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170

In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention (futurism.com)

submitted 2 months ago by 0x815@feddit.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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The original article is behind a paywall at 404media.

In a pitch deck to prospective customers, one of Facebook's alleged marketing partners explained how it listens to users' smartphone microphones and advertises to them accordingly.

As 404 Media reports based on documents leaked to its reporters, the TV and radio news giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims that its so-called "Active Listening" software uses artificial intelligence (AI) to "capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations."

"Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers," the deck continues.

In the same slideshow, CMG counted Facebook, Google, and Amazon as clients of its "Active Listening" service. After 404 reached out to Google about its partnership, the tech giant removed the media group from the site for its "Partners Program," which prompted Meta, the owner of Facebook, to admit that it is reviewing CMG to see if it violates any of its terms of service.

An Amazon spokesperson, meanwhile, told 404 that its Ads arm "has never worked with CMG on this program and has no plans to do so. The spox added, confusingly, that if one of its marketing partners violates its rules, the company will take action.

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[–] GooberEar@lemmy.wtf 32 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Earlier this year one of my relatives came for an extended visit. We were discussing what we might have for dinner that week and both of us were on board for the same ingredients, such as asparagus. My relative was also happy with the video services I'm currently subscribed to because I have a couple options they don't have at home, so they were telling me about how they were rewatching some older Harrison Ford movies. And then there's the age-old (or old age) conversations about our current health issues.

In the following days, my relative kept bringing up the fact that their phone and tablet are listening to our conversations. Proof? After we had the food conversation, their news feed was suddenly filled with asparagus recipes. They were also getting ads for more Harrison Ford content on the service that they don't subscribe to. And to top it off, they were seeing ads for a prescription my dog takes but that they had never even heard of before our conversation the day or two before. Isn't it obvious? They're listening to our conversations.

To me this was easily explainable by Occam's Razor. All our devices are on the same IP address. After we discussed the asparagus I went online that night and did a search for asparagus recipes. And when we were talking about my dog's health condition, I used my phone to look up the active ingredient because I couldn't recall off the top of my head. Plus, when Hulu or whatever random service sees you're watching a lot of Harrison Ford movies, it makes sense they'd advertise others you might like.

That makes a lot more sense and is a lot less complicated of an explanation than "our devices are always recording our conversations and uploading them to the internet as a basis to send us advertisements".

Sure it's technically feasible, but if it were happening, surely they would be a lot more incontrovertible proof than a questionable and likely misinterpreted news source that seems to be more of a "sly" advertisement for a tech solution that the big players aren't actually using.

[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 14 points 2 months ago

This.

If they were listening, that means they'd have to transmit that voice data, then they'd have to use models to understand that data, then do all that shit - I think there would be a ton of evidence of that (at the very least, someone would have done some verified packet sniffing).

There's a lot easier ways to get the same job done, and there's solutions to it

[–] Lifebandit666@feddit.uk 10 points 2 months ago

I had a friend bring up this very topic this weekend and I replied "What would be more creepy and more likely is that the ad giants have algorithms for working out what you'll buy that are that good that they know what you want before you do and you're just noticing how good it is"