englishhippy
Vital Youth Team
Professor Kelli Burns claims to have tested a hunch that the social media giant's mobile application is listening to everything you say and providing ads based on that content, and discovered it was true.
The mass communication prof at the University of South Florida, with the help of telly journalists, has verified the fact that Facebook's mobile app grants itself access to your microphone by talking about a holiday she wanted to take.
"I'm really interested in going on an African safari. I think it'd be wonderful to ride in one of those jeeps," she said out loud with her phone in hand. According to the NBC report, under a minute later, the first story in her Facebook feed was about a safari. And a car ad soon appeared on her page.
Of course, the "evidence" is purely anecdotal, and as soon as the report spread, Burns has walked back her claim, saying that she may have been searching online for the same things she said out loud – in which case Facebook may be reacting to other data it has picked up on her habits.
It may also be worth noting that before Professor Burns became an academic, she spent seven years in corporate marketing and the course she teaches is the "principles of public relations."
Facebook's app access to a phone's microphone is fact, and, critically, it now appears to be turned on by default, meaning you have to dig into your phone's innards to disable it.
This is not the first time Facebook has faced this charge: last year it was also accused of listening to people and selling ads in response. It said at the time that users had to turn the microphone on. But that may have changed subsequently, since most users find their microphones are on as a default for the Facebook app.
The mass communication prof at the University of South Florida, with the help of telly journalists, has verified the fact that Facebook's mobile app grants itself access to your microphone by talking about a holiday she wanted to take.
"I'm really interested in going on an African safari. I think it'd be wonderful to ride in one of those jeeps," she said out loud with her phone in hand. According to the NBC report, under a minute later, the first story in her Facebook feed was about a safari. And a car ad soon appeared on her page.
Of course, the "evidence" is purely anecdotal, and as soon as the report spread, Burns has walked back her claim, saying that she may have been searching online for the same things she said out loud – in which case Facebook may be reacting to other data it has picked up on her habits.
It may also be worth noting that before Professor Burns became an academic, she spent seven years in corporate marketing and the course she teaches is the "principles of public relations."
Facebook's app access to a phone's microphone is fact, and, critically, it now appears to be turned on by default, meaning you have to dig into your phone's innards to disable it.
This is not the first time Facebook has faced this charge: last year it was also accused of listening to people and selling ads in response. It said at the time that users had to turn the microphone on. But that may have changed subsequently, since most users find their microphones are on as a default for the Facebook app.
