386
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
386 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
3758 readers
411 users here now
Which posts fit here?
Anything that is at least tangentially connected to the technology, social media platforms, informational technologies and tech policy.
Post guidelines
[Opinion] prefix
Opinion (op-ed) articles must use [Opinion] prefix before the title.
Rules
1. English only
Title and associated content has to be in English.
2. Use original link
Post URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
3. Respectful communication
All communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. Inclusivity
Everyone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacks
Any kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangents
Stay on topic. Keep it relevant.
7. Instance rules may apply
If something is not covered by community rules, but are against lemmy.zip instance rules, they will be enforced.
Companion communities
!globalnews@lemmy.zip
!interestingshare@lemmy.zip
Icon attribution | Banner attribution
If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @brikox@lemmy.zip.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This is not about just the data, they were found guilty of fucking eavesdropping. I can't wait to see people defending this as not being true for advertising. Please bookmark this article everyone. That headline is crap.
I feel this comment lacks some nuance. Someone who didn't read the article might think microphones were involved, or that Meta recorded any conversations, which they didn't.
What has actually happened: The Flo app, as part of onboarding, asks the user about their goal for using the app, with possible choices being "I am pregnant" and similar sensitive info. They are using Meta's analytics SDK for tracking what users do in the app, and they included an event for when a user selects the goal. All these events go to their analytics dashboard, which lives on Meta's servers. Flo promised they are not sharing this information with third parties, but they clearly do. So in the end, information about someone being pregnant ended up on Meta's servers. Meta later learned that this data is sent their way, and incorporanted it for their own use for advertising.
Both Flo and Meta are clearly guilty here. But no eavesdropping occured here, "just" the usual event tracking of which radio button a user selected when installing the app. I.e. no conversation was recorded by anyone, which is what someone may picture seeing the word "eavesdropping". Which doesn't make this any better of course.
What I'm trying to get to is this:
This story is once again an example showing that your devices don't need to listen to your conversations, and aren't eavesdropping on you. Because all the apps you use are already tracking everything you do, no eavesdropping necessary. Which I think is the opposite to the point you were trying to make.
https://archive.is/ckFB2
You might be partially right, but I can't find what is meant by the "recorded conversations" part. I guess I gotta look further in.
To be clear, I'm not saying secretly recording conversations with a mic never happens, just that it didn't happen in this case.
To the other story you linked, what we know happened is that some company had a slide deck claiming they have that capability. It could be that they really did and that it's used everywhere. It could also be that they were judging interest and didn't even look into the feasibility of building it. It could be that they wanted publicity by manufacturing some controversial news and never even wanted to build it. Or, again, it could be true. But all we know for a fact, in that case, is that a slide deck existed. Not that any product existed, let alone that it was deployed anywhere.
Again, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, it probably does, but that story doesn't prove it either.
Why are you writing diatribes then?
English is not my first language, so had to look "diatribes" up. "a forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone or something"? That was not my intention, I'm trying to have a polite conversation, maybe I'm failing at it if that's how it's received!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatribe
don't be silly. i know that's IMPOSISBLE because i read a headline from a big-tech-sponsored publication which said they can't do that (even though the article - which i didn't actually read - says they can)
There are much more effective ways of surveillance...
Such as?
anything which doesn't involve me having uncomfortable thoughts about the trustworthiness of a device which i coincidentally am already currently trusting with my embarrassingly human personal details.
I'd bookmark it if it did something. it's not visible at all for seo to the outside world.
We've got a lot of really smart people here, some are journalists. These people go around telling other people and now have links to sources. Why do you think the trolls come here?
It's good to have this as a back up when the techbro trolls try to say they don't really listen for ads or data farming. This happened just a few weeks ago, but I couldn't find a link.