Facebook also listening in on converstations

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

 

Yes, yet another one of these topics. 

 

Like all the other tech giants, Facebook apparently hired third-party contractors to transcribe audio recordings.  These recordings included plenty of random stuff, arguments etc. 

The difference with the others is that this are Messenger conversations, so the people actively recorded the audio instead of a device randomly picking it up.  Still, I'm pretty sure that most of the users had no idea that anyone apart from the recipient would hear the audio.

 

Quote

Facebook Inc. has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, according to people with knowledge of the work.

The work has rattled the contract employees, who are not told where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained.

 

They’re hearing Facebook users’ conversations, sometimes with vulgar content, but do not know why Facebook needs them transcribed, the people said.

 

Facebook has already stopped doing this after the others came under fire for it.  They also claim that the users whose voice chats were transcribed chose that option in Facebook's Messenger app. 

I don't use Facebook so I can not verify the default position of this option, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's on by default and people simply weren't aware what it actually did.  Much like the others, they were deliberately vague about everything.

 

Quote

The Facebook data-use policy includes no mention of audio. It does, however, say Facebook will collect “content, communications and other information you provide” when users “message or communicate with others.”

Facebook says its “systems automatically process content and communications you and others provide to analyze context and what’s in them.” It includes no mention of other human beings screening the content.

In a list of “types of third parties we share information with,” Facebook doesn’t mention a transcription team, but vaguely refers to “vendors and service providers who support our business” by “analyzing how our products are used.”

 

Source : Bloomberg

 

Another day, another data scandal.  Or is it "Another day, another Facebook scandal"? 

I guess nobody is surprised at this anymore.  Everyone is doing whatever the hell they want with your data and you have almost no say in it. 

The only thing you as the user can do is not to use these companies' products and make it as hard as possible for them to create a shadow profile on you too. 

[imreloadin]

How are people even surprised by this anymore?

I thought it was pretty much common knowledge that Facebook, Google, Apple, etc all listen in on conversations that they aren't "supposed to"...

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

12 minutes ago, imreloadin said:

How are people even surprised by this anymore?

I thought it was pretty much common knowledge that Facebook, Google, Apple, etc all listen in on conversations that they aren't "supposed to"...

I wonder if Tesla records where you're driving... I can totally see that being true. 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

14 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

I wonder if Tesla records where you're driving... I can totally see that being true.

Teslas log every button you push, how hard you press the pedals etc.  The company can access that data at any given moment, and has done so whenever users reported strange behavior or blamed the car for a fender bender.   

[Flying Sausages]

46 minutes ago, imreloadin said:

How are people even surprised by this anymore?

I thought it was pretty much common knowledge that Facebook, Google, Apple, etc all listen in on conversations that they aren't "supposed to"...

Government is also watching us and listening us through their " bird " drones. Bird is not real.

[Arika]

colour me abso-fucking-lutey gobsmacked

[Drak3]

Just now, Arika S said:

gobsmacked

Is that some kind of Godsmack parody band?

[Crunchy Dragon]

49 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

I wonder if Tesla records where you're driving... I can totally see that being true. 

As far as I know, Google does it via Maps as well.

[D13H4RD]

Wow, who would have guessed

 

A major social networking corporation known for many privacy violations has made yet another one... 

[Delicieuxz]

3 hours ago, imreloadin said:

How are people even surprised by this anymore?

I thought it was pretty much common knowledge that Facebook, Google, Apple, etc all listen in on conversations that they aren't "supposed to"...

And Microsoft, and Amazon.

 

Microsoft might have been the first to be doing it and the influencer who got all the other tech giants to do it because Microsoft stated they were doing it, through PR speak, pretty much since Windows 10 released in 2015. Microsoft are also monitoring the readable contents of people's emails and documents that are sent through Microsoft's servers.

 

Tech forums, especially LTT, had many people who ridiculed the claims of it as being tin-foil hat conspiracies. But I think that anyone with an appreciable level of smarts rather than smug, dogmatic belief in an innocence of habitually psychopathic corporations, in contradiction of their very own words, should have realized it was happening.

 

But, a lot of people didn't. Those people, due to their dismissiveness and denials of what is a real and dangerous matter, are partly responsible for things progressing to this point because they were the enablers who gave those companies a free pass by sending out the signals that it isn't a big or serious deal and that there won't be public opposition to it, allowing data-selling corporations to get the foothold they now have.

 

What was formerly the US government's surveillance program called PRISM has simply morphed and been made much more subtle by dropping the name, while being vastly expanded and also normalized. The data that Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc, harvest, which they all compile into non-anonymous (per the actual definition of anonymous) virtual profiles of each person, is being shared with each other and also the US government to create comprehensive virtual profiles of every person, giving those companies, and most of all the US government a god-view over society.

 

 

3 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

I wonder if Tesla records where you're driving... I can totally see that being true. 

 

2 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

As far as I know, Google does it via Maps as well.

Anything that harvests data is being reviewed by people who are looking for ways to make money from that data. All of Amazon's things like keypads, security cameras, in-home delivery services, pharmaceutical, grocery, and all other purchases, voice assistants, website page views and searches, are sending valuable data to Amazon, who then shares it with the CIA and NSA to broaden their virtual profile and tracking of each person who uses those things. Expecting that all other tech giants aren't doing the same thing is like believing that if those companies' executives were offered $10 billion (or in the case of Amazon, $53 billion) of free cash that they wouldn't take it.

[mr moose]

2 hours ago, Arika S said:

colour me abso-fucking-lutey gobsmacked

I've always wondered where the expression "color me..." came form.

[That Franc]

I mean, Facebook has been known for listening to users randomly even outside of conversations with other users, and I'm not surprised that those recordings were also being reviewed by actual humans. That's why I refrain from even visiting the website, let alone actually having any of Facebook-owned apps installed on my devices.

[msknight]

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

Yet Facebook can't seem to understand when I tell it to uninstall itself...

I also can't understand why Microsoft's malicious software protection tools don't uninstall Windows.

 

Just another of life's mysteries I guess. - perhaps they're there to actually protect the malicious software, and not the user!

[laminutederire]

That's why law standards should be at least GDPR levels everywhere in the world..

[matrix07012]

And nobody is surprised by this

[Guest]

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

I've always wondered where the expression "color me..." came form.

Oxford dictionary puts it as 1963. 

[JuztBe]

Okay, techies who know how technologies work, how companies like that operate likely assumed that. But what about another 99% who uses messenger. 

Even if "it's obvious". It's still bloody disgusting and things like that should either be illegal, or be stated very clearly. 

I don't understand why we keep downplaying things like this. 

[The King of the Undead]

excuse me while I fail to be surprised. I feel like there is a colation between s***y business practice and successful.

[williamcll]

Wow who still uses facebook these days?