Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

48 点作者 momeunier超过 7 年前

For weeks and months, there has been the same conspiracy about Facebook listening to their 2 Billion users to serve targeted ads.Countless questionable youtube videos, reports of all sorts by people who have no idea what it would entail to perform such a stunt on a large scale.After googling extensively, I still can't find any real scientific proof that it's either true or on true. It's mostly about some people relating their funny experience and mostly about Facebook saying "No we don't"Anyone familiar with Charles Proxy would know it's pretty easy to spy on the traffic going from an app to the backend. I work in Facebook advertisement and I've been doing it for various reasons already many times. I've never seen anything that would like a speech datagram, but then again, it wasn't what I was looking for when listening to the Facebook app.I would expect that given Google and Apple should be scrupulous about what the Facebook app does and doesn't, there should be a host of people who've been looking into that urban legend a number of time. Also the data plan of many people would simply explode too quickly for this to be true.With my colleagues, we've been wondering if it would be possible to rely on a local text-to-speech engine running on the phone. Needless to say that would drain the battery pretty quickly and the dataset needed in the app would be pretty huge... But is it? And would it really drain the battery? More than Pokemon or the Facebook app...?Who among you guys is a seasoned user of Charles and could run the experiment a tad further?

26 条评论

ricardobeat超过 7 年前

The lack of actual responses to your question here is a bit entertaining. "Of course they are not", "it's not possible", "iOS/Android is safe" etc. Almost like it is offensive to ask.I can't help but remember my incredulous reaction to ECHELON in the 90s and how it turned out to be not just true, but much worse than the original "conspiracy theory".A very relevant example: <a href="https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/36569" rel="nofollow">https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/36569</a>

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godelski超过 7 年前

My answer to this has always been "Why would they need to?" It drains battery, it sends a lot of data, and would be a huge scandal. But you are already telling them where you are, who you're with, and they have information about your credit, etc.Instead, I've been using this as an opportunity to teach people why big data is scary. In the past people often said they didn't care that Google could, and do, read their emails. Often responding with the ironic "I have nothing to hide" quote, or "I don't care, my stuff is boring." This pervasive rumor, of Facebook/Google always listening, has facilitated this conversation immensely. I've been able to better explain it to many who are not tech or statistic savvy in the least.I don't believe Facebook is listening, because they don't need to.

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joshfraser超过 7 年前

I was at lunch with a couple friends and they were making fun of Juicero. I hadn't heard of it at this point. I didn't look it up on my phone, but at least one of my friends did. That afternoon I started seeing Juicero ads non-stop on Facebook. Was Facebook listening or did they connect the dots that my phone was in the same restaurant as friends who were Googling Juicero and figured we had been talking about it?Another time I was on a road trip with a friend, driving through a food desert. We were talking about our food options -- stuff we never eat like McDonalds, Wendys, etc. Guess what pops up on Facebook moments later? An ad for Wendys! Were they listening? Or did they just connect the dots that it was lunch time, that we'd been driving for a long time without eating & that Wendys was one of the only options around?In both instances, there were non-microphone explanations but creepy/impressive nonetheless.

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maxfurman超过 7 年前

Every one of my friends, including me, has a story about how they used a phrase in conversation that they don't typically say ("Renaissance Faire" in my case, which I have never attended and generally have no interest in), and then seeing an ad for it on either Facebook or Instagram right afterwards. This is purely anecdotal, of course, but it is creepy anyway. The only way to stop this "myth", if it is one, is for Facebook to stop doing whatever it is they do instead of listening to us to get to this unnerving level of targeting.

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Cenk超过 7 年前

The excellent "Reply All" podcast had an episode about it: <a href="https://gimletmedia.com/episode/109-facebook-spying/" rel="nofollow">https://gimletmedia.com/episode/109-facebook-spying/</a>

mikeash超过 7 年前

It’s trivial to debunk by observing that many people who say they’ve experienced this are using iPhones. On iOS, apps can’t silently use the microphone in the background. A background app using the microphone is always accompanied by a red status bar saying that they’re doing it. This doesn’t show Facebook listening, therefore we can conclude that they’re not, at least on iOS.It’s possible they might be doing it on Android, but once you show that a lot of people are imagining things, it’s a small leap to thinking that they all are.

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jesseddy超过 7 年前

All I know is that things that I have talked about with my phone around 1-2 days prior, I suddenly see ads for. Things I did not Google or mention on the Internet. In one case I started seeing ads on Instagram for a product that I posted a photo of and did not even include the product's name in the post. Dishwashing liquid that I would never even buy (I'm not the target user so it wasn't target marketing).It's all a little too much for me to believe it's a coincidence.

nxc18超过 7 年前

The burden of proof falls on the people making claims that facebook is listening. Absent that, it seems extremely unlikely that facebook is recording audio and no one has posted in outrage about it - streaming audio would be quite conspicuous.Even more troubling than audio recording in this case is that facebook has so much information about you that they don’t need it. The idea that facebook knows the approximate content of your conversations/thoughts to the point that it seems like they’re listening should be deeply troubling.If facebook knows the content of your conversation, seemingly before or at the same time that you have it, what does that mean for free will? Agency? (Obviously free will is bs, but most people I’ve talked to refuse to acknowledge that - is this a wake-up call?)What other predictions can they make? With the level of information given to facebook (browsing history, precise location, when you’re asleep and when you’re awake, and possibly much more, like your cell account info and the TV you watch) they can build a very complete picture of your life, and may even know things about yourself that you don’t know.Of course, when facebook is actively listening to you (e.g. for facebook messenger) all bets are off. They already read your conversations anyway, so it’s not a far jump.

pcl超过 7 年前

I don’t think FB is listening because all the stories I’ve heard can be explained by their graph.I think it’s hard to debunk because people don’t recognize how powerful their knowledge graph is at this point, and simultaneously underestimate how hard general-purpose speech recognition is, even with studio-level audio setups. And especially to a non-programmer, I think it seems so much easier to just figure out speech recognition than to maintain a huge knowledge graph about billions of people, their connections (explicit and implicit), their current whereabouts, the sites they are visiting, and the text they literally give to Facebook in the form of messages etc. But of course, each one of those things is a tractable problem, and can progress independently of the others, until all of a sudden it’s so good it seems like they must be inside our heads, or at least listening.But here’s the thing: I think all that big data is actually waaaaay creepier. If they were just listening in and showing relevant ads, that’d be one thing. But instead they have all this data going back years, and can make all these inferences from the data. Just imagine what inferences could be made about non-advertising topics!

hyperbolejoe超过 7 年前

I proposed a thought to Reddit, but have no proof of its possibility either technically or practically.The people we talk with are generally the people we are connected with on social media. It's feasible to me that a conversation happens and someone in the group makes a search, which then maybe causes algorithms using location data to push those ads to people in that location.Further, what's being talked about is probably being talked about and searched by others in the area and/or with the same interests, so even if it isn't localized quite so much the possibility of what's being talked about to generate ads is heightened.Finally, there's the confirmation bias and recency bias at play. Once something is known or on mind, it's more likely to be noticed. They may have already had those ads coming in and only noticed them after talking about it. Or, the ads might have even caused the person to subconsiouciously think about the thing.The psychology at play in advertising is advanced.

wildanimal402超过 7 年前

"Facebook does not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed. Some recent articles have suggested that we must be listening to people’s conversations in order to show them relevant ads. This is not true. We show ads based on people’s interests and other profile information – not what you’re talking out loud about,” said Facebook in a statement last year. “We only access your microphone if you have given our app permission and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio. This might include recording a video or using an optional feature we introduced two years ago to include music or other audio in your status updates.”Source: <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2017/10/31/facebook-ads-microphone/#1f13abc3534d" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2017/10/31/faceboo...</a>

tkb608超过 7 年前

Facebook listening to their customer's concerns about privacy? Yes, that myth has been throughly debunked.

jesseddy超过 7 年前

Maybe local text-to-speech is not plausible given the heavy processing and battery drain. What if instead there is a list of words/brands being listened for; my phone is always listening for "OK, Google."

scarface74超过 7 年前

I can't speak for Android, but there are a number of precautions on iOS.The first one is that iOS gives users very fine grained control over what apps are allowed to use the microphone. It's not just a list of permissions, it asks specifically with a system dialogue box whether you want to allow an app to have permission.Second, the status bar turns a very obvious red color when an app is using the microphone when it's in the background.If FB was able to bypass both of those safeguards without Apple knowing, it would be a major story.

notatoad超过 7 年前

Install the facebook app on lineageOS, open up privacy guardian, and see for yourself exactly how often it uses your microphone. It's definitely not listening to everything you say.

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superbrama超过 7 年前

Without hard evidence (speech processing code, or evidence of the recordings over the wire), it’s reasonable to take the official account at face value. Frankly that account is far creepier. They’ve built AI so smart that it knows what you’re talking about.Think about it for a minute. Fb and others have so much data on people and have trained algos so well, even they don’t understand how they work so well. It’s not difficult to imagine this is the case; a computer, especially one with extensive data on the lifes, behaviors and thoughts of billions of people, is far smarter and better at predicting behavior than any human could.Scary is that it’s just the beginning. I fall squarely into the alarmist camp on the AI issue. Not now, but in the long run. One can see how this scenario with the fb ad microphone spying paranoia thats actually 1 million IQ AI flexing its muscle is but the beginning of a slippery slope.

chmike超过 7 年前

Facebook may only need to recognize a few keywords. The one that companies had payed for. It wouldn't be that many. An approximate recognition is good enough. So processing and data transmission could be small.As long as there is no uncontestable proof, the doubt must benefit Facebook.The testimonies are not uncontestbale proofs. Considering the million people uisng the facebook app, there will always be a small set of people who will see advertisement of what they just talked about. That is statistic. Some of these, understandably chocked, may be very vocal about it.We also know that people are payed to spread fake news and manipulate people. So I'm cautious. The truth is unknown, and the longer it takes to get uncontestable proofs, the less credible the listening thesis becomes.Facebook can't do much appart to let it rain. Open source is the way I would go. That is one way to calm down paranoid or conspirationist people.

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Ninn超过 7 年前

I believe that facebook in no way can accomplish this at scale without getting caught.Even so, i recon that your approach to test them is flawed, instead you should either of the following:1. Reverse engineer the applications that has access to actually capture audio from the microphone to start with, i.e. the Messenger app on android.2. Create a kernel module/microphone driver, which records when and which applications actually access the microphone. If the facebook apps are actually found accessing the microphone outside of a user initiated scope, one could bring the experiment to the next level and record the same audio recoding and save it for later review.I recon 1. has already been done by several researchers, especially in relation to bug bounty programs etc. but that doesnt really mean that you should try to do it again for your own research.

burningion超过 7 年前

I think this is really something even more nefarious than background listening.Facebook and Google are using machine learning and massive data sets about the mental worlds we inhabit when we think nobody is looking.And these algorithms are optimizing for clicks in so many vectors of psychological need and vulnerability that it’s already become incomprehensible for how they can know the things we haven’t yet understood we will think about.They know about our conversations because they know the searches of the people we talk to, and what they’re thinking about. What will be on the top of their mind.There’s nothing to go looking for or debunk. It’s just the next step in the data collection experiment.I’m guessing they’ll need to tone down the effectiveness of ad targeting, if they haven’t already.

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jdblair超过 7 年前

Reply All, an entertaining podcast from Gimlet Media, tackled this topic a few weeks ago [0]. They explained the myth, explained how Facebook's advertising an be explained without surreptitious listening. In the last part they called believers in the myth and tried to convince them otherwise.[0] <a href="https://gimletmedia.com/episode/109-facebook-spying/" rel="nofollow">https://gimletmedia.com/episode/109-facebook-spying/</a>

Balgair超过 7 年前

Anyone with a heavy accent have these 'coincidences'? I imagine that a thick accent (Scots,etc) would be much harder to have this happen to.

enraged_camel超过 7 年前

I personally find the alternative far creepier: that Facebook can figure you out and predict your behaviors even if it doesn’t actively listen.

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retube超过 7 年前

is there any evidence cameras are used? I've recently been engaged in two activities in front of my phone and got scarily relevant ads that I've never seen before, and are can not be part of my graph. I am not on social networks and none of my browsing or search would be vaguely relevant.

kirykl超过 7 年前

It’s really amazing that people think Facebook is listening. It’s like wearing a name tag and assuming someone is psychic when they call your name.

timthelion超过 7 年前

This is pretty much impossible to debunk because:A) Given Facebooks policy of A/B testing, it almost certainly isn't listening all the time.and more importantly,B) Now that everyone is talking about it, Facebook would have been stupid NOT to turn it off at least for now.

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paulcole超过 7 年前

The people who believe it’s listening would never accept even the most ironclad “proof” that it’s not. This is a hallmark of conspiracy theorists.So why bother?

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26 条评论

ricardobeat超过 7 年前

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godelski超过 7 年前

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joshfraser超过 7 年前

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maxfurman超过 7 年前

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Cenk超过 7 年前

The excellent "Reply All" podcast had an episode about it: <a href="https://gimletmedia.com/episode/109-facebook-spying/" rel="nofollow">https://gimletmedia.com/episode/109-facebook-spying/</a>

mikeash超过 7 年前

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jesseddy超过 7 年前

nxc18超过 7 年前

pcl超过 7 年前

hyperbolejoe超过 7 年前

wildanimal402超过 7 年前

tkb608超过 7 年前

Facebook listening to their customer's concerns about privacy? Yes, that myth has been throughly debunked.

jesseddy超过 7 年前

scarface74超过 7 年前

notatoad超过 7 年前

Install the facebook app on lineageOS, open up privacy guardian, and see for yourself exactly how often it uses your microphone. It's definitely not listening to everything you say.

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superbrama超过 7 年前

chmike超过 7 年前

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Ninn超过 7 年前

burningion超过 7 年前

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jdblair超过 7 年前

Balgair超过 7 年前

Anyone with a heavy accent have these 'coincidences'? I imagine that a thick accent (Scots,etc) would be much harder to have this happen to.

enraged_camel超过 7 年前

I personally find the alternative far creepier: that Facebook can figure you out and predict your behaviors even if it doesn’t actively listen.

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retube超过 7 年前

kirykl超过 7 年前

It’s really amazing that people think Facebook is listening. It’s like wearing a name tag and assuming someone is psychic when they call your name.

timthelion超过 7 年前

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paulcole超过 7 年前

The people who believe it’s listening would never accept even the most ironclad “proof” that it’s not. This is a hallmark of conspiracy theorists.So why bother?

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