Is Facebook Watching You?
Recently, there's been outrage over Facebook maybe using voice recognition software to listen in on your conversations and show you ads based on things you've talked about. Users have been complaining on twitter, coming up with reasonings behind this, and even making YouTube videos to prove that Facebook is listening to us.
This conspiracy theory is nothing new.
The whole idea that Facebook is listening to our conversations started way back in 2015, when a group of individuals saw ads on their social media pages about things they’ve just talked about in real life, whether it’s seeing adverts for cat food after talking about cats or travel agency ads after talking about taking a vacation. After Facebook addressed it in a tweet saying that they were not using the microphones to detect what people were saying after users started to post their suspicions about it on Reddit and Twitter, the theory still refused to die. It has resurfaced two years later. Last week, Facebook had to tweet again stressing that they were not listening to our conversations to settle the situation.
I first thought about the about the technical capabilities tied to this theory. One must think whether the app is physically capable of listening in on us. The app has to 1) listen to a conversation from your mobile device; 2) identify specific terms or phrases; and 3) funnel those interests and propensities to audiences for ad targeting. This is very technically difficult because natural language is hard to filter, on top of all the ambient noise and static. I don’t believe Facebook would go through all the trouble of programming and coding a software system that can track and detect words that we say in our everyday conversations, mainly because Facebook doesn’t need to.
Facebook already has all the information it needs for good ad targeting - they know who we are, our names, where we’re from, where we go to school, how old we are, what pages we follow and what we like. They know our political views and where we stand on the spectrum, all our electronic devices, our family, and what we view on other websites (with cookies, pixel-tags, Iframe, etc.). They can also track where we are through location services. So why would they need to track what we say on a daily basis if they already have tons of information on us?
Even if Facebook could - and is, listening to us, so what? Sure this may be a breach of privacy, but it’s not like Facebook is trying to see what kind of gossip you’re talking about with your BFF or an argument you have with your parents. The words you say that are linked with Facebook is simply put into an algorithm that spits out an ad that you might be interested in. Though the thought might be scary that Facebook knows that you have two cats through the conversations you’ve been having, all they are doing with the information is that they are trying to target specific ads that pop up on your feed to increase business for many companies. That’s it. And frankly there is no problem with that. Personalisation is extremely useful for ad targeting and it’s always better to see an ad that you can relate to then an ad for a service you would have completely no interest in.
I think what the main issue’s about; critics believe it’s an invasion of privacy, while others view it as a business opportunity - but at the end of the day, signing up for Facebook means you are giving up your privacy rights. By using the internet and liking or clicking something, you are acknowledging the fact that companies will use this information to try to sell you their products. After all, this is all for the benefit of the consumer.