Every User is Being Eavesdropped: Media Expert Elaborates

Media expert Samvel Martirosyan wrote on his Facebook page: “The company working with Meta, Google, and Amazon has made it clear that applications are listening to what we say, and advertisements are also targeted accordingly. This is something we already knew without this.”

Martirosyan also posted a link in the comments section with more details on the topic. 404 Media has discovered that the Instagram social network is eavesdropping on every user for advertising purposes through a method known as Active Listening. This fact has been acknowledged by one of the main partners of the advertising service platform, Cox Media Group (CMG), which has been working with Google and Meta for many years.

According to CMG’s presentation, as part of the development of a contextual advertising variant that literally reads users' thoughts:

• The company offers clients Active Listening, an “active listening” service,
• This option allows AI (Artificial Intelligence) to eavesdrop on your conversations near the smartphone, as well as analyze user actions online,
• Active Listening captures any voice from any smartphone microphone,
• The algorithms of Active Listening enable clients to provide more precise advertisements. For example, after uttering the phrase “I need a new shirt,” they see a stream of targeted advertisements for shirts,
• Cox Media Group’s main clients include Google, Amazon, and Meta.

It is noteworthy that after Google and Meta published data on the use of Active Listening, any mention of CMG has been removed from their resources. Amazon has informed media that they are aware of this service but have never used it. Facebook clarified that they have urgently “started checking” that information from the media.