7 days for Hulu to "catch up" with what they were talking about. Their example was that they were having a party and the TV was on. They were talking about wanting to move, and someone randomly mentioned New Orleans. A single mention, everyone kind of laughed about it and moved onto the next subject. The next week, Hulu started displaying advertisements for New Orleans.

What I found interesting is that they said Hulu is not at all subtle about it. They will just spam the same "targeted" ad over and over again. Like a switch gets flipped. It goes from never having an ad about whatever key word was hit on, to seeing it extremely frequently.

I would be interested if anyone else with Hulu has had similar experiences. Anyone?

Re:As if...

[angel'o'sphere]

Why don't you just learn how to use your device?
E.g. check the data consumption, disable the mic etc.
I'm 100% certain the facebook app has no access to the mic on my mac, and he messenger is usually manually deactivated, because I only need it in extremely rare cases.
If you check how data the facebook app has transmitted, and don't use it for a day, afterwards it is the same: obviously it does not sent secret data to the home base.
You could remove the sim card, and check the traffic via your home router ...
Or just remove the app ...

Re:As if...

[bjoeg]

Catalina Express and helicopter was just a reference, in this real life event it was a discussion whether to take a ferry versus a toll bridge.
There had been no searches before hand, only the verbal discussion, and pricing for this bridge and ferry is common knowledge in my part of the world.

You are completely right if I do not trust Facebook and believe they are evil, why do I keep using them. Personally I do not have a problem with Facebook, nor the amount of data they may collect from me, simply because I do not feel I have anything to hide from Facebook. Others might have it differently and that is completely their choice which I respect.
Facebook was for me once a way to stay connected to friends and stay updated of events my friends' lives. Now Facebook has for me transitioned to become a site/media where I get the latest news in areas that interests me, more or less just like Slashdot does.

What I am only concerned about, is that I feel Mark/Facebook is answering all the questions directly to the spot ("to the teeth"?), but leaves out some information which could have been revealed if the questions where asked differently.
For instance as other already mentioned, is Facebook targeting ads purely on a Facebook user's likes, comments, posts, apps etc.? or is Facebook scraping Google Ad cookies, Smaato cookies, AdServing cookies and so on for many of the other marketing trackers on the internet, to collect a larger profile for knowing which ads to serve?

And to allow my tinfoil hat again or call it conspiracy, let us remember the event of 2016, where Mark posted a picture to celebrate Instragram's 500Million active users.
In this picture he had masked webcam and mic of his laptop. Was this to prevent "simple" industrial spionage or was it to protect himself from his own system?

Re:As if...

[dwpro]

To be fair, any decently advanced AI is going to surprise us by predicting what we'll talk about before we know it, once they have enough data (IE, comparative persons in our same demographic that watch the same news, get the same ads, read the same magazines, etc). Expect this apparent 'snooping' to get much, much worse.

Everyone missing the point.

[Narcocide]

Ok, so if it's not Facebook doing this one, then who is it? Someone is definitely listening to the mics even when video is not being captured by the user.

Re:Everyone missing the point.

[freeze128]

It's someone else. Maybe Google. Maybe Amazon. Those 2 companies have very robust voice recognition technologies, so it seems plausible. Probably not Apple, though.

I have a phone with a custom rom on it, and have NEVER installed the facebook app, or even opened the facebook web page on it (because I don't have a facebook account). I have noticed that sometimes youtube will recommend videos with topics that I was recently talking about. I'm not even logging into youtube either. What *REALLY* freaks me out is on more than one occasion, I was suggested a youtube video about a very specific topic that I was only *THINKING* about, and never even vocalized. It might just be a coincidence, but I'm pretty sure my phone's microphone cannot do that.

Re:Everyone missing the point.

[AHuxley]

The mic is not passing back the "sound" of each conversation. That allows the color of law legal cover for never "listening" in.
Just some user side mic data to say this account would support a pet food ad.
Looking to sell pet food? Get a list all accounts that are set to pet food.

How much

[hcs_$reboot]

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

Wag the dog

[thunderclees]

Wag the Dog was a great movie, it was about Bill Clinton but the pearls of wisdom for it can be applied here

What is being done here could be flann.
The microphone issue is a distraction attempting to take attention away from the real issue. That FaceBook's real value is in the information it collects about the poor saps who use it.

Conrad 'Connie' Brean: You're goddamn right, then it's got nothing to do with the B-3 Bomber!
John Levy: There is no B-3 bomber.
Conrad 'Connie' Brean: [Knowingly] I just said that! There is no B-3 bomber, and I don't know why these rumors get started!

Henkin, H., Mamet, D., Levinson, B., Hoffman, D., De, N. R., Heche, A., Leary, D., ... New Line Home Video (Firm). (1998). Wag the Dog. Calif.: New Line Home Video.

Re:Wag the dog

[Dr. Evil]

Wag the dog predated the Clinton scandal.

Hard to believe, but true.

Re:Wag the dog

[thunderclees]

Per Wikipedia:
The Clinton–Lewinsky scandal was an American political sex scandal that involved 49-year-old President Bill Clinton and 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The sexual relationship took place between 1995 and 1997 and came to light in 1998...
The movie was in general release on 6-Jan-98 and the scandal first broke, perhaps conveniently on 17-Jan-98.
Wikipedia contributors. (2018, April 2). Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:33, April 11, 2018, from

Was the plant in Khartoum a weapons factory?

Why does the dog wag its tail?
Because a dog is smarter than its tail.
If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.

"IT? I need you to disable the mic next week...."

[anvilmark]

"I'm going to be grilled by congress next week and I need to be able to truthfully say we aren't using the mic to target ads....yeah, you can turn it back on when I leave D.C..... thanks guys."

It's Baader-Meinhof phenomenon

[kriston]

It's Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

Nobody's listening to you. You aren't that interesting. Don't flatter yourself.

Re:It's Baader-Meinhof phenomenon

[Ol Olsoc]

It's Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

Nobody's listening to you. You aren't that interesting. Don't flatter yourself.

That's not how this works. Give it some thought. People are not interesting until they are interesting.

More likely explanation

[Solandri]

I'm the last person to want to defend Faacebook. But across a user base of 2 billion people, just by random chance alone some of them will see ads related to something they talked about recently next to an electronic device. Facebook represents such a huge sampling population that if you allow self-selection, even rare phenomenon will pop out due to self-selection bias.

How about simply asking...

[wardk]

"What exactly are ALL the things that Facebook records via the mic, and what does it do what that those recordings? and please note Mr Zuckerberg that lying to congress, even if not under oath, is against the law."

Re:How about simply asking...

[keith_nt4]

If there's a CIA sniper with a laser sight on the back of his head...is it still illegal?

Re:How about simply asking...

[Ol Olsoc]

"What exactly are ALL the things that Facebook records.....

Yes.

Sure

[nospam007]

"Facebook Doesn't Use Your Mic For Ad Targeting "

We have a special company that does that for us. We don't do such things.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion