Facebook has done it again and this time, it looks like the social media giant went further than ever before. The company has confirmed that it has been transcribing audio messages sent via Facebook messenger.
Facebook has been invading user privacy for a long time now. As reported by Bloomberg, the company has been paying multiple outside contractors to transcribe audio messages sent via Facebook’s messaging app. According to the company’s employees, they have even been transcribing intimate conversations between users, the best part is, they don’t even know why.
Facebook has vaguely claimed that it will “stop” transcribing and monitoring user audios and has paused the audio message review a week ago just like Apple and Google did.
In all honesty, Facebook has stood in the same place, invading user privacy for years now. Thus, taking these claims with a grain of salt will be the sensible thing to do.
When asked for the reasons behind the audio message transcription, the company said it needed to check whether the AI was interpreting the messages properly or not.
Previously, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, had denied all claims that the company was collecting audio messages, that too, in front of the US congress. He called this a ‘conspiracy theory’. However, Facebook has now acknowledged that it ‘accesses’ user’s microphone if the app is given permission to do so.
