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Facebook Does Not Use Your Phone’s Microphone for Ads or News Feed Stories
- jvehent 10y agoLet me fix that for you: "Facebook Does Not [yet] Use Your Phone’s Microphone for Ads or News Feed Stories"
- cortesoft 10y agoI think these rumors are just a side effect of how good these companies can be at predicting what you are, or will be, interested in. People think it must be listening in when it is just using other bits of info about you. Like when Target knew the guy's daughter was pregnant before he did: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-how-target-exposed-a-teen-girls-pregnancy-2012-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-how-t...
- carsongross 10y agoSaid facebook. That's awfully specific.
- xufi 10y agoIs that why it's asking me to use it everytime I somehow end up tapping "Send a audio message" button?
- marricks 10y agoThat's a pretty good blanket statement, hard to see how they could be twisting words here except as jvehent said, they may in the future. That being said, it is unsettling they have the feature. A lot of people, me included, were upset when Google started reading our emails for ads. Slowly, people started accepting that was the norm, and there is a lot less fuss over it now, bigger other battles to fight with the NSA and other privacy issues. Whose to say what we say out loud is more private than emails? It really could be a matter of time until that expectation of privacy of the spoken word is diminished with the rise of Alex and the like.
- johntb86 10y agoThat being said, it is unsettling they have the feature. What feature do they have?
- aninhumer 10y agoThere are a lot of useful things a smartphone could do with an always on microphone. It could hear you arranging to meet up with a friend, and offer to create a reminder based on the details. It could warn you if the restaurant you're going to is closed. It could keep notes on all your conversations for all those times you forget something your friend said yesterday. It could be pretty awesome, if only we could trust anyone to do this kind of thing.
- marricks 10y agoThere's the rub, I think the NSA revelations and everyone collaborating with them, wittingly or unwittingly, proves we never can.
- Buge 10y agoHas it ever been the case that Gmail didn't use email content for ads?
- marricks 10y agoI'm pretty sure they didn't when it first started in the early 00's, and it was sort of big news when they explicitly updated their terms to say they did as recently as 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/15/gmail-scans-all-emails-new-google-terms-clarify https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/15/gmail-sca...
- franciscop 10y agoyet
- xviia 10y agoGood thing everyone has been so honest about data capture of Americans ... “What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls and the NSA cannot target your e-mails.” President Obama, June 16, 2013, on the Charlie Rose Show During a March 12, 2013, Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden asked DNI Clapper if the NSA collected any type of data on millions of Americans. Clapper said: “No, sir.” “We don’t hold data on U.S. citizens.” DNI Clapper speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on July 9, 2012 “Provides the government the same authority in national security investigations to obtain physical records that exits in an ordinary criminal case, through a grand jury subpoena.” Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein speaking on the Senate floor on May 22, 2011
- obamaway 10y agoWhat is particularly bothersome about Obama is that he is very good at misleading with lying. He says "NSA cannot target your e-mails" when he knows that NSA is actively collecting emails, but not by specifically targeting.
- riprowan 10y agoOf course not. Audio processing is handled by a third party.
- MichaelGG 10y agoComing after "Facebook doesn't have bias in news" and "Facebook news is purely algorithmically generated", hopefully this will give people pause.
- jrs235 10y agoSoon to be followed by "Upon further review, some developers may have abused the microphone permission and used it for internally unauthorized purposes."
- slackstation 10y agoFacebook manages the public and private lives of over a billion people and is publicly traded. They will use the former every way legal plausibly deniable to help the latter. This much power, I'm surprised that people are surprised. At this scale, I'd put a high estimation that there are multiple abuses from: 1) Private citizens who work there 2) Hackers with undisclosed access to their infrastructure 3) Governments around the world that have jurisdiction to suboena them 4) Governments that they want curry favor with (ie Germany, EU, USA) I would guess that there were breaches that would be a scandal but, were caught quietly and handled internally and never made it out. They have billions of dollars in the bank, some of the smartest people on the planet and a CEO that wants to change the world. It's not like a conspiracy. It's just simple math. With software written by humans being as fragile and imperfect as it is and that much information as centralized as it is, it's crazy to trust that it's always stayed safe in the hands of Facebook and that your view of the world through Facebook's filter isn't being changed at all.
- killbrad 10y agoWell, since Facebook said it, it must be true, and immutably so.
- hoodoof 10y agoYeah, it's not like members of Facebook's board of directors do anything in secret to harm the interests of others.
- compiler-guy 10y agoFacebook Does Not Use Your Phone's Microphone for Ads or News Feed Stories... ...right now.
- Nursie 10y agoNo, it doesn't, because it will never be installed on my phone!
- morganvachon 10y agoI can't prove whether or not the Facebook app is listening and reporting back to the mothership, however I do know that I've seen my battery life more than double since I deleted the FB app and switched to using the mobile website (which is extremely well implemented, btw) instead. After removing the FB app, FB Messenger app, Instagram (which I never used anyway) and WhatsApp (ditto), I've gone from 20-30 hours between charges to 60-70 hours between charges. This is on an iPhone 6 that admittedly isn't used for much more than SMS, RSS, music in the car, and light browsing. Now, I can't say with certainty that removing those apps removed any battery-hogging 24/7 microphone monitoring, but no matter what it's clear the FB apps were draining the battery. Again, I'm still accessing FB just as much as I did before (about twice a day, for about 10 minutes at a time) but it's via the web browser. Also, my data use has dropped, though not as significantly as battery life; where I was using about 1.5GB of data per month, now I'm just under 1GB/month (estimated based on the ~450MB used in the two weeks I've been FB-free)
- Nursie 10y agoThis is one of the reasons I won't install them. The other is I have severe privacy concerns well before any idea that it might be listening - FB are always trying to scrape more data from you anyway, letting them have access to lots more by being resident on the phone seems a bad plan.
- 0x0 10y ago"Does not use your microphone (..) to inform ads or change what you see in news feed" leaves a lot of room for other uses. Does it change what you see in other places? Does it affect your advertisement preferences without notifying the advertisers? (what does "inform ads" even mean?) Why not just say "Does not use your microphone without tapping a record button" (and make sure it's implemented like that).
- tiplus 10y agoA classic example of an "overspecific dementi",a complex answer where a simple one would have sufficed. However, in their defense, maybe this is the type of statement that expensive legal departments deliver by default as they consider it 'simple' and 'direct' compared to the stuff they usually write?
- chipperyman573 10y ago>Why not just say "Does not use your microphone without tapping a record button" (and make sure it's implemented like that). Because it does. From the article: "We only access your microphone if you have given our app permission and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio. This might include recording a video or using an optional feature we introduced two years ago to include music or other audio in your status updates."
- harry8 10y agoNo it doesn't. "Might include..." They want you understand that without having to be pinned to having said it. This is really carefully worded to get you to think exactly what you did. Why not just say "Doesn't use your microphone without tapping a record button"? It's reasonable to assume because that statement would be false.
- 0x0 10y agoWhat you are quoting is basically saying they'll use your microphone for anything they can think of, because obviously using the microphone is related to audio. To spell it out, tailoring content based on what they hear is a "feature that requires audio". The permission part they mention is an iOS restriction they can't get around.
- hetfeld 10y agoFacebook Does Not Use Your Phone’s Microphone for Ads or News Feed Stories Yet
- amaks 10y ago(http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100652-Facebook-CEO-People-Who-Trust-Me-Are-Dumb-F-cks http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100652-Facebook-CE...) Zuckerberg: They "trust me" Zuckerberg: Dumb f*cks.
- Dr_tldr 10y agoYes, always take the private chat logs of a socially awkward guy in his early twenties trying to sound flippant/cool in front of his friend as a complete and eternal expression of someone's innermost character. How substantive, how insightful! And in fairness, there are very few people from 18-25 who would not be classified as "dumb" when it comes to thinking through privacy, consequences, and boundaries.
- Joof 10y agoSo what do they use the data for?
- randartie 10y agoAmazing levels of cynicism here on HN.
- harry8 10y agoIt's not cynical. No really it isn't. Anymore that it's cynical to assume the mafia are involved in crime. Any other approach is just plain idiotic because evidence.
- logn 10y agoAssuming they're honest here, is it possible it's other apps tapping the microphone, correlating it with your Facebook account, and somehow placing items in your newsfeed/etc.? I'm not familiar with the capabilities of FB ad platform to know if this is feasible. Otherwise, like someone else here said, it's probably contracted out to a third-party doing the mic listening.
- kamiller201 10y agoBeyond what everyone else is saying about the limitations on what the actual language indicates, both the length and the tone of this message sound questionable...
- astrange 10y agoThis is the kind of comment you could just post for any article without reading it.
- jgalt212 10y agoPeter Thiel approved this message.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agook... but does facebook acquire, using any means, any data from a 3rd party that has ever used a phone's microphone for collecting that data. * crickets * you're all sheep.
- dredmorbius 10y agoWhy do phones, tablets, laptops, etc., not come at the very least as an option in a form WITHOUT integrated microphones, and with cappable lenses? If I want a mic, I'll plug in a goddamned headset.
- raddad 10y agoI've always said Facebook is a government agents, pedophiles, stalkers and burglars dream come true. All that information freely given away to whoever wishes to collect it. Now with the audio video aspect, Facebook can branch out into amateur porn.