
Ask HN: How to explain / 'prove' to friends FB is not listening via phone - joshdance
Lots of my friends believe FB is listening to them, and serving them ads based on their conversations IRL.<p>Any good articles or studies showing this is not the case?
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Lordarminius
Your question is biased because you assume FB / Google / OEM manufacturers and
whoknowswhoelse are not listening in on private conversations. A lot of people
think they are. It is unwise to discount their suspicions

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natdempk
There was a pretty decent Reply All podcast about this:
[https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hlwr/109-is-
facebo...](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hlwr/109-is-facebook-
spying-on-you)

In short, you can't. People want to believe what they want to believe. Maybe
if you have someone receptive you can explain the absurd number of
correlations advertisers can make from your profile, and the fact that a guess
only has to be right once for it to see like Facebook is listening to you
while advertisers make tens or hundreds of guesses every day. No one wants to
hear this explanation though, so I wouldn't expect to convince anyone. :)

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tonteldoos
A quick google suggests there are just as many articles saying that it IS the
case (especially when you broaden it to include Google/Amazon/etc).

Some have pretty convincing anecdata backing up the theory.

I'm not sure that you can prove/disprove it, without actual insider
knowledge...

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k4ch0w
Buy a burner phone with cash in a different city that you live in. Install
Facebook. Start a Netflix binge session show that is purely in Chinese or
Japanese. Do nothing else then open a url with a lot of ads.

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thedevindevops
Brace yourself:
[https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update](https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update)

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PerfectElement
You can try to use some common sense. The risk of a security researcher
finding out about it, or of a whistleblower coming out is too high. Something
like that would not pass a risk-benefit analysis in any stretch of the
imagination, specially for a company that already collects huge amounts of
data from their users.

I don't think this is something Facebook would be able to come back from.

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muzani
It actually seems easier to prove how to do this. I might actually hack
together an app that listens in on conversations and transcribes it to profile
a user. And then demonstrate how hard or easy it is.

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tjkrusinski
Try saying the name of various products/brands out loud and then documenting
if you see ads for those products?

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HNLurker2
Haha so relatable. Do you work for Facebook?

