The Notion desktop app will observe if there is a process running on your computer that is actively using your microphone, such as Zoom.
Notion does not and cannot listen to the audio coming from your microphone ambiently or snoop on the signal received by another application. This detection is done purely based on the existing of a process using your microphone, not on the audio coming from the microphone. Users can verify this because the OS-level microphone indicator will show that Notion is not listening to their microphone.
If one is detected, Notion will notify the user and try to associate it with a calendar event if you have connected your calendar. Connecting your calendar is not a requirement to receive this notification.
Users can disable this behavior via their account settings in Settings > Notifications > Desktop meeting detection notifications.
Only when the user has started a meeting note and clicked record, will Notion activate the user's microphone. We cannot do this without operating system mediated consent dialog, which is the way it should be! At this point Notion will show up as using the microphone in the OS indicators.
(I work at Notion)
Source: I built the same listening infrastructure into other meeting note taking apps. Our team spoke at length about this security issue with Apple.
If you check Reddit and similar forums, it's been raised so many times by users.
A feature that's opt-in will get like 1% of the use of a feature that's opt-out. A happier middle ground would be to enable by default and showed a "I don't like this, pls turn it off" button the first few times.
Our PMs don't like making things opt-in.
-> Your users don't like making things opt-out. Low usage metrics is a UX problem. Activating it without informed consent gives you bloated metrics anyway.
Good compromise.
Runner up is the "what's new" tutorial overlays.
What is so hard about that?
> Our PMs don't like making things opt-in.
Lamest excuse ever.
I wouldn't be surprised if you phoned back home about that mic activation - do you?
I recently joined an org where Notion is in use - I will actively lobby them to not install the desktop app, at all or to quit Notion alltogether.
Once you already are in the habit of evading user-privacy, it's a only a couple of down quarters before you start tracking and sending data to data brokers or someone else. This is why no one here likes this behavior.
As more and more companies start to use AI for “personalized”/targeted pricing, offers, advertising, etc. The more this exact type of data will be useful and therefore lucrative.
Please don't forget: Road to hell is paved with good intentions. Making features which can eavesdrop on users opt-in can go very wrong, very fast.
I understand the need to make it "feel like magic", but that line is very thin.
Last note, please when you move something around (e.g. Calculate button from bottom of the database columns to header menu), please let users know. It really feels bad when you use something too much just disappears.
BTW, I'm a Notion subscriber as you can say :)
oof, i will forward that feedback to the team. we should do better about communicating changes to ui
Then refuse implementing it. Have some dignity for God's sake.
Also, searching for dignity in a post-“don’t be evil” startup environment seems unusual.
Expecting a shift in corporate culture to come from a short list of individuals making great personal sacrifice (of their careers, reputations, whatever) is not reasonable, sustainable, or realistic.
I know there are a lot of folks who abhor regulation in many contexts, but stuff like this is most effectively handled by such mechanisms.
Whenever people on HN and else where present you the mustache twirling evil Microsoft or Apple or Google C-suite/board who are trying to enshitificate a product or a tool because they don’t care, always keep in mind that the reality is often a lot more mundane than that.
The application that is “sneakily” listening to you and transmitting everything you say to their servers can be a legitimate product of a mustache twirling villain, but it’s a lot more likely (in my experience) that a group of 5 engineers and a PM were tasked by “Present relevant products from our company to the user” task and someone was like “what if we record what they are saying (or just zip-up their entire ~/Documents folder), run it through an LLM on our server and prompt it to analyze their convo or documents and recommend one of our products to sell to them? Sounds good to me, no?”
Moustache-twirler A: We've identified these metrics that correlate with increased shareholder value
Moustache-twirler B: But what do those metrics say about user privacy?
(both laugh. This is very funny)
MT A: no but really, fire any PMs that don't make these go up and let the survivors figure out why
MT B: sounds great. See you at golf this weekend
(some time later, in a less fancy conference room)
Engineer: This new feature is great, but could be construed as an invasion of privacy. Can we make it opt-in?
PM (panicking): Oh good heavens, no! Also send the opt-out button to the UX team, that way it doesn't come down on us.
Well... yeah. It's either because the benefits of opting in aren't communicated well enough or that users just don't actually want it.
For AI meeting notes, I'd imagine it's the latter.
That is an implementation detail. What matters is the outcome:
Notion leadership has signed off on this being opt-out.
The calculus here, as you indicated, was that opt-in has little buy-in.
What leadership didn't take into account was the risk of this being publicized, and the blowback from this awareness.
That, or leadership has already calculated that not enough people will care (possibly true).
I suppose it's then up to those that do care to make more noise about this, to tilt the odds?, so this specific calculus (also known as enshittification) doesn't keep occuring (i.e, if the blowback costs are disproportionate to the value provided by default opt-out....)
Thank god the web browser was developed in an era where PMs weren't stack-ranked on rubrics like "feature engagement". Imagine a world where every website was granted access to your filesystem, webcam, microphone, and geolocation by default so that PMs could report back on how many websites were making use of those browser APIs.
“Ze engagement metrics must go up on ze dashboard every quarter, jah!” I can’t wait for the day PMs and other parasites find a new industry to move to. They sure have sucked the fun out of this one.
But none of this conversation makes me want to use Notion. We used to use it at $OLDJOB for meeting notes and light DB work for non-technical users. Now I’m happy we stopped.
we dropped the ball with the support response quoted the top of the thread. we don't process your microphone data until you click the button to start transcribing, and remind the user to confirm they have two-party consent. we merely detect when a meeting app is using your microphone.
source: i work at notion, just checked the code. it's electron, you're welcome to check for yourself.
Tell them that alone is one reason I'll never use it. I'm sure I'm a minority, but not zero.
If a company is willing to do even small privacy violations, I do not trust them at all. Feel free to run OpenSnitch or LittleSnitch - most apps are opening connections to many domains you won't recognize. Your guess is as good as anyone's what data they're exfiltrating. That is, of course, unless you use more privacy-preserving apps that are typically opensource.
> you just wouldn't be able to tell.
You can setup a local web proxy and tell us. Also check the sources since it's an electron app.
It's probably not always this easy. I see many connections on apps using UDP, so who knows how, exactly, they are encoded.
The data may also be "encrypted", similar to how Zoom "encrypted" data. That is to say, the data is encrypted, but the private key is on the same server. So, if you MITM, it looks encrypted - but there's no security.
Based off of that, I then assume that other companies are exfiltrating as much data as possible off my devices.
I mean, even your car, which, keep in mind, is a multi-tens-of-thousands dollar product, exfiltrates your location, all your texts, all your phone calls, and as much data from your phone as possible.
Yes, this is a "leap of faith". I am not bound by a purely evidence-based worldview - I consider that naivety. I do not need strong irrefutable evidence of bad things happening. When people are untrustworthy, I approach them with skepticism in order to protect myself.
For example, I have absolutely no proof that the NSA is surveilling SMS and telephony right now. None at all. But I know Prism was a thing. It is safe to assume the NSA is absolutely surveilling SMS and telephony.
And, I'm almost always right, in my experience.
I don't need proof that some random man is a mugger to know to put my phone in my pocket and walk quickly at 3 AM. This is what I mean when I say your mentality here is naive - how many times do you need to get mugged to learn?
And, secondly, even if you DO require proof, this is an incredibly inefficient way to live. If you require proof for everything, you wouldn't be able to get much done. You'll be sitting around waiting, or searching. Sometimes, it's faster to assume, if your assumption is good.
People being angry here shows how they distrust software they use and distrusting always online software causes fear and stress.
The best these people can do is relying on free software distributed in a sane way because that's what can help trust software, and, in a professional setting, to push their companies or their providers towards free software as well, and demand guarantees that their privacy is respected.
These matters are not theoretical and this discussion is a witness of this.
If Notion wants to be trusted, they should go open source. I see Notion people are here. Do it! Stop doing closed source software! That doesn't bring anything worth and see what badness it brings. Your value is elsewhere. It's in you expertise, your vision and how well you do things.
I work for an open source competitor (or at least in the neighborhood) and that works out well for us and has been for 20 years.
The day you open source your desktop client, you'll be able to show us the code and show that you indeed don't send audio records or related logs to your headquarters. We won't have to reverse engineer, sandbox just to be sure, and hope for the best.
Knowledge management software shouldn't hide knowledge.
I do not want to be spied on and have 0 trust for any company wishing to do any kind of monitoring of my usage in order to provide or advertise "features" to me.
I'd prefer an option to silently grab non-security/non-fix updates once every [Day, Week, Month] in the background, and install automatically on next app start up. Urgent updates can happen immediately. The default should be every week as every update is around 85mb. You could go a step further and have an option to only download over WiFi.
As for the mic "issue", I'm not sure what everyone's on about. Acting like it's the first app on Windows to monitor what the system is doing to provide a feature.
> If you do not want the AI Meeting Notes feature available to your users, administrators may opt-out their workspace at any time via the toggle available in their console.
Here's your problem: Make this opt-in.
(edit: see what @jitl said)
EDIT: no, there's no transmission of logs or analytics events besides a check to see if the feature is enabled. We only transmit some data if you ask Notion to record.
Just want to clarify for pedantic reasons - is there transmission regardless of whether it's enabled or disabled? And does that happen only if someone asks Notion to record?
you're talking about the desktop notification in particular, right?
"Bin it, no one will turn it on, make them turn it off if they don't want it"
Are there other cases where Notion is monitoring my network traffic? If so, what are they?
See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/1i4ypl8/comment/m8o... for info about the "local network access" permission
Like, I can give my consent, but the meeting attendees can't, right?
Does Notion just listen to me, not my attendees?
I only ask because we got an email about recording meetings from HR/Legal a couple weeks ago and I never considered it before
I believe it's Notion, not me, who is doing the recording. And Notion doesn't require everyone's consent, just mine.
So if I am to take your meaning, it'd be up to me to disable the meeting notes if any other attendee is in a 2 party consent state (assuming everyone is in the US, IDK how other countries handle that)
With Notion it's still you doing the recording, you're the one using software and clicking a button to record.
ty
i assume with notion you'd need to click the "yes transcribe this" both after the meeting starts and after you inform other party if it's a two party state.
1. Notion records audio only during your use of the Meeting Notes feature. Here are the docs: https://www.notion.com/help/ai-meeting-notes
2. Notion desktop app has notifications about meetings that ask you if you want to use Meeting Notes, it recognizes this by detecting that your microphone is on (i.e. it does not listen to audio coming from your microphone). This feature is a setting in preferences btw, under Notifications > Desktop meeting detection notification.
source: I work for Notion