Being Tracked Whatsoever They Do, Users Are Creeped Out Of Facebook Ads' Intelligence

Just 20 minutes right after having a conversation mentioning about Rokinon – a lenses producers in the US, the photographer Carl Mazur was extremely freaked out when his Facebook displayed an ad delivering Rokinon products to his ‘New Feeds’.

Although he has yet given Facebook’s eavesdropping a second thought before, the recent ads did make him seriously contemplate about some kinds of stories which he had heard about the social network giant. Those stories hinted that Facebook has kept eavesdropping on users’ own conversations through the smartphones’ mics for a long time. By this, it can bring such precisely targeted ads onto its billion-user platform.

In the meantime, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg has denied similar practices when he came to the US Congress for a hearing. One amongst the most powerful in the tech industry did claim his company is not involved in any eavesdrop to serve ads service. Alongside, some analysts and experts say Facebook even doesn’t need users’ conversations to delivery ads contents effectively. However, plenty of people, who experienced the same situations as Mazur did, have considered about a conspiracy and shared their own stories through YouTube, Medium, and a lot of comments on both Facebook and other social media.

In an effort to shine a light on the existing conspiracy theory, a test was made in order to look at how data flows into the Facebook app. It came in two situations including turning on and off the mic on the smartphone. However, the reporter didn’t find a piece of evidence that proves Facebook stole his data from conversations to target him any coincidence-so-called ads.

The obsession of being eavesdropped has already freaked out a bunch of users. On the other hand, a large number of users are still unaware of how the ads work. Note that the company keeps a list of users’ interests for targeting, which you can see in the “Likes” section. Facebook makes a way for its users to find out “Why am I seeing this ad”, but some explanations still seem incomplete.