Suspicions that Facebook (and associated apps like
Instagram) are secretly recording audio through phone microphones in
order to better target ads have refused to die, despite official denials dating all the way back to 2016. In today’s Senate hearing, Mark Zuckerberg addressed the urban legend yet again, issuing an absolute denial.
“Yes or no, does Facebook use audio obtained from mobile
devices to enrich personal information about users?” asked Sen. Gary
Peters (D-MI).
“No,” Zuckerberg responded adamantly.
He went on to elaborate that Facebook does have access to
audio when people record videos on their devices for Facebook, but
otherwise it doesn’t access your microphone.
“Hopefully that will dispel a lot of what I’ve been
hearing,” said Peters, before moving on with his questioning. The
senator said that he had heard the conspiracy theory from many people,
including his staffers.
Zuckerberg’s full answer follows below:
Senator, let me get clear on this, you’re
talking about this conspiracy theory that gets passed around that we
listen to what’s going on on your microphone and use that for ads. To be
clear, we do allow people to take videos on their devices and share
those, and videos have audio, so we do while you’re taking a video,
record that and use that to make the service is better by making sure
your videos have audio, but I think that is pretty clear. But I just
wanted to make sure I was exhaustive there.
Zuckerberg tries to cover his mess but doesn't seem like he is on the ledge.
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