Facebook cannot seem to respect the privacy of anything. Although a certain level of privacy is a basic human right, Facebook has been paying contractors to secretly transcribe all of your conversations.
That’s according to third-party contractors who spoke to Bloomberg about the practice. The conversations were those recorded through the social media messaging app’s microphone. The contractors said that they were paid to listen in on countless, occasional vulgar conversations among Facebook Messenger users, though the company never explained to them why it needed the transcriptions. Facebook later told Bloomberg that the human transcriptions were being used to test the performance of its speech-recognizing artificial intelligence.
This is a troubling admission for a company quickly getting the reputation of one that regularly violates people’s privacy rights.
According to a report by Futurism, Facebook stopped the practice only last week. “Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago,” the company said Tuesday. However, in numerous hearings in front of Congress, CEO Mark Zuckerberg insisted that Facebook only accessed people’s microphones when explicitly given permission to do so for features like voice messaging. Zuckerberg never disclosed that Facebook was sending recordings to third party contractors to be transcribed.
Facebook also said that the users who were affected chose the option in Facebook’s Messenger app to have their voice chats transcribed. But still, Zuckerberg insisted this was just a conspiracy theory. “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,” Zuckerberg told U.S. Senator Gary Peters in April 2018. “We don’t do that.”
Regardless of the reasons the social media giant is spying on you, they are violating your fundamental human rights. Bloomberg reports that Facebook doesn’t mention audio recordings in its data-use policy and the tasks they were asked to do that spurred the contractors to come forward over concerns that their work was unethical.
The Facebook data-use policy, which was revised last year to make it more understandable for the public, includes no mention of audio or recorded voice messages sent in the Messanger app. It does, however, say Facebook will collect “content, communications and other information you provide” when users “message or communicate with others.”
That’s just vague speak for “we will spy and we don’t care.” The Orwellian future we were all warned about is here.
All too-big-to-fails are for dual use, like the tech which has a civilian and a military purpose, both.
You could have arrived at this, intuitively, because of the praetorian chip, which they have on their shoulder.
I tell Alexa “my dick so big” jokes. I wonder if I will get #MeToo attention now?
I don’t necessarily care about the boring home life of cubicle workers. I really, really don’t want to know.
But, these same people get so upset about being doxxed.
A person could argue about it, or choose to not use the products. Validation of this type of technological use ultimately falls on the customers whom support the companies and their ventures. A company sold something and people bought it. If people continue to buy it, they’ll get more of the same. These are companies driven by profits, and losses. Nothing more, nothing less. Tech companies are not mythical enemies of yore nor governments unto themselves. It’s just that consumers have adapted to monopolization and lack of choice so much so that now they’re arguing for bigger government to regulate products, rather than simply not buying the product and opening up room for more equitable market competition. Perhaps something radical like using paper and stamps, magazines and newspapers. A step away from this instant reaction online environment. Fortune Cookie says; More of the same in the very near future, and higher taxes.
no Facebook in this home. screw em all!
Hey Mac, I’m not being put up. What gives?
On Facebook eh?
You deserve everything you ultimately get from Ben Dover.
…but thanks for taking the attention off me. I can use the extra head start.
Ben Dover makes some steamy movies.
Archivist said, “Ben Dover makes some steamy movies.”
Archivist, eh?
Peeping Toms.
His movies are nowhere near as good a Phil McKracin’s
In my experience, all of the gaming addicts (like on fb) were actually, tacky, baloney-salad-swilling, elderly people, headed for fixed incomes. Plz, ftlog, don’t invite me to this bingo parlor of banal delights, one more time.
If (if, if) I wanted to keep in contact with them and their ugly kid’s school play, and their dog tricks, and slide shows of their vacation, I would have to use addons, to clear fb’s clutter of eyesores, so I could concentrate.
I have spent effort to use less-featured Emai|s and homepages, etc, and removed far more content than I have ever consumed, thankfully.
A purposeful user (if he does not cartoonishly give up, first) could find adult business, high culture, and spirituality, if ever he wanted to expand his mind. We have wasted a powerful tool on idiocy.
Zuckerberg himself has tape over his laptop webcam.
Steve also said he’d never let his kids use an iphone, so not surprised to learn about this.
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