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According to a Forbes article dated 5/22, Facebook apparently plans to add a feature to its smartphone app that listens to sounds around you.

Initially available only in the United States, the feature apparently works as follows:

  1. When someone is writing something using the app,
  2. if the user has opted in,
  3. the app listens to surrounding sounds through the microphone,
  4. converts them into some kind of “code” and sends it to the server,
  5. and adds information about what music the user is listening to or what program the user is watching to the update.
  6. If the user does not want that information attached to the update, it is sent to and stored on the server without being linked to that user, merely as a record that someone is listening to the music or watching the program.

First, let us assume that Facebook is being honest. (That is difficult to know, given its apparent history of saying it was not doing so while actually selling users to the NSA for millions of dollars.)

In that case, it could encroach on Twitter’s specialty of real-time comments about programs. Audience measurement companies might also suffer. Because there would be far more measurement points than those companies have, the data could become quite valuable if sampling bias were properly corrected.

Next, suppose Facebook is not being honest—for example, it records audio and sends it directly to the server even when the user is not writing anything… That really would be Big Brother. It probably would not do this to everyone, but it seems conceivable that it might do so to particular people at the request of the NSA or similar organizations.

Concerned users will probably need to revoke microphone access for the Facebook app at the operating-system level. On iOS, this can be configured under “Privacy > Microphone.”

The experiment itself is fine, but I sincerely hope that listening will not be enabled by default.

 

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