Facebook Isn't Listening Through Your Phone's Microphone. It Doesn't Have To

"Herein lies one of the key misunderstandings about Facebook, which I like to call the Narcissistic Fallacy. We’re all the center of our own worlds, and assume our lives terribly important or interesting to outsiders. As a result, we equate what we’d most hate to have revealed with what advertisers (or Facebook) would most like to know. But that’s a completely false equivalence; advertisers don’t care about the vast majority of even your most personal data.

Put another way: Just because I have a naked photo of you on the internet, doesn’t mean anyone would pay money to see it.

The same goes for most of your Facebook data, including your conversations. While there are probably a few conversational snippets that would reveal something commercially interesting, the data advertisers really want to use for targeting isn’t on Facebook. No, that data resides instead in your Amazon shopping cart, or your car dealer, or your local Target, or every other place you tip your hand to capitalism about your wants and desires.

So what explains all these eerie anecdotes and viral YouTube videos?
The vast majority seem to amount to confirmation bias, the internet equivalent of wondering why it always rains after you wash the car. You’re watching the video of the one Facebook user who experienced some improbable event, and ignoring the millions of users who had no such odd coincidence.

The harsh truth is that Facebook doesn’t need to perform technical miracles to target you via weak signals. It’s got much better ways to do so already. Not every spookily accurate ad you see is a pure figment of your cognitive biases. Remember, Facebook can find you on whatever device you’ve ever checked Facebook on. It can exploit everything that retailers know about you, and even sometimes track your in-store, cash-only purchases; that loyalty discount card is tied to a phone number or email for a reason."

read article by Antonio Garcia Martinez

Facebook Isn't Listening Through Your Phone's Microphone. It Doesn't Have To | WIRED: The internet is awash in theories about Facebook using your smartphone's microphone to eavesdrop on your conversations. It's not. Here's why.