A media firm that has worked with the likes of Google and Meta has admitted that it can target adverts based on what you said out loud near device microphones.
Media conglomerate Cox Media Group (CMG) has been pitching tech companies on a new targeted advertising tool that uses audio recordings collected from smart home devices, according to a 404 Media investigation. The company is partners with Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Bing.
In a pitch deck presented to Google, Facebook, and others in November 2023, CMG referred to the technology used for monitoring and active listening as “Voice Data.” The firm also mentioned using artificial intelligence to collect data about consumers’ online behavior.
they’ve claimed the same last year in December, and it turned out they were overselling their capabilities
Some people really will believe anything, as long as you’re trash talking big tech. And this platform is particularly bad.
Like hell are they able to just tap into your microphone like that, both Android and I OS have that locked down.
Some people really will believe anything, as long as you’re trash talking big tech. And this platform is particularly bad.
Just say something like you should be paying for YouTube (via ads or premium) and brace for the swarm.
I’d pay if they actually offered a better service. But they don’t, so I use alternatives that do:
- Grayjay - sub to more than just YouTube, downloading works as expected, etc
- Nebula - smaller selection of content, but downloading works as expected
Both of those offer a better experience than YouTube premium (in terms of app features). If YouTube offered a higher quality experience, I’d be more interested in paying for it.
So, I instead just donate to/buy merch from creators I really appreciate and avoid the YouTube app. The only reason Google is involved is because of the network effect, not because they actually provide a good service, so I don’t feel bad cheating them out of their ad revenue.
I bailed on Netflix and Disney+, but I refuse to torrent, so I rip DVDs and Blurays to my Jellyfin instance.
I am concerned about the trend of “ripping disks instead of just downloading” because it’s either wasteful (throwing out a perfectly good disk feels wrong) or take up unnecessary space. Plus, this is not universal because relatively obscure media may be out of print and thus scarce. So if I were paying for my media and it was not available DRMless, I would do like how I did with Steam games - buy and then download a corresponding DRMless copy.
I agree. I have a few personal rules regarding piracy, and it’s essentially if it’s unreasonable to get a legal copy from the original vendor (and buying DVDs/Blurays is reasonable), then I have no problem pirating it. Just because something is technically available used isn’t enough, my legal consumption of the content needs to reward the original creator for me to consider piracy immoral. I care a lot less about copyright terms than actual availability on the market.
So I buy DVDs and Blurays to populate my library because that seems to be the only way for me to get a legitimate copy to extract a DRM-free version from. I do that for all media, like video games (i.e. if I can’t find a given game for sale, I don’t have any qualms pirating it).
And yeah, the space is pretty wasteful, but it’s honestly not that bad. I have plenty of storage space at home to store a bunch of disks, and I can always discard the cases and store the disks in a binder or something if space becomes an issue. But it’s not a complete waste, because I have the option of lending the physical media to someone else, which is nice.
Thanks for explaining your point of view! Would you consider reselling those if the space becomes an issue?
Yeah, but I’d probably delete the media if I do. If it stops being sold, I’d feel justified in pirating.
One problem with downloading is you seldom get special features that are on the disc.
You do understand we’re taking the piss out of people like you, right?
For what?
Been there, done that. They start yelling about Plex servers and torrents.
I don’t want to turn downloading shows into a hobby in it’s own right.
You should read the 404 piece, it’s considerably less sensational and doesn’t flat lie in the headline. I hate Big Tech too, but this is very bad framing.
Can you pass a link?
it’s the link above: https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/
A bundle of people say they have a paywall but they don’t, they have an AI-bot-wall which can be got around with a free account. I’d recommend it tbh because they are doing very good work.
I pay the yearly subscription to support them as they are very much a rare entity in tech media: independent, reader-supported, and willing to ask difficult questions of tech companies, not fawn over their newest doodads.
Hmmm…
That looks pretty paywally to me. That said, I’m all for people supporting independent media.
ah strange, I thought it was just for the above filter - apologies, I guess that’s the ignorance you get if you’ve dropped that $$$.
I can give you the general vibe which is BIG CLAIMS in a presentation followed by every “partner” (Amazon, Google etc.) giving 404 statements that they had nothing to do with this and that it was against their ToS
The piece from noodlejetski: https://lemmy.world/comment/12182781 gives you a previous iteration of this claim
I don’t know if I’m allowed to share here, but there’s an… how could I say… alternative… archive snapshot, from the moment when the paywall weren’t in place yet… It’s available today at a site that are known for archiving things. 😀
I’ll allow it.
Sorry, was definitely reading this 90% asleep as I rolled out of bed. Thanks for the extra link anyway.
absolutely no bother at all i was posting from bed too
Voice data doesn’t have to mean live microphone. Voice data could be when you use Siri or Google and talk to your phone to search things.
It is worth noting that most phones, whether Android or iOS, now notify users when a service accesses the microphone. On Android, a green light appears in the upper right, while on iPhone, it’s an orange light.
I don’t know about Apple but Google used to make a little tone that let you know that it was listening to you. It doesn’t do that anymore. Now it just shows a little green light which, if you’re not looking directly at the phone you won’t see.
And it was pretty frequent when Google’s voice Assistant would randomly activate and I’d hear that little tone and I would have to turn it off so it wouldn’t sit there listening to my conversation. But now you don’t have that option, now if you miss that little light everything you say is recorded.
Fuck these services. I have permanently disabled both my phones 's Google Assistant and the Nest speaker I bought. Yes, it’s less convenient. But the fact of the matter is that these companies aren’t interested in making a service that is useful to you they just want to collect data on everything you do so they can sell it. And to be clear, I was fine with them collecting data on stuff that I actively participated in, it’s the price I was willing to pay. But for them to pull this shady ass shit of removing the audible notification is just garbage.
For Google’s devices, the sound is still available as an accessibility feature. It’s now off by default, which I agree it should not be. But you can turn it back on, I have it on all my devices, they all still make that sound after recognizing "hey Google " either as a true or false positive.
It was disabled even in accessibility mode in the last major update on my last phone (Pixel 8) I haven’t tried it on the Pixel 9 but I doubt I’ll have better luck.
It baffles me that people actually take these assertions seriously, especially after having used different software that uses voice input, like Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa or whatever. Those things make some serious mistakes even under ideal circumstances, and you want me to believe that they can accurately overhear things in non-ideal circumstances? I highly doubt it.
Regardless, you can use an ad blocker to make this a moot point - I’ve never experienced anything even close to this, because I never get ads.
No bro one time I was talking about buying protein shakes with my bro and then THE VERY NEXT DAY I saw an ad for protein shakes after watching Joe Rogan on the weightlifting subreddit.
You expect me to believe this is coincidence?!?!?!?!?!
deleted by creator
This is a false anecdote and outdated too.
How so?
Critically, “Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft told 404 Media they have no involvement with CMG’s Voice Data tool.”
But more importantly, they can’t listen on your microphone unless you give them permission. It’s not a thing that is technically possible. And like the article says, these days phones even show an indicator to alert you when the microphone is on.
That indicator and the permission system are provided by the OS on your phone. If you trust your OEM not to abuse it, then it works. If the company that made your device is facebook, neither of those features prevent facebook from listening in 24/7.
Facebook doesn’t make phones.
They did once:
“Facebook’s phone collaboration with HTC was a flop back in 2013.”
They do make other Android-based devices like the Meta Quest line of VR headsets, and Facebook was just an example, any other OEM fits in that statement as well, like Samsung, Google, OnePlus, etc.
I also think people discount the power of advertising when they think Facebook or Amazon is listening to them. They don’t think that maybe why they were talking about xyz was because they saw an ad for it. Then they saw another ad for it after they talked about it and got confused on cause and effect.
Yeah, no need for voice data, they just use search patterns. It’s easy to feel like they’re listening to you and serving you an ad for something you said or talked about, but most likely it’s just something the user searched for.
Search patterns yes, but also location data, and it’s aggregated over all your friends. So if you go to a restaurant together with a friend who recently searched for some clothes brand, the algorithm will know that and show you ads for that brand. Chances are you talked about his interests when you met, so you incorrectly infer that it was listening to the conversation.
Confirming what we already know. After the 100th time you get a recommendation for a product you mentioned in a conversation the day before you start to get a little suspicious.
Yeah, when I read this I was like ‘is anyone still denying ads use of microphone?’ Eight years ago I would be called paranoid, but now everybody experienced smartphone at it’s best.
When it comes to Android, this should be standard. You can block all the bullshit with a few clicks, some apps don’t need internet access at all (such as the fucking keyboard, Google).
Obligatory FUTO keyboard recommendation. I liked Swiftkey - but not enough to defend the idea of an online keyboard.
Oh wow. This seems to do exactly what I’ve been looking for. Works with nordic languages, and with a longtap layer for numbers and symbols, so for my purposes seems perfect at a glance.
Whoa this is cool, but I’m finding the voice to text to be quite buggy. Sometimes it works and other times all I get a bunch of emojis and weird symbols??
The only problem I have with it is that it doesn’t have support for 12-key Japanese input.
The only problem I have with it is that it doesn’t have support for 12-key Japanese input.
Tried it now, it’s really great but doesn’t have the full pc layout that includes our accursed Č,Ć,Š.Đ diacritics. I’m actually really satisfied with my jugaad solution - downgraded version of gboard, frozen in time and cut off from the internet by Rethink VPN. There’s no reason to update it, really, which is lucky since newer versions start randomly lagging if they can’t reach google’s fucking servers.
Why not just use actual Gboard and revoke its internet permissions?
My trust in Google and Facebook after this: 📉📉📉
Never trust any company all you are is dollar signs to them
Your comment after this: 📈📈📈
admits isnt the right word, they are exaggerating their capabilities for the sake of marketing themselves to other marketing people who have no idea how device permissions or internet packets work.
“We always knew it”… No you just didnt know about your own confirmation basis, you didnt notice all those times when you hadn’t talked about whatever you never shop for and it was shown in ads anyway.
If a marketing company had the ability to spy on behalf of advertising whats stopping some random app or the local police dept from doing it? And you can bet if this was at all possible the cops would be all over it to monitor “criminals”
Read this post. Disable microphone access on the phone.
Is anything about american leadership in politics or business ever good for people?
Honestly so disgusted with this country.
No politics in this post, only business
It aint just google n facebork. They all do it. Even if youre just hanging out not browsing it can hear the environment around you
We know, you don’t need to admit it 10 years after the fact.
Yes they do. Not enough people know.
We need everyone to talk about this until it becomes general public knowledge, and then general public outrage.
Have you read the article? They’re claiming (!) that they would use ads on websites to use mic data. If you know anything about Android or IOS, you’ll know that you have to give mic permission to your browser for it to have access to anything. THEN the browser itself checks if a website needs access to your mic and you have to willingly give it. And lastly: Android indicates when your mic is hot with a green dot. So all of their claims are bs.
Come back if one of the OS developers admit to always listen on an OS level.
Come back if one of the OS developers admit to always listen on an OS level.
If the device does not listen at all times it cannot detect the wake word (Hey Google).
Edit: formatting.
If a device isn’t using a local detection of the wake word it would have a constant stream of data sent back to the developer… Which is super obvious.
It also wouldn’t be able to respond “Your device is offline” when the Internet is down.
It’s not a thing and it doesn’t happen.
Well look, not to be dismissive of what you’re saying, but the technical aspects of it really don’t matter. There is not (yet) any law in the US that would protect people from such surveillance, regardless of its current technical infeasibility. The point of getting people at large worried or upset about this is to get law established before it becomes a widespread problem, not after some company publicly admits to doing something despicable.
The fact that companies are thinking about this, trying to accomplish it, trying to buy this functionality from other companies… that should be enough to scare people and get them angry. It’s certainly enough that we should all be talking about it, and publicly shaming them for the voyeuristic creeps that they are.
There should be riots in the streets over stuff like this, because you can’t build a surveillance state without surveillance technology.
You should probably remove the tinfoil hat. Seems to be cutting off the circulation to your 3 brain cells.
If Cox is advertising this as a product, it’s because they have a market that will buy it.
There is not (yet) any law in the US that would protect people from such surveillance, regardless of its current technical infeasibility.
Wiretapping laws exist. There is no state in the US that allows for wholesale recording someone without consent. Even one party consent states still require ONE party to consent. Recordings taking in a private place without consent would fail to meet even that limited scope.
The problem is that when you accept the terms of service for smart devices and applications with voice interfaces, you give consent to be recorded.
Others around you don’t. That consent isn’t transferable. Nor does it grant wholesale recording even if the owner isn’t expecting it, eg if google present “we need to record in order to do voice to text operations”, then other shit gets used, that’s a problem. And lastly, it doesn’t transfer to other applications. If I consent to be recorded by “Google” that doesn’t grant other ad partners access without explicitly stating so. EULA/TOS isn’t law. Terms and conditions get abused all the time. Law often strikes them down when those terms make it to court.
I agree wholeheartedly :)
I agree with the premise but I have zero confidence this would cause outrage. Most people are too stupid to understand the implications
A lot of seemingly smart people said that it would not make sense to do that.
”In most moments of the day, there’s a smart device in within two-inch radius of us. That means a smart device is likely within earshot when we talk about our plans for the weekend, how badly we need our kitchen remodeled, or which SUV model is best for the family with our spouse, and so much more,” the company wrote.
Facebook and Google swear they cast it into the fire, because they don’t want to take away your privacy to make money. Do you believe them?
The bootlickers love this thread
