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Comment on Meta illegally collected data from Flo period and pregnancy app, jury finds

I feel this comment lacks some nuance. Someone who didn’t read the article might think microphones were involved, or that Meta recorded any conversations, which they didn’t.

What has actually happened: The Flo app, as part of onboarding, asks the user about their goal for using the app, with possible choices being “I am pregnant” and similar sensitive info. They are using Meta’s analytics SDK for tracking what users do in the app, and they included an event for when a user selects the goal. All these events go to their analytics dashboard, which lives on Meta’s servers. Flo promised they are not sharing this information with third parties, but they clearly do. So in the end, information about someone being pregnant ended up on Meta’s servers. Meta later learned that this data is sent their way, and incorporanted it for their own use for advertising.

Both Flo and Meta are clearly guilty here. But no eavesdropping occured here, “just” the usual event tracking of which radio button a user selected when installing the app. I.e. no conversation was recorded by anyone, which is what someone may picture seeing the word “eavesdropping”. Which doesn’t make this any better of course.

What I’m trying to get to is this:

they were found guilty of fucking eavesdropping. I can’t wait to see people defending this as not being true for advertising.

This story is once again an example showing that your devices don’t need to listen to your conversations, and aren’t eavesdropping on you. Because all the apps you use are already tracking everything you do, and eavesdropping is not necessary.

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pelespirit@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
You might be partially right, but I can’t find what is meant by the “recorded conversations” part. I guess I gotta look further in.

“Each of the Defendants had their own purpose for collecting and using Flo user data,” the brief said. “Flo used this information to acquire new app users through advertising and marketing, including advertisements based on Flo App users’ reproductive goals (e.g., getting pregnant). Flo also sold access to the CAEs sent through SDKs to other third parties for profit. Google and Meta separately used the data they intercepted for their own commercial purposes, including to feed their machine learning algorithms that power each of their respective advertising networks.”

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- dev_null@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  To be clear, I’m not saying secretly recording conversations with a mic never happens, just that it didn’t happen in this case.
  
  To the other story you linked, what we know happened is that some company had a slide deck claiming they have that capability. It could be that they really did and that it’s used everywhere. It could also be that they were judging interest and didn’t even look into the feasibility of building it. It could be that they wanted publicity by manufacturing some controversial news and never even wanted to build it. Or, again, it could be true. But all we know for a fact, in that case, is that a slide deck existed. Not that any product existed, let alone that it was deployed anywhere.
  
  Again, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, it probably does, but that story doesn’t prove it either.
  
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  - pelespirit@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    Again, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, it probably does, but that story doesn’t prove it either.
    
    Why are you writing diatribes then?
    
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    dev_null@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    English is not my first language, so had to look “diatribes” up. “a forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone or something”? That was not my intention, I’m trying to have a polite conversation, maybe I’m failing at it if that’s how it’s received!
    
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