Instagram Head Denies Company Listens Through Smartphones

It’s happened to quite a few people, and the frequency with which it happens is quite alarming. You probably remember having a conversation and seeing an ad based on the content of that conversation shortly after you have had it. This has made a lot of people strongly believe that both Facebook as well as Instagram listen in on the conversations that you are having through your smartphone and give you ads based on these conversations which would be an enormous violation of ethics and a breach of trust as far as consumers are concerned.

The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, was interviewed by television personality Gayle King who is an ardent believer in this theory. Mosseri, however, flatly denied that Facebook and Instagram listen in on your conversations in order to produce ads, although King was adamant that he was lying and that Facebook and Instagram do indeed listen in. Mosseri gave two possible explanations for this trend occurring, with the first of these explanations being blind luck which seems highly unlikely and it is rather suspicious that the Head of Instagram would be attributing such a controversial phenomenon to luck when such a thing seems to be happening far too often.


The second reason seems a little more plausible however. According to Mosseri, you could have interacted with pages (or websites on the internet) that have something to do with the kind of conversation you are about to have, and the ads are based on your activity rather than any kind of malicious listening in that Instagram and Facebook are doing. All the way until the end of the interview, King was unwilling to concede that such a thing could be possible.




Read next: Here is How Facebook Knows Everything About You

Featured photo: Bigtunaonline / Getty Images
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