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> "I run ads product at Facebook. We don't - and have never - used your microphone for ads. Just not true," Mr Goldman wrote. Personally, I am so used to corp

> "I run ads product at Facebook. We don't - and have never - used your microphone for ads. Just not true," Mr Goldman wrote. Personally, I am so used to corp speak and word play by major companies that it is difficult to take anything at face value. Therefore, I think the nature of the question asked to Facebook should be different. It should be on what they do rather do they do X. So, here's my question - "What does Facebook use data gathered from user microphones across any devices for?"

glenstein 9y ago
I was about to leave an extremely similar comment, but I was going to frame it in terms of the NSA "direct access" story. I got the impression from that story that immediate denials from tech companies, which seemed categorical, turned out to hinge on which magic words were used. In this case, when I read a sentence like "We don't use your microphone for ads" I end up doing that game where you re-read the sentence over and over and emphasize a different word each time, trying to guess which one is the magic word.
- hexane360 9y ago
  "We don't use your microphone for ads, your phone uses its microphone for our ads" /s
- trophycase 9y ago
  "We don't serve you advertisements through your microphone."
  - zionic 9y ago
    My favorite is "WE" don't, but our partners do.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  We don't use your microphone for ads
- zild3d 9y ago
  "We don't use your microphone for ads", we use the microphone of whoever is near you based on location data
mikeash 9y ago
I’m sure they don’t use the microphone for ads. If they use the microphone, they surely use it to feed data into their profile of you which gets used for all sorts of things... like ads. One level of indirection is enough to make this denial technically true.
madeofpalk 9y ago
How could they respond to remove all doubt they're listening? Edit: https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11854860/facebook-smartphone-listening-eavesdrop-microphone-denial https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11854860/facebook-smartpho... In a statement issued on June 2nd [2016], Facebook said it "does not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed." That's pretty fucking clear to me. Original comment: If they had said something like "We don't use microphones to gather data to drive personalisation on users profiles" there would be comments here on HN complaining about corporate speak and how they didnt just flat out deny using it for advertising. Apps get busted for doing dodgy things all the time. The Facebook app has been decompiled and network traffic inspected and studied so often that if this actually was true then it would have been proven by now. Instead, all we have is this weird 'survivorship bias' where one time someone said something out loud there was a tangentially related ad on FB. Today I was looking up bars in Budapest and found one on Google. I started looking at images, at the only one that loaded so far on the slow internet was of food. "Wow, Google knows me so well. All I care about right now is food and the first image it loads is of food" I said out loud to my friend. Eventually the internet caught up and the rest of the images that loaded were of food. It only showed me food photos (in a bar thats more known for its decoration and alcohol). Nothing more than a coincidence.
- gt_ 9y ago
  "We don't gather data using microphones"
  - diego 9y ago
    But they most likely do. Voice corpora are extremely useful to train voice recognition systems, for one.
    - lovich 9y ago
      And people have a problem with it, and so the companies use Corp speak to try and make it seem like they aren't doing what you asked. The poster higher up asked how they could remove all doubt, and it's really easy. The problem is that they are trying to remove all doubt while continuing to do business as usual
noonespecial 9y ago
I just assume that they hire a 3rd party to do it and just incorporate the processed "external data source". Now they don't use the mic, just a text stream purchased from Acoustic Magic Analytics Inc.
Cacti 9y ago
Why would they even bother? On the one hand, they don't need to, they already collect an incredible amount of data on everyone. And on the other, if they were to get caught listening, that's a gross violation of so many federal laws that it's possible Facebook wouldn't even exist the day after it was uncovered. The risk is incredibly high, and the payoff not that great. What we're seeing is simply that people fail to understand how much data they leak, and how effective Facebook is at putting it all together. They assume it must be magic, listening to their words, listening to their thoughts, but the reality is they don't need to, because we are _voluntarily_ telling them all this info already.
lloeki 9y ago
> "Just not true" Somehow this kind of phrasing turns several lights bright on my bullshit detector.

glenstein 9y ago

I was about to leave an extremely similar comment, but I was going to frame it in terms of the NSA "direct access" story. I got the impression from that story that immediate denials from tech companies, which seemed categorical, turned out to hinge on which magic words were used. In this case, when I read a sentence like "We don't use your microphone for ads" I end up doing that game where you re-read the sentence over and over and emphasize a different word each time, trying to guess which one is the magic word.

hexane360 9y ago
"We don't use your microphone for ads, your phone uses its microphone for our ads" /s
trophycase 9y ago
"We don't serve you advertisements through your microphone."
- zionic 9y ago
  My favorite is "WE" don't, but our partners do.
TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
We don't use your microphone for ads
zild3d 9y ago
"We don't use your microphone for ads", we use the microphone of whoever is near you based on location data

mikeash 9y ago

I’m sure they don’t use the microphone for ads. If they use the microphone, they surely use it to feed data into their profile of you which gets used for all sorts of things... like ads. One level of indirection is enough to make this denial technically true.

madeofpalk 9y ago

How could they respond to remove all doubt they're listening? Edit: https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11854860/facebook-smartphone-listening-eavesdrop-microphone-denial https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11854860/facebook-smartpho... In a statement issued on June 2nd [2016], Facebook said it "does not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed." That's pretty fucking clear to me. Original comment: If they had said something like "We don't use microphones to gather data to drive personalisation on users profiles" there would be comments here on HN complaining about corporate speak and how they didnt just flat out deny using it for advertising. Apps get busted for doing dodgy things all the time. The Facebook app has been decompiled and network traffic inspected and studied so often that if this actually was true then it would have been proven by now. Instead, all we have is this weird 'survivorship bias' where one time someone said something out loud there was a tangentially related ad on FB. Today I was looking up bars in Budapest and found one on Google. I started looking at images, at the only one that loaded so far on the slow internet was of food. "Wow, Google knows me so well. All I care about right now is food and the first image it loads is of food" I said out loud to my friend. Eventually the internet caught up and the rest of the images that loaded were of food. It only showed me food photos (in a bar thats more known for its decoration and alcohol). Nothing more than a coincidence.

gt_ 9y ago
"We don't gather data using microphones"
- diego 9y ago
  But they most likely do. Voice corpora are extremely useful to train voice recognition systems, for one.
  - lovich 9y ago
    And people have a problem with it, and so the companies use Corp speak to try and make it seem like they aren't doing what you asked. The poster higher up asked how they could remove all doubt, and it's really easy. The problem is that they are trying to remove all doubt while continuing to do business as usual

noonespecial 9y ago

I just assume that they hire a 3rd party to do it and just incorporate the processed "external data source". Now they don't use the mic, just a text stream purchased from Acoustic Magic Analytics Inc.

Cacti 9y ago

Why would they even bother? On the one hand, they don't need to, they already collect an incredible amount of data on everyone. And on the other, if they were to get caught listening, that's a gross violation of so many federal laws that it's possible Facebook wouldn't even exist the day after it was uncovered. The risk is incredibly high, and the payoff not that great. What we're seeing is simply that people fail to understand how much data they leak, and how effective Facebook is at putting it all together. They assume it must be magic, listening to their words, listening to their thoughts, but the reality is they don't need to, because we are _voluntarily_ telling them all this info already.

lloeki 9y ago

> "Just not true" Somehow this kind of phrasing turns several lights bright on my bullshit detector.