A new report has revealed that Facebook, like many of the other tech giants, sent some of its user’s audio recordings to third-party contractors and that these recordings sometimes contained “vulgar content.”
This revelation adds to growing concerns that tech giants are surveilling users and listening to conversations with previous reporting confirming that Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft also ran similar programs which sent user conversations to third-party contractors. Most of these programs have now either been paused or updated to give users an opt-out option.
According to this latest report, Facebook’s contractors felt that the work was “unethical” because they believe that Facebook “hasn’t disclosed to users that third parties may review their audio.”
Facebook’s data use policy doesn’t specifically mention collecting audio or sending that audio to third parties. However, it does contain vague terms stating that it will collect “content communications and other information you provide” and that it shares this information with “vendors and service providers who support our business” by “analyzing how our products are used.”
The report adds that Facebook has paid hundreds of contractors to review and transcribe audio recordings and that these contractors didn’t know where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained.
In its response to this story, Facebook said users who had their audio recordings sent to third-party contractors had opted in to voice chat transcriptions via an option in the Facebook Messenger app.
Facebook also confirmed that it has been transcribing user audio since 2015 and stopped the program earlier this month after other tech companies were scrutinized for this practice:
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“You’re talking about this conspiracy theory that gets passed around, that we listen to what’s going on on your microphone and we use that for ads. We don’t do that.”