My Favorite Facebook Conspiracy Might be True
Despite Facebook’s denials, plenty of users are convinced the social network is listening to their conversations. It’s so popular a theory, with so many first-hand accounts of being met with Ads after conversation it’s very believable.
It’s interesting because this wildly popular conspiracy theory that Facebook listens to your private phone calls isn’t so hard to imagine. If Alexa and Google Home do it, why wouldn’t Facebook via its apps?
No matter what the tech giant says people just aren’t convinced it’s not true.
Facebook can handle any privacy scandal because for old people, it’s basically a communications utility.
Of course, Facebook has repeatedly denied doing as much.
Many of us have heard stories about the social network eavesdropping on conversations through the mics on smartphones in order to deliver more precisely targeted ads. But we don’t give it a second thought. Until it happens to us.
Despite those denials from Facebook, and evidence from experts to the contrary, the belief is widely held and seemingly unshakable. If Google snoops and tags our E-commerce purchase confirmation on Gmail among many many other things, why wouldn’t Facebook use whatever advantage it can to maintain its duopoly advertising power over us?
If you’re feeling paranoid, you’re not alone — but are you crazy?
The belief that Facebook is listening to users through their smartphones, then serving ads based on that spying, is extremely pernicious, or whatever you want to call it! It’s nearly ubiquitous to assume that Silicon Valley companies exploit us in every possible way for profit.
For me to imagine that Facebook, Google, Apple or Microsoft really cares about privacy is beyond belief, because these are data companies. Their business model is all about harvesting data and training it with AI.
For years, people have speculated that Facebook and Facebook Messenger use your phone’s microphone to listen to your conversations and send you targeted adverts based on your IRL chats. If that hasn’t been happening since 2016, it will definitely be happening in 2021, in more ways than one.
In the smart home, on your phone or in other ways (earbuds for example).
Back in June 2016, Facebook issued a statement: “Facebook Does Not Use Your Phone’s Microphone for Ads or News Feed Stories,” is its headline. Three years ago this is what they said:
However as advertising gets upgraded with 4G, IoT, and personalized streams of data, voice and voice AI interfaces will be a major part of that. So will eye tracking in VR and a host of other scenarios. We don’t even “search” in the same way, many of us use voice increasingly for search itself, and apps instead of websites, and Amazon instead of Google for products.
Maybe the reason Facebook didn’t care about having a great smart assistant product or smart home speaker and Portal-like device way sooner was because they’ve already been spying on us via our phones — it would make sense at least.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg even told Congress the company doesn’t engage in the practice. Experts and analysts say Facebook doesn’t need our conversations to target ads effectively. Think again, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t that dumb.
Facebook more or less should be regulated like tobacco companies were. Digital dopamine has done enough damage, Facebook should be broken up in spite of Sheryl Sandburg boldly proclaiming on CNBC that Chinese companies won’t be broken up (as if that’s somehow a defense for Facebook’s behavior?).
Countless users say their phone’s microphone has been hijacked by Facebook to target ads. Are we to discount so many personal stories of this? Just because these personal accounts are anecdotal stories, does that discredit them?
Facebook’s reputation as a privacy protector is basically dirt. Facebook is patient zero for the arrival of a surveillance architecture and surveillance data capitalism that we don’t even fully understand in 2019.
Even if Facebook doesn’t eavesdrop, the pervasive belief that it listens to us adds to its reputation for poor privacy practices.
It will turn out that Google and Facebook’s aggressiveness on our data is what triggered the rise of Surveillance capitalism that will be so pervasive and so limiting to human freedom it could trap us in decades of a digital dark age. If these two companies started it, companies like Amazon, Huawei, Alibaba and others will complete the circle.
It’s been three years since NBC mentioned the possibility of Facebook spying on our phone conversations, and 3 years later we aren’t any clearer on this issue.
How is that for accountability? Cambridge Analytica and dozens of scandals since are nothing in comparison to this.
The fact that the conspiracy theory lives on is a testament to the massive machine Facebook has set up to hoover up your data and exploit it to deliver targeted ads.
The theory lives on because Mark Zuckerberg has nearly total control and exactly zero oversight. He has no boss and Facebook isn’t even audited, regulated or required to hold to certain standards.
I rest my case and will leave you with this video.
My Favorite Facebook Conspiracy Might be True
Research & References of My Favorite Facebook Conspiracy Might be True|A&C Accounting And Tax Services
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