By Kayla DeKraker
We’ve all had the experience.
You’re talking about a product or service with someone, and then all of the sudden, you see an ad for it on social media and joke your apps are listening to you.
But are they?
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, put that misconception to rest and explained what’s actually going on.
“This is a myth busting video about something I’ve had a lot of passionate conversations about,” Mosseri began a recent video, noting that even his wife has asked him about it.
He continued, “First of all, if we did, it would be a gross violation of privacy. You would drain your phone’s battery, and you would notice, and you would actually see a little light on the top of the screen letting you know that the microphone was on.”
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So what’s actually going on?
“One, maybe you actually tapped on something that was related, or even searched for that product online on a website. Maybe before you had that conversation,” he posited. “We actually do work with advertisers who share information with us about who was on our website to try to target those people with that, so if you were looking at a product on a website, that advertiser might have paid us to reach you with an ad.”
He also said, “We show people ads that we think that they’re interested in, or products we think they’re interested in, in part based on what their friends are interested in and what similar people with similar interests are interested in.”
Mosseri suggested that it’s possible you searched an item or something similar without remembering.
“You might have actually seen that ad before you had the conversation and not realized it,” he said, adding that “We scroll by ads quickly, and sometimes you internalize some of that, and that actually affects what you talk about later, for random chance, coincidence, it happens.”
He concluded by reassuring viewers, “we do not listen to your microphone. I know some of you are just not gonna believe me no matter how much I try to explain it, but I wanted to set the record straight. I’m sure the comments on this one are gonna be a little bit spicy.”
They certainly were “spicy.”
“So what you’re saying is there is actually a person in my house that works for Instagram listening in…… I see,” one person said.
Another user added, “That is exactly what I would say if I was listening to people’s conversations.”
In a separate post, Mosseri shared that the app is trying to give users more control over their algorithm.
“…in world where recommendations continue to grow, we know it’s important to give you more control over your experience,” he said. “We’ll soon start testing a way for you to tune your algorithm by adding and removing topics based on your interests, starting with reels. We hope this will be a meaningful new way to shape what you see.”
Instagram isn’t the only one to deny these claims of listening to its users.
Apple has also claimed innocence in eavesdropping. “Apple has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose,” the company said in a statement earlier this year.
Are these companies being truthful? One can hope, but many will still wonder if such specific recommendations were really just coincidences.
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