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I agree with you up until the mic comment. I ran a few tests with friends. We talked about very obscure topics repeatedly (and nothing else) that we would other

I agree with you up until the mic comment. I ran a few tests with friends. We talked about very obscure topics repeatedly (and nothing else) that we would otherwise would have never messaged, and after scrolling 2 mins, targeted ads appeared for those topics. Happened for multiple topics.

kevinwang 9y ago
are you serious? Which app/phone?
- fratlas 9y ago
  We both had our phones (one iPhone, one android) and macbooks on with facebook (web/app) open.
  - daveFNbuck 9y ago
    How did you ensure that no other apps were listening in the background?
    - mod 9y ago
      I don't understand--how would other apps trigger related facebook ads?
      - seanp2k2 9y ago
        Send some data to an ad network or something that feeds it, Facebook ads somehow pick that up. Not beyond the realm of feasibility. Try using a just-factory-reset phone with JUST the Facebook app installed. There is science to be done here.
      - falseAss 9y ago
        https://www.quora.com/How-does-Facebook-know-what-I-looked-at-on-Amazon https://www.quora.com/How-does-Facebook-know-what-I-looked-a...
  - dx034 9y ago
    With facebook web it's pretty easy to say as you have to give permission via your browser. Otherwise, for Chrome, you'd have to assume that Google works with Facebook to help them make more money. Rather unlikely.
ghughes 9y ago
I just don't buy this theory until I see some evidence. It wouldn't be hard for a talented individual to reverse engineer the Facebook client app to find out if it's either a) continuously recording and uploading raw audio to their servers, or b) continuously recording and locally processing audio before sending information about the content to their servers. Until I see an analysis of their code that indicates either of those things is happening, I have to believe that this is a conspiracy theory perpetuated by people posting these suspicious anecdotes all over the internet.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sergiotapia 9y ago
  I had it happen to me too. Why would I lie about something like this? This is my real account, I'm a real guy. My wife and I were talking about celebrating my kids birthday party at Arcade Foobar. A day later she started seeing ads on Facebook about Arcade Foobar. It's grotesque and one of the many reasons why my wife and I no longer have facebook accounts.
  - Sacho 9y ago
    You don't have to be lying about it, but consider that we often incorrectly detect patterns where none exist.
  - dx034 9y ago
    Probably because people in your area often celebrate birthdays there. You would've seen it without the conversation as well. And it was one of probably 100 ads you and your wife saw over the days, you didn't notice the ones that were targeted badly.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    Complete nonsense. That you actually believe this instead of the much more plausible explanations are beyond me.
brightball 9y ago
My wife and I did the same test with the same results. It's the reason I took the app off my phone and just use the mobile web.
- brightball 9y ago
  For clarification on what we did for our test, I live in the south east. We don't watch professional baseball at all...so we started talking about going to a Cincinnati Reds game. And then we saw ads for the Reds and MLB. I'm not trying to go full tin foil hat here, but it was a pretty strong coincidence for that to happen.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
paulcole 9y ago
Did you also see ads for things you didn't talk about? How did you select those very obscure topics?
HalfwayToDice 9y ago
It embarrasses me to see such conspiratorial nonsense on this website. There are many reasons why such things happen: coincidence, someone google the topic from the same router IP address, ad tracking on Googled websites, etc etc The idea that one of the worlds largest companies would risk their entire business by secretly recording their users for ad revenue is absurd on almost every level. Yet some people on HackerNew, a forum that self-selects to a highly educated/intelligent part of the community actually believes it. It's mind-boggling.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- flukus 9y ago
  > The idea that one of the worlds largest companies would risk their entire business by secretly recording their users for ad revenue is absurd on almost every level. I'm with you on the skepticism, but they are one of the largest companies in the world because of ad revenue. It's not putting their business at risk, it is their business.
- fratlas 9y ago
  Not wearing my tin foil hat, just reporting what I found when I tried to test it myself. Only our computers on the router, had never googled the topics.
  - seanp2k2 9y ago
    See my updated post just above. I just tried it with my Nexus 7 and saw nothing around mic uploads. Install Fiddler and MITM your Facebook app and repeat your experiment. I'm very curious to see if you find something different from what I found.
- colordrops 9y ago
  It embarrasses me to see such horrible logic and head-in-the-sand thinking on this website. Whether they record ambient audio or not, how is it implausible or out of character with everything else they do? Facebook and many other companies collect countless dimensions of data on users to profile them for marketing. Audio is just one more. It's not even really that disturbing or far fetched. Why would they ignore such a lucrative data source when they've already tapped so many others? It's a direct business plan with Amazon's echo for christ sake. What is so hard to comprehend about this?

kevinwang 9y ago

are you serious? Which app/phone?

fratlas 9y ago
We both had our phones (one iPhone, one android) and macbooks on with facebook (web/app) open.
- daveFNbuck 9y ago
  How did you ensure that no other apps were listening in the background?
  - mod 9y ago
    I don't understand--how would other apps trigger related facebook ads?
    - seanp2k2 9y ago
      Send some data to an ad network or something that feeds it, Facebook ads somehow pick that up. Not beyond the realm of feasibility. Try using a just-factory-reset phone with JUST the Facebook app installed. There is science to be done here.
    - falseAss 9y ago
      https://www.quora.com/How-does-Facebook-know-what-I-looked-at-on-Amazon https://www.quora.com/How-does-Facebook-know-what-I-looked-a...
- dx034 9y ago
  With facebook web it's pretty easy to say as you have to give permission via your browser. Otherwise, for Chrome, you'd have to assume that Google works with Facebook to help them make more money. Rather unlikely.

ghughes 9y ago

I just don't buy this theory until I see some evidence. It wouldn't be hard for a talented individual to reverse engineer the Facebook client app to find out if it's either a) continuously recording and uploading raw audio to their servers, or b) continuously recording and locally processing audio before sending information about the content to their servers. Until I see an analysis of their code that indicates either of those things is happening, I have to believe that this is a conspiracy theory perpetuated by people posting these suspicious anecdotes all over the internet.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sergiotapia 9y ago
I had it happen to me too. Why would I lie about something like this? This is my real account, I'm a real guy. My wife and I were talking about celebrating my kids birthday party at Arcade Foobar. A day later she started seeing ads on Facebook about Arcade Foobar. It's grotesque and one of the many reasons why my wife and I no longer have facebook accounts.
- Sacho 9y ago
  You don't have to be lying about it, but consider that we often incorrectly detect patterns where none exist.
- dx034 9y ago
  Probably because people in your area often celebrate birthdays there. You would've seen it without the conversation as well. And it was one of probably 100 ads you and your wife saw over the days, you didn't notice the ones that were targeted badly.
- Kiro 9y ago
  Complete nonsense. That you actually believe this instead of the much more plausible explanations are beyond me.

brightball 9y ago

My wife and I did the same test with the same results. It's the reason I took the app off my phone and just use the mobile web.

brightball 9y ago
For clarification on what we did for our test, I live in the south east. We don't watch professional baseball at all...so we started talking about going to a Cincinnati Reds game. And then we saw ads for the Reds and MLB. I'm not trying to go full tin foil hat here, but it was a pretty strong coincidence for that to happen.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

paulcole 9y ago

Did you also see ads for things you didn't talk about? How did you select those very obscure topics?

HalfwayToDice 9y ago

It embarrasses me to see such conspiratorial nonsense on this website. There are many reasons why such things happen: coincidence, someone google the topic from the same router IP address, ad tracking on Googled websites, etc etc The idea that one of the worlds largest companies would risk their entire business by secretly recording their users for ad revenue is absurd on almost every level. Yet some people on HackerNew, a forum that self-selects to a highly educated/intelligent part of the community actually believes it. It's mind-boggling.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
flukus 9y ago
> The idea that one of the worlds largest companies would risk their entire business by secretly recording their users for ad revenue is absurd on almost every level. I'm with you on the skepticism, but they are one of the largest companies in the world because of ad revenue. It's not putting their business at risk, it is their business.
fratlas 9y ago
Not wearing my tin foil hat, just reporting what I found when I tried to test it myself. Only our computers on the router, had never googled the topics.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  See my updated post just above. I just tried it with my Nexus 7 and saw nothing around mic uploads. Install Fiddler and MITM your Facebook app and repeat your experiment. I'm very curious to see if you find something different from what I found.
colordrops 9y ago
It embarrasses me to see such horrible logic and head-in-the-sand thinking on this website. Whether they record ambient audio or not, how is it implausible or out of character with everything else they do? Facebook and many other companies collect countless dimensions of data on users to profile them for marketing. Audio is just one more. It's not even really that disturbing or far fetched. Why would they ignore such a lucrative data source when they've already tapped so many others? It's a direct business plan with Amazon's echo for christ sake. What is so hard to comprehend about this?