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My question was NOT "Does Facebook use the phone's microphone to inform ads or change what we see in the News Feed?". It seems you have misunderstood my question. Let me repeat my question again :

"What does Facebook use data gathered from user microphones across any devices for?"

To allow people to post audio/video messages in Messenger?

I understand what you're asking and you do have to be particularly aware of what /you/ are asking.

That particular question, in context of these allegations, would presuppose that they use microphone data for something other than what the user clearly is aware of, e.g. voice chat.

So an answer like "to provide users the service they need" would undeniably be spun by media to be: Facebook uses microphone to tweak news feed. The longer the answer is, the more likely it can be misunderstood and taken out of context.

You shouldn't expect a public company to answer questions like that, simply because the media will gladly take the answer out of context. You need to phrase it specifically, so they can answer without being misunderstood.

"When did you stop beating your wife?"

No, it's not a loaded question. It's much more like "list everything you've punched". Maybe with "in my house" appended as an analogy to it being user microphones.

The question does not presume any misuse. It just leaves no room for implications.

Modify their apps to not request microphone permission.

Apparently people think there's a secret backdoor that lets an iPhone app record audio without turning the status bar red. You could deny mic permission and people would still think it's the secret backdoor.

There was a backdoor that let the Uber iPhone app record the screen invisibly from the background that went unnoticed for years.

Well no, Apple (in an unprecedented move), granted the Uber app the com.apple.private.allow-explicit-graphics-priority entitlement.

    "Apple gave us this permission because early versions of Apple Watch
    were unable to adequately handle the level of map rendering in the Uber
    app," an Uber representative, Melanie Ensign, told Business Insider.
    "Subsequent updates to Apple Watch and our app removed this dependency,
    and we're working with Apple to remove the API completely."

Uber was doing other sneaky stuff to read the devices serial number (or other unique identifiers) and evade Apple's countermeasures, but that's seperate from this.

What is the meaningful difference, in the context of tedunangst's post, between an entitlement that allows surreptitious recording of video and a backdoor that allows surreptitious recording of audio?

I'm 95% sure that there will be an entitlement for recording audio without showing the red mic bar (look at the Phone app), but it won't be a public one. There is no way for a third party app to get past app review with a custom entitlement without explicit permission from Apple. I'd be very surprised if it even passed automated review when the app was uploaded.

Uber's entitlement was always 'public'. Facebook doesn't hold any private entitlements that would allow it to record audio in the background without notifying the user.

Recording audio from an iOS app does not turn the status bar red, FYI.

It does for me while outside the app; tested with FaceTime (Built-in), Voice Recording (Built-in, recording not streaming), Snapchat, and Discord.

Inside the app I believe they can record whenever, without the banner appearing.

It does if the application isn't running in the foreground.

Facebook doesnt request microphone access on iOS.

https://imgur.com/a/ifaiT

Edit: Actually, FB will ask for microphone permission if try to record a video. Based on every other app that records video also prompts for permission to record using the microphone, I'm lead to believe the microphone permission is required on iOS if you want to record video.

FB Messenger does not prompt for Microphone until you record a video or voice memo.

> https://imgur.com/a/ifaiT

I can see "Messenger" and "Instagram" with access to microphone.

Those apps have voice and video features, so it makes sense that they'd request microphone access. (And iOS lets you disable those specific features if you want.)

iOS also shows an indicator if an app is using the microphone. This is true even for built-in Apple apps like Voice Memos. There's no way to surreptitiously record.

This indicator only shows while the app using the mic is in the background.

The banner won’t show if the app using the mic is in the foreground.

Instagram can record video posts and Messenger can make video calls, both requiring microphone access. In either case the recording is obvious with a red bar for microphone access in the background, like all other iOS apps.

> How could they respond to remove all doubt they're listening?

Amend their privacy policy.

How? Where's the limit? Should they list everything they don't do in their privacy policy?

“Facebook does not use microphone input for ads, user interest assessment or for any purpose other than facilitating a single user initiated transaction.”

"We don't gather data using microphones"

But they most likely do. Voice corpora are extremely useful to train voice recognition systems, for one.

Its only useful to train if they also have the transcript by a human. Eavesdropping conversations and having armies of people transcribing them seems like a very expensive and illegal way to get that data when there are probably millions of available samples, TV shows, etc that have both voice and transcription available already off the shelf.

The 2017 F8 developer conference featured a lot on Machine Vision. Processing images and video for objects, such as for automatic close captioning, is where vast resources are focused. I highly recommend watching a few of the videos, they’re specially aware as well and can infer orientation of obscured things like limbs. Microsoft has real-time audio translation, doing machine transcription at scale is totally feasible.

The OP that I was replying to was insinuating that FB is collecting audio as training data to create AI models like the ones you are talking about. I was pointing out that raw audio is useless to train an AI model for recognizing words, the whole point of training data for AI is that you have an input and a known output (transcription) that you can use to train and test the model with, having just input is useless for training.

And people have a problem with it, and so the companies use Corp speak to try and make it seem like they aren't doing what you asked. The poster higher up asked how they could remove all doubt, and it's really easy. The problem is that they are trying to remove all doubt while continuing to do business as usual

That makes sense. So, given that this is data it's users have an obvious interest in keeping private, Facebook could at least inform of this. The only reason I could imagine they aren't doing this is that their voice recognition isn't used for any released products. I think that's a viable theory of what they would be doing with the voice data.

EDIT: User 'crucifiction' makes a good point about needing the transcript to use it for voice recognition. So, who knows.

It doesn't in any sense justify collecting data and being so elusive about their intent. We naturally have reason to get the impression that Facebook just wants the data, will try anything it can to keep collecting it until so much energy has been invested in the PR issues that the collection has an attributable effect on their market.

But maybe they are using the voice data to change the world for the better and bring people together yada yada! :)

>In a statement issued on June 2nd [2016], Facebook said it "does not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed."

>That's pretty fucking clear to me.

Said nobody who understands law, language, or politics. It's absolutely fucking clear to everyone who reads with discrimination what this means. It means they are using your microphone to vacuum up your information. That they added the qualifier "..to inform ads or to change what you see in the News Feed" gives them the verbal and legal wiggle room they need to do absolutely anything they want with your information. For example, they could use your microphone to monitor, record and quantify everything they hear to "adjust a user profile" that they keep on all users. In that case, they could simply claim that the ads you see and the news feed you get are based on your user profile.

>How could they respond to remove all doubt they're listening?

They could very simply. "We do not listen to your microphone or record content, data, or metadata from your microphone in any circumstance". Without qualifiers of any kind.

They can’t say that though, because recording a video involves accessing the microphone. Otherwise Facebook Live and Stories couldn’t exist.

..."except when Facebook Live and Stories are explicitly accessed by the user."