Technology

Techbros really went full police state just to deliver ads I wouldn't click on straight into my adblocker

Recent versions of Android make it much more difficult for a background app to access the microphone. There will be a notification if any background app is using the mic or camera.

"Meta does not use your phone's microphone for ads and we've been public about this for years," the statement read.

Meanwhile:

"Meta does not use your phone's microphone for ads and we've been public about this for years," the statement read. "We are reaching out to CMG to get them to clarify that their program is not based on Meta data."

Ah, yes. The tried and true defense of "we've denied it for years and continue to deny it" must be credible coming from a source as trustworthy as Facebook. I hear they're planning on holding a press conference to pinky swear they're not listening to the microphone they demand access to in order to show you ads that make them money.

They really need to name-and-shame beyond "Facebook Partner" considering we're talking about fucking Cox Media Group.

Dildos, lots of dildos! I'm just gonna repeat that while I'm driving to see if I start getting Google ads for dildos.

It remains funny to me that futurism.com became mostly about covering the dystopia we live in.

I am so numb to outrage that this just seems... Meh. What happened to me.

Most of the non tech people reaction

I remember reading some time ago that "the idea (of phones listening to everything you say to serve ads) makes no economic sense, because it'd be too expensive to run"

Looks like it actually isn't "too expensive" to run in the end.

What's the last "bombshell scandal that would ruin a company" that actually ruined a company?

This is why I don't like the push of everything needing an app. I sure do wish people in congress cared about this type of privacy issues the way they did Tiktok.

I highly doubt that they actually managed to do this, at least any time recently.

As another commenter noted, Android alerts you when an app is accessing the microphone in the background, and it would also absolutely destroy the phones battery life more than the FB app currently does. The only way that we have the "Hey Google/Siri" command prompts active all the time is with custom hardware not available to the apps, and certainly not without Android knowing about it.

Maybe they actively listen while the app is open, but even then I think recent Android/iOS would let you know about that.

These companies absolutely do use your microphone to listen.

My wife and I have tested this and you can too.

Have a conversation near your phones about purchasing something offbeat. We used a kitchen garbage disposal in our test. Talk about them for a few minutes, about needing to buy one, different brands, etc.

Almost immediately you'll be served garbage disposal adds.

A market agency claiming they do something of the sort isn’t proof that conversations are being monitored en masse. Security researchers can and probably have tested for this and found no clear, verifiable evidence, otherwise we would have known. Also, this stuff can be blocked at the OS level and I find it hard to imagine (esp. without solid proof) that Google or Apple would jeopardize their reputations to this extent by enabling such unauthorized listening in on users’ conversations.

Of course it’s good to keep watching this space but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.