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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 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.
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.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
They use it for other undisclosed purposes.
The whole concept of facebook... using your real name... instant fail.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
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.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.