[godelski]

My answer to this has always been "Why would they need to?" It drains battery, it sends a lot of data, and would be a huge scandal. But you are already telling them where you are, who you're with, and they have information about your credit, etc.

Instead, I've been using this as an opportunity to teach people why big data is scary. In the past people often said they didn't care that Google could, and do, read their emails. Often responding with the ironic "I have nothing to hide" quote, or "I don't care, my stuff is boring." This pervasive rumor, of Facebook/Google always listening, has facilitated this conversation immensely. I've been able to better explain it to many who are not tech or statistic savvy in the least.

I don't believe Facebook is listening, because they don't need to.

[ghughes]

Or in other words, they are listening, just not to your voice. Their product is an intelligence-gathering apparatus that works at scale without microphones or other traditional surveillance tools.

[godelski]

I'd phrase that as "they're watching" not listening. More like having a private eye tail you. They can't hear exactly what you say (well maybe) but they sure do see everything you do.

[ben_jones]

I try to put my mind in the head of whoever at Facebook would be making this decision. Chief of marketing? Chief of Technology? Mark Zuckerberg himself? A product manager? Some director?

And I believe all of them in fact would be perfectly fine with it - if it somehow helped them hit their quarterly bonuses or user growth numbers.

[godelski]

My point is that I do not believe constantly listening would significantly improve their profit. I don't think they'd gain much information. And I'm sure they've discussed it.

[2_listerine_pls]

> it sends a lot of data

They could send just a transcript once every few minutes.

[Techonomicon]

You probably wouldn't do that sort of processing constantly on device. Battery intensive

[readhn]

is it possible that there are tools available that do the job with minimum energy consumption but they are not out in the open yet?

i wonder what tech military has that we dont know is even possible today?

[2_listerine_pls]

The military is not at the forefront of R&D, but they may be able to restrict whatever they deem important. For instance, this can happen with patents. Some patents are reviewed by a committee before they are published.

[momeunier]

What do you do about multiple languages? Hiding a speech-2-text dataset in English in the app is one thing, hiding several in multiple languages would make the app bloat.