>If it were true I feel confident that information would have leaked by now.

Yeah, there's no way for Facebook to be actively listening to conversations on millions of phones connected to private home networks without someone noticing. And that's not even addressing that someone currently or formerly working at Facebook would just blow the whistle at some point.

The problem with this conspiracy theory is that people just don't care about numbers and facts. They usually have an anecdote ("I was talking about cheese and hour later I got an ad for cheese") and that removes any need for hard evidence. Hard evidence that shouldn't be that hard to collect considering you own both the device and the network on which this supposed listening is happening on.

But this definitely _does_ happen, and most people, even non-tech people are aware of it. There's just some people who refuse to believe it.

If you mean the conspiracy theory, then some proof would be in order. That happening, and most people believing that to happen, are both outlandish claims.

Spoiler: it actually does not happen. As the other person commented, snooping like this in scale would leak.

I don't understand this "argument from incredulity". It has leaked - you found out about it. Do you want them to publish an article in NY Times saying "yes, we spy on you all the time"? Do you want a personalized letter? What, exactly, is the form of this "leak" you expect would happen if this were true?

Just in case you are serious here: a random anecdote on a forum discussion doesn't count for anything, definitely not for a "leak". That parent message had a wild claim which of course requires serious proof.

Edit: since you're asking, proof could be multiple testimonials from ex-engineers working on the project or a peer-reviewed article in a serious journal. Until that this is in the same bin with healing crystals and chemtrails.

Right. Testimonials in violation of their NDAs.

Whistleblowers never prosper, at least in the US. Too many examples, take Stingray for a less controversial one. What was the result? Crickets. Exactly what would be the incentive for those engineers?

Myself, I'm a Bayesian and I grew up in a communist country, which means I start from "of course everyone is spying on me, all the time" and require strong evidence to change my mind.

>Right. Testimonials in violation of their NDAs.

You're expecting 100% of the engineers at Facebook (or previously at Facebook) that know about this to comply with the NDA. And history shows that 100% of Facebook employees will not keep quiet about Facebook doing bad/illegal things.

I don't need to change your mind, so I won't try. I'll just say that it must be very tiring to believe every conspiracy theory by default. To me it seems like a sad way to live.

>It has leaked - you found out about it.

Where?

Really? In the parent message.

Yeah, really. Because I ain't seeing anything.

You mean that Facebook is definitely tapping your phone's microphone 24/7?

Couldn't the facebook app just listen for signal fingerprints? For example, Nielsen embeds digital fingerprints into songs so that it can tell what you listen to without listening to the full audio stream. They simply listen for a certain pattern, and make note when they detect the pattern. You could do the same with with "coffee" or "jogging" or "yoga mat". You don't listen to the conversation audio, you detect audio fingerprints.

They would still need to enable the Audio hardware. That would be noticed.

Nice, thanks for linking the article!