What The Tech: Are social media platforms listening to you?
BY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Technology Reporter
Is your phone eavesdropping on you? It’s a conspiracy theory that’s been floating around for years.
What about social media platforms? Instagram’s CEO is now speaking out.
It’s suspicious when something you just talked about shows up in your social media feeds. It happens, and it’s creepy.
Say you’re out with friends and someone mentions cowboy boots. Later, ads for cowboy boots start popping up everywhere. No wonder people think they’re listening.
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri says it isn’t.
“We do not use the phone’s microphone to eavesdrop on you,” says Mosseri.
So why does it happen? Mosseri gives a few reasons.
“You might have actually seen that before you had the conversation and not realized it. Maybe you actually tapped on something that was related or even searched for that product online on a website maybe before you had the conversation,” says Mosseri.
But people swear seeing an ad having never searched for product, only after talking about it. But here’s where things get really interesting.
You were talking to someone about a product and they before had actually looked for or searched for that product.
Let’s say I have coffee with my friend john, and let’s say he searched for these caps called a scally which we talk about. Even though I never searched for them online. When I get home, ads for scally caps pop up on my Facebook and Instagram feeds.
And since Meta knows when friends are together it can push ads to everyone, based on just one person’s interests.
Just in case you talked about it. And using location, Instagram and Facebook know when friends are sitting next to each other.
Plus, if they are listening we’d see a green light when the microphone is on, and the battery will die faster. Still, that won’t satisfy a lot of people who are convinced the phones are listening to us.
