‘We Don’t Listen to Your Microphone’: Instagram Boss Denies Eavesdropping as Meta Taps AI Chats for Ads

Meta’s recent announcement that it will start using your interactions with Meta AI to personalise advertisements and other content across platforms has raised eyebrows once again. But more than that, it has reignited the rumour that Facebook and Instagram secretly listen to your conversations to show you relevant ads. In the defence, Instagram's chief has posted a video, attempting to bust the “myth”, in which he categorically mentioned: “I swear, we do not listen to your microphone.”

When you use Instagram or Facebook after you have had a conversation about a trip to Goa or a product you have been planning to buy, you see an ad depicting exactly what you have on your mind. It’s eerie and precise, making people doubt if the mobile apps for Facebook, Instagram, and now WhatsApp are continuously listening to their conversations. It is a perception that Meta has tried to rebut for years.

Now, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri’s latest video explains that the common occurrence of advertisements on Meta’s platforms has to do more with your search history than your phone’s microphone. In the video, he said that he has discussed about this topic passionately with several people, including his wife.

“We do not listen to you,” Mosseri said. “We do not use the phone’s microphone to eavesdrop on you,” he added, highlighting how doing that would be “a gross violation of privacy” and would cause severe battery drain. He also explained how you may see precisely targeted ads on Instagram or Facebook “for something that you recently talked to somebody about.”

His first theory is that the ads are tailored according to your search history across websites. So, if you have searched for something on Google, chances are ads related to that thing will appear on Facebook or Instagram. “We actually do work with advertisers who share information with us about who is on their website to try to target those people with ads,” he said.

The second reason why you see targeted ads is not just your interests, but also your friends’. “...we show people ads that we think that they’re interested in, or products we think they’re interested in, in part based on what their friends are interested in and what similar people with similar interests are interested in.” So, he said, when you talk to someone about a product, and they have already looked it up online, ads are targeted at you.

Mosseri puts the onus of feeling targeted on you in the third reason, saying “you might have actually seen that ad before you had a conversation and not realised it.” He said people scroll quickly, skimming through ads, and “sometimes you internalise some of that.” That could become the basis of your conversation without you even realising it.

Four, random chance, coincidence, it happens,” said Mosseri whimsically.

His video “busts” the myth that the company has been trying to dispel for a long time. Still, it will do only so much to repair the company’s image. “I know some of you are just not going to believe me, no matter how much I try to explain it,” Mosseri said. And he was right about it. “That is exactly what I would say if I was listening to people’s conversations,” said a comment on the video.

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