So facebook does speech recognition in realtime for every android device out there and share it in realtime with the many ad networks. Someone is really screwed up at facebook to share such an incriminating secret or business leverage (depending on how you want to see it) with competitors.

The conspiracy theory doesn't seem to hold ground.

Experience is the best evidence. Give me a better reasonable explanation then? Why do you think it's a conspiracy theory? There are lawsuits[1] and news articles on this.

Someone really screwed up at facebook? Have you read the news recently? They lie through their teeth to their owm shareholders and customers!

If I had to guess they merely transcribe audio on the device and send keywords for ad targeting and other nefarious uses. They can claim there is no "recording" since audio isn't stored anywhere. Honestly,I think this is fairly harmless if you compare it to some of the other more serious conspiracy theories.

Remember how NSA's surveillance was also a conspiracy theory?

IMO,it's a double edged sword for them,they do this sort of crooked business for law enforcent and intelligence community but they also profit by exploiting this for revenue generation.

[1] http://digg.com/2017/facebook-phone-microphone-ads

"Leaking" data they are supposed to have is not anywhere close to secretly recording user audio. They have plausible deniability with what you hear on news. There is no deniability when they are caught recording users. "Carelessness" does not lead an app to go rogue and start listening and transcribing audio.

Like I said, the problem I see with theory is that it doesn't hold ground even with all the assumptions one should be expected to make.

As for NSA, none of their surveillance was happening on the device. So that again is not the same as this theory.