Some Outfits Takes Pictures… Of Users
May 23, 2025
Conspiracy theorists aka wackadoos assert preach that the government is listening to everyone with microphones and it’s only gotten worse with mobile devices. This conspiracy theory has been running circuits since before the invention of the Internet. It used to be spies or aluminum can string telephones were the culprit. Truth is actually stranger than fiction and New Atlas updated an article about how well Facebook is actually listening to us, “Your Phone Isn’t Secretly Listening To You, But The Truth Is More Disturbing.”
Let’s assume that the story is accurate, but the information was on the Internet, so for AI and some humans, the write up is chock full of meaty facts. It was revealed in 2024 that Cox Media Group (CMG) developed Active Listening, a system to capture “real time intent data” with mobile devices’ microphones. It then did the necessary technology magic and fed personalized ads. Tech companies distanced themselves from CMG. CMG stopped using the system. It supposedly worked by listening to small vocal data uploaded after digital assistants were activated. It bleeds into the smartphone listening conspiracy but apparently that’s still not a tenable reality.
The mobile cyber security company Wandera tested the listening microphone theory. They placed two smart phones in a room, played pet food ads on an audio loop for thirty minutes a day over three days. Here are the nitty gritty details:
“User permissions for a large number of apps were all enabled, and the same experiment was performed, with the same phones, in a silent test room to act as a control. The experiment had two main goals. First, a number of apps were scanned following the experiment to ascertain whether pet food ads suddenly appeared in any streams. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the devices were closely examined to track data consumption, battery use, and background activity.”
The results showed that phones weren’t listening to conversations. The truth was on par and more feasible given the current technology:
“In early 2017 Jingjing Ren, a PhD student at Northeastern University, and Elleen Pan, an undergraduate student, designed a study to investigate the very issue of whether phones listen in on conversations without users knowing. Pretty quickly it became clear to the researchers that the phones’ microphones were not being covertly activated, but it also became clear there were a number of other disconcerting things going on. There were no audio leaks at all – not a single app activated the microphone,’ said Christo Wilson, a computer scientist working on the project. ‘Then we started seeing things we didn’t expect. Apps were automatically taking screenshots of themselves and sending them to third parties. In one case, the app took video of the screen activity and sent that information to a third party.’”
There are multiple other ways Facebook and companies are actually tracking and collecting data. Everything done on a smartphone from banking to playing games generates data that can be tracked and sent to third parties. The more useful your phone is to you, the more useful it is as a tracking, monitoring, and selling tool to AI algorithms to generate targeted ads and more personalized content. It’s a lot easier to believe in the microphone theory because it’s easier to understand the vast amounts of technology at work to steal…er…gather information. To sum up, innovators are inspirational!
Whitney Grace, May 23, 2025
Meta Knows How to Argue: The Ad Hominem Tactic
May 20, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby expressing his opinions to Zillennials.
This is exciting for me, the dinobaby. Meta (a Telegram inspired outfit) is now going after “real” media people. Yep, individuals as in ad hominin just like the old times in Greek discourse. Cool. A blast from the past. Check out the title from the pay-to-read outfit, The Verge:
Now that is a headline: Meta, antitrust trial, attorney, failed, and the ultimate “real” journalist pejorative “blogger.” A blogger. Wow. Harsh.
The write up says, which for the purpose of this short essay, as the sacred truth:
In court, he [Meta’s lead attorney] projected a headline about her [Kara Swisher] recently calling Mark Zuckerberg a “small little creature with a shriveled soul.”
But who is the failed blogger because Ms. Swisher is no longer just a blogger; she is a media personality? It is Om Malik. Before you say, “Who?” Here’s a snapshot: Mr. Malik is the founder of Gigaom. He is a venture capitalist.
The Verge story asserts:
Malik critiqued Facebook’s intentions for offering free access to its apps and others in India, after board member Marc Andreessen blamed local resistance to the program on “anti-colonialism” in a later-deleted tweet. “I am suspicious of any for-profit company arguing its good intentions and its free gifts,” Malik wrote at the time.
How will this trial play out? I have zero idea. I am not sure the story with the “failed blogger” headline will do much to change opinions about Meta and its “bring people together properties.”
Several observations:
- What types of argumentative strategies are taught in law school? I thought the ad hominem method was viewed as less than slick.
- Why is Meta in court? The company has been chugging along for 21 years, largely unimpeded by regulations and researchers who have suggested that the company has remarkable influence on certain user cohorts? Will a decision today remediate alleged harms from yesterday? Probably not too much in my opinion.
- With Meta’s increasing involvement in political activities in the US, won’t other types of argumentative techniques be more effective and less subject to behaviors of the judicial processes?
Net net: Slick stuff.
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2025
Zuckerberg Wants WhatsApp To Compete With Telegram
April 24, 2025
After 13 years of just borrowing Telegram’s innovations, the Zucker wants to compete with Telegram. (Wasn’t Pavel Durov arrested?)
Mark Zuckerberg is ready to bring WhatsApp to the messaging race and he plans to give Telegram and Signal a run for their money. Life Hacker posted a press release about the updates to the message app: “WhatsApp Just Announced a Dozen New Features.”
Group chats are getting a major overhaul. There will be an indicator that shows who has WhatsApp open in real time. This will allow users to see how many people are active on a threat. There will also be a “Notify for” section in group chat settings for managing thread notifications and there will be a “Highlights” option to limit what alerts users. The option to create events will be extended to one-on-one chats. Apple iPhone users get the exclusive update of a built-in document scanner and WhatsApp can now be set as the default message app.
Calls have been updated too:
You’ll notice three new features when placing calls. On iOS, you can pinch to zoom when on a video call. This works on both your video feed, as well as the feed of the person you’re talking to…You can now add a friend to a one-on-one call by swiping over to their chat, tapping the call button, and choose "Add to call.”…Finally, WhatsApp says they’ve upgraded their video call tech, optimizing the routing system and boosting bandwidth detection.”
Updates will has some important changes:
“There are also three changes to the Updates tab: Channel admins can record and post videos to their followers directly from the app (though these videos need to be 60 seconds or less). You can also see a transcription of voice messages updates in channels, and channel admins can share QR codes to link to the channel.”
Why not implement the live video, the crypto wallet, and the bots? Oh, right. Those are harder to emulate.
Whitney Grace, April 24, 2025
Why Is Meta Experimenting With AI To Write Comments?
April 18, 2025
Who knows why Meta does anything original? Amazon uses AI to write snapshots of book series. Therefore, Meta is using AI to write comments. We were not surprised to read “Meta Is Experimenting With AI-Generated Comments, For Some Reason."
Meta is using AI to write Instagram comments. It sounds like a very stupid idea, but Meta is doing it. Some Instagram accounts can see a new icon to the left of the text field after choosing to leave a comment. The icon is a pencil with a star. When the icon is tapped, a new Meta AI menu pops up, and offers a selection of comment choices. These comments are presumed to be based off whatever content the comment corresponds to in the post.
It doesn’t take much effort to write a simple Instagram comment, but offloading the task appears to take more effort than completing the task yourself. Plus, Instagram is already plagued with chatbot comments already. Does it need more? Nope.
Here’s what the author Jake Peterson requests of his readers:
“Writing comments isn’t hard, and yet, someone at Meta thought there was a usefulness—a market—for AI-generated comments. They probably want more training data for their AI machine, which tracks, considering companies are running out of internet for models to learn from. But that doesn’t mean we should be okay with outsourcing all human tasks to AI.
Mr. Peterson suggest that what bugs him the most is users happily allowing hallucinating software to perform cognitive tasks and make decision for people like me. Right on, Mr. Peterson.
Whitney Grace, April 18, 2025
Facebook: Always Giving Families a Boost
March 21, 2025
What parent has not erred on the side of panic? We learn of one mom who turned to Facebook in the search for her teenage adult daughter, who "vanished" for ten days without explanation. The daughter had last been seen leaving her workplace with a man who, she later revealed, is her boyfriend. The Rakyat Post of Malaysia reports, "Mom’s Missing Teen Alert Backfires: ‘Stop Embarrassing Me, I’m Fine!’" To be fair, it can be hard to distinguish between a kidnapping and a digital cold shoulder. Writer Fernando Fong explains:
"CCTV footage from what’s believed to be the company dormitory showed Pei Ting leaving with a man around 2 PM on the 18th, carrying her bags and luggage. Since then, she has refused to answer calls or reply to WhatsApp messages, leading her mother to worry that someone might be controlling her phone. The mother said neither her elder daughter nor the employer had seen this man."
Such a scenario would alarm many a parent. The post continues:
"Desperate and frantic, the mother turned to social media as her last hope, only to be stunned when her daughter emerged from the digital shadows – not with remorse or understanding, but with embarrassment and indignation at her mother’s public display of concern."
Oops. In the comments of her mother’s worried post, the daughter identified the mystery man as her boyfriend. She also painted a picture of family conflict. Ahh, dirty laundry heaped in the virtual public square. Social media has certainly posed a novel type of challenge for parents.
Cynthia Murrell, March 21, 2025
What Sells Books? Publicity, Sizzle, and Mouth-Watering Titbits
March 18, 2025
Another dinobaby blog post.
Editor note: This post was written on March 13, 2025. Availability of the articles and the book cited may change when this appears in Mr. Arnold’s public blog.
I have heard that books are making a comeback. In rural Kentucky, where I labor in an underground nook, books are good for getting a fire started. The closest bookstore is filled with toys and odd stuff one places on a desk. I am rarely motivated to read a whatchamacallit like a book. I must admit that I read one of those emergence books from a geezer named Stuart A. Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute, and it was pretty good. Not much in the jazzy world of social media but it was a good use of my time.
I now have another book I want to read. I think it is a slice of reality TV encapsulated in a form of communication less popular than TikTok- or Telegram Messenger-type of media. The bundle of information is called Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism. Many and pundits have grabbed the story of a dispute between everyone’s favorite social media company and an authoress named Sarah Wynn-Williams.
There is nothing like some good old legal action, a former employee, and a very defensive company.
The main idea is that a memoir published on March 11, 2025, and available via Amazon at https://shorturl.at/Q077l is not supposed to be sold. Like any good dinobaby who actually read a dead tree thing this year, I bought the book. I have no idea if it has been delivered to my Kindle. I know one thing. Good old Amazon will be able to reach out and kill that puppy when the news reaches the equally sensitive leadership at that outstanding online service.
A festive group ready to cook dinner over a small fire of burning books. Thanks, You.com. Good enough.
According to The Verge, CNBC, and the Emergency International Arbitral Tribunal, an arbitrator (Nicholas Gowen) decided that the book has to be put in the information freezer. According to the Economic Times:
… violated her contract… In addition to halting book promotions and sales, Wynn-Williams must refrain from engaging in or ‘amplifying any further disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments… She also must retract all previous disparaging comments ‘to the extent within her control.’”
My favorite green poohbah publication The Verge offered:
…it’s unclear how much authority the arbitrator has to do so.
Such a bold statement: It’s unclear, we say.
The Verge added:
In the decision, the arbitrator said Wynn-Williams must stop making disparaging remarks against Meta and its employees and, to the extent that she can control, cease further promoting the book, further publishing the book, and further repetition of previous disparaging remarks. The decision also says she must retract disparaging remarks from where they have appeared.
Now I have written a number of books and monographs. These have been published by outfits no longer in business. I had a publisher in Scandinavia. I had a publisher in the UK. I had a publisher in the United States. A couple of these actually made revenue and one of them snagged a positive review in a British newspaper.
But in all honesty, no one really cared about my Google, search and retrieval, and electronic publishing work.
Why?
I did not have a giant company chasing me to the Emergency International Arbitral Tribunal and making headlines for the prestigious outfit CNBC.
Well, in my opinion Sarah Wynn-Williams has hit a book publicity home run. Imagine, non readers like me buying a book about a firm to which I pay very little attention. Instead of writing about the Zuckbook, I am finishing a book (gasp!) about Telegram Messenger and that sporty baby maker Pavel Durov. Will his “core” engineering team chase me down? I wish. Sara Wynn-Williams is in the news.
Will Ms. Wynn-Williams “win” a guest spot on the Joe Rogan podcast or possibly the MeidasTouch network? I assume that her publisher, agent, and she have their fingers crossed. I heard somewhere that any publicity is good publicity.
I hope Mr. Beast picks up this story. Imagine what he would do with forced arbitration and possibly a million dollar payoff for the PR firm that can top the publicity the apparently Meta has delivered to Ms. Wynn-Williams.
Net net: Win, Wynn!
Stephen E Arnold, March 18, 2025
WhatsApp: Chasing More Money
January 1, 2025
Meta aims to make WhatsApp indispensable to businesses around the world. The app is currently responsible for just a fraction of the company’s revenue, but Zuckerberg seems to have high hopes for the messaging platform. Rest of World‘s thorough piece, “How WhatsApp Ate the World,” describes the plan. Writer Issie Lapowsky details the app’s evolution since Facebook (now Meta) bought it and examines where the company plans to take it from here. We learn:
“WhatsApp initially achieved that global dominance in large part by doing just one thing very well: enabling cheap, private, and reliable messaging on almost any phone, almost anywhere in the world. But in the decade since Meta acquired WhatsApp for an eye-watering $22 billion in 2014, the app has been transformed from a narrowly focused utilitarian tool into a sort of ‘everything app.’ In countries like India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, WhatsApp is now also a place for scheduling doctor’s appointments and conducting real estate deals — and buying Sabharwal’s ceramic ducks. In Brazil, the beauty juggernaut L’Oréal now makes an average of 25% of its online direct-to-consumer sales on WhatsApp. The shift has been driven, of course, by money. WhatsApp has never been much of a moneymaker. While Meta makes billions off mining people’s personal data to sell more ads, WhatsApp is an encrypted app, whose founders once very publicly swore off advertising altogether. Lately, however, WhatsApp has been aggressively luring big businesses to its suite of paid messaging products for businesses, and openly flirting with the possibility of introducing ads in the not-too-distant future.”
Because of course it is. Meta insists it respects WhatsApp’s original mission of privacy, pledging to keep its end-to-end encryption intact. The company has even added privacy tools that remind us of the old Telegram: disappearing messages, encrypting backups, and shielding IP addresses in calls. Is Meta attempting to move forward by stepping into the past? Even with these privacy promises, Lapowsky notes:
“And yet, with each new revenue-boosting feature, WhatsApp has added a little asterisk to its core privacy promises, according to Nathalie Maréchal, co-director of the privacy and data program at the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, D.C. ‘It’s not necessarily that those asterisks are illegitimate. It’s that they’re complicated,’ she told Rest of World, ‘and many users are either not going to take the time, or aren’t going to prioritize, fully understanding it.'”
Ah, details. Another key part of Zuck’s vision is no surprise—generative AI. Meta’s chatbot is now a standard part of the app’s search bar, while a customer-service version and AI marketing tools are now available to businesses. Will all these changes turn WhatsApp into the moneymaker the tech mogul envisions?
Cynthia Murrell, January 1, 2025
A New Frankie Bursts on the Music Scene
November 27, 2024
So here is a minor but unfortunate thing that just happened to our culture: As the BBC reports, “Zuckerberg Records ‘Romantic’ Cover of Explicit Rap Hit.” Let me advise you, dear reader, to avoid hearing even a portion of this track if you possibly can. That goes double if you are a fan of the original. I wish I could unhear it. Writer Paul Glynn tells us:
“Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has recorded his own version of rap track Get Low alongside US star T-Pain, in tribute to his wife Priscilla Chan for their ‘dating anniversary.’ Zuckerberg sings with the help of Auto-Tune on an acoustic guitar reworking of the filthy floor-filler, which was originally a hit for Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz in 2003. ‘Get Low was playing when I first met Priscilla at a college party, so every year we listen to it on our dating anniversary,’ the Meta boss explained on his own platform Instagram.”
How sweet. Would that Zuckerberg (or “Z-Pain,” as he has styled himself for this stunt) had left it at that. His “lyrical” treatment renders the raunchy lines surreal, and not in a good way. Fortunately for him, his wife welcomed the gesture as “so romantic.” But why subject the rest of us to this acoustic, Auto-Tuned abomination? Shouting one’s love from the rooftops is one thing. This is quite another.
For the morbidly curious, here is a link to Zuckerberg’s (not safe for work) creation. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. For comparison and/or a palate cleanser, here is the original (even less safe for work) Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz video on YouTube. What a time to be alive! A new Frank Sinatra is upon us.
Cynthia Murrell, November 27, 2024
EU Docks Meta (Zuckbook) Five Days of Profits! Wow, Painful, Right?
November 19, 2024
No smart software. Just a dumb dinobaby. Oh, the art? Yeah, MidJourney.
Let’s keep this short. According to “real” news outfits “Meta Fined Euro 798 Million by EU Over Abusing Classified Ads Dominance.” This is the lovable firm’s first EU antitrust fine. Of course, Meta (the Zuckbook) will let loose its legal eagles to dispute the fine.
The Facebook money machine keeps on doing its thing. Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
What the “real” news outfits did not do is answer this question, “How long does it take the Zuck outfit to generate about $840 million US dollars?
The answer is that it takes that fine firm about five days to earn or generate the cash to pay a fine that would cripple many organizations. In case you were wondering, five days works out to about 1.4 percent of a calendar year.
I bet that fine will definitely force the Zuck to change its ways. I wish I knew how much the EU spent pursuing this particular legal matter. My hunch is that the number has disappeared into the murkiness of Brussels’ bookkeeping.
And the Zuckbook? It will keep on keeping on.
Stephen E Arnold, November 19, 2024
Meta, AI, and the US Military: Doomsters, Now Is Your Chance
November 12, 2024
Sorry to disappoint you, but this blog post is written by a dumb humanoid.
The Zuck is demonstrating that he is an American. That’s good. I found the news report about Meta and its smart software in Analytics India magazine interesting. “After China, Meta Just Hands Llama to the US Government to ‘Strengthen’ Security” contains an interesting word pair, “after China.”
What did the article say? I noted this statement:
Meta’s stance to help government agencies leverage their open-source AI models comes after China’s rumored adoption of Llama for military use.
The write up points out:
“These kinds of responsible and ethical uses of open source AI models like Llama will not only support the prosperity and security of the United States, they will also help establish U.S. open source standards in the global race for AI leadership.” said Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs in a blog post published from Meta.
Analytics India notes:
The announcement comes after reports that China was rumored to be using Llama for its military applications. Researchers linked to the People’s Liberation Army are said to have built ChatBIT, an AI conversation tool fine-tuned to answer questions involving the aspects of the military.
I noted this statement attributed to a “real” person at Meta:
Yann LecCun, Meta’s Chief AI scientist, did not hold back. He said, “There is a lot of very good published AI research coming out of China. In fact, Chinese scientists and engineers are very much on top of things (particularly in computer vision, but also in LLMs). They don’t really need our open-source LLMs.”
I still find the phrase “after China” interesting. Is money the motive for this open source generosity? Is it a bet on Meta’s future opportunities? No answers at the moment.
Stephen E Arnold, November 12, 2024
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