Facebook paid people to transcribe users' voicemails

"Like Apple and Google, we paused the human audio review more than a week ago," Facebook said on Tuesday. The company said this work is about users who have chosen a messenger to transcribe their voicemails. Facebook has reportedly commissioned people's work because it has checked whether its "artificial intelligence" interprets the recordings correctly. The content of these records cannot be linked to their authors, says the social network operator.

According to Bloomberg, however, rewriting conversations has put outside workers in an unpleasant situation. "They didn't tell them where or how the recordings were made, just to transcribe them … They listen to Facebook interviews, sometimes with vulgar content, but they don't know why Facebook should be uploaded," those involved in the action , told the news agency. involved.

The user's social network was not aware that their audio recordings could be in the hands of third parties. Facebook's data usage policy does not specifically mention registrations. It states that the company collects "content, communication and other information you provide when you use our products, including information provided when you register your account, create or share content and send messages or otherwise communicate with other users." The policy also states that content usage and communication are "automatically processed" by Facebook systems.

According to Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg refuses to collect sound recordings from users for advertising. The founder himself made sure of this at the US Congress last year. "You're talking about a conspiracy theory that circulates that we listen to what's going on with your microphone and use it to advertise. We don't," Zuckerberg told Senator Gary Peters in April 2018.

Lately, companies like Amazon and Apple have also been criticized for commissioning human control of consumer device registrations. According to critics, such a procedure violates privacy. Apple and Google recently reported that they have discontinued this activity, Amazon has promised to allow "human review" users to decline.

Apple, Google and Microsoft also entered the Irish Personal Information Protection Authority's viewfinder as part of a manual transcript of records. He said on Wednesday that because of the same problem, he would seek clarification from Facebook. Many US tea companies are headquartered in Ireland, so the Irish regulator is investigating possible violations of the EU Data Protection Act (GDPR).

"In addition to ongoing contact with Google, Apple and Microsoft … we are now requesting detailed Facebook information on this processing (data) and why Facebook thinks such processing is in line with its GDPR commitments," the Irish Office said in response to the findings of Bloomberg.