The social media platform Instagram offers an option called Active Listening (AL) that allows it to listen to users for marketing purposes. According to 404 Media, this was acknowledged by one of the social network’s partners, which offers Cox Media Group (CMG) advertising services.
CMG allegedly provides its clients with “active service listening,” according to a presentation made as part of the development of the contextual advertising option. With active listening, artificial intelligence can listen in on Instagram users’ conversations when they are close to a smartphone. AI uses it to analyze user actions as well.
AL is capable of simultaneously recording all sounds from any smartphone’s microphone. Users of the option can receive the most accurate advertising thanks to its algorithms. The user will notice a lot of targeted advertisements for t-shirts, for instance, if they repeatedly say “need a new t-shirt” close to their phone.
For a long time, CMG has collaborated with Meta and Google. Aside from the last two, Amazon is the company’s primary client. Google and Meta are said to have removed all mentions of Cox Media Group from their own resources after the use of the Active Listening option became known.
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In turn, Amazon told the publication that those who knew about this service but never used it did not use it. Facebook explained that it began to urgently check this information from mass media.
It was previously reported that several groups of consumers in the European Union countries have appealed to their supervisory bodies with complaints against the company Meta Platforms due to an alleged violation of privacy rules. In particular, the Deputy Director General of the European Consumer Organization, Ursula Pachl, said that it is time for data protection authorities to stop the unfair processing of meta data and the violation of basic human rights.
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