Whistleblower Testifies Facebook Listens to You EVERYWHERE—Here’s How To Stop It
We now know what Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, puts tape over both his camera and his microphone—his own app is able to listen to you at home and at work.
By Matt Agorist
TheFreeThoughtProject.com
March 28, 2018
In June of 2016, as Instagram celebrated reaching 500 million monthly users, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, posted a photo of himself enjoying the moment. The photo quickly went viral, not because people like Zuckerberg, but because it showed the owner of a company—that requests permission to record through your camera and microphone—with tape over both his camera and microphone. Now, we know why.
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christoper Wylie, appearing before a committee of British MPs on Tuesday, delivered a bombshell testimony noting that Facebook has the ability to spy on all of its users in their homes and offices.
Wylie is testifying before the British parliament as it investigates the role of the now infamous Cambridge Analytica firm in the Brexit election. The chairman of the committee, MP Damian Collins came right out and asked Wylie if Facebook has the ability to listen to what people are talking about in order to better target them with ads.
“There’s been various speculation about the fact that Facebook can, through the Facebook app on your smartphone, listen in to what people are talking about and discussing and using that to prioritize the advertising as well,” Collins said. “Other people would say, no, they don’t think it’s possible. It’s just that the Facebook system is just so good at predicting what you’re interested in that it can guess.”
As TFTP has previously reported, Facebook has admitted that its app has the capability to listen to what is happening around it. Wylie went on to confirm this and put it into shocking perspective, illustrating that Facebook can listen to you to find out where you are.
“On a comment about using audio and processing audio, you can use it for, my understanding generally of how companies use it… not just Facebook, but generally other apps that pull audio, is for environmental context,” Wylie said. “So if, for example, you have a television playing versus if you’re in a busy place with a lot of people talking versus a work environment.” He clarified, “It’s not to say they’re listening to what you’re saying. It’s not natural language processing. That would be hard to scale. But to understand the environmental context of where you are to improve the contextual value of the ad itself” is possible.
Wylie continued: “There’s audio that could be useful just in terms of are you in an office environment, are you outside, are you watching TV?”
Naturally, Facebook denies that it uses a user’s microphone to show them ads.
“I run ads product at Facebook. We don’t – and have never – used your microphone for ads. Just not true,” Rob Goldman, vice president of ads products at Facebook, tweeted on October 2017. “That includes Facebook-owned Instagram,” he added.
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