For those of you who’d rather not have Facebook passively listen to the music we listen to, the movies and television shows we watch, or likely, our conversations, you’re not the only one.
After the largest social network in the world released their plan to create a way for users to actively share what they’re listening to via their cellphone’s microphone, website Sum of Us quickly protested.
“When writing a status update – if you choose to turn the feature on – you’ll have the option to use your phone’s microphone to identify what song is playing or what show or movie is on TV,” Facebook claims. “That means if you want to share that you’re listening to your favorite Beyoncé track or watching the season premiere of Game of Thrones, you can do it quickly and easily, without typing.”
Apparently the app can’t interpret conversation, only music, movies and television shows. But the creators of Sum of Us aren’t buying it.
“Facebook says the feature will be used for harmless things, like identifying the song or TV show playing in the background, but by using the phone’s microphone every time you write a status update, it has the ability to listen to everything,” the protest states.
The petitioners plainly do not trust Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO.
“Not only is this move just downright creepy, it’s also a massive threat to our privacy. The information it gathers by listening to its 1.2 billion users worldwide can be sold for huge profits to advertisers and corporations looking for better information on consumer tastes and preferences. Talk about a Big Brother move.”
“Facebook says it’ll be responsible with this feature, but we know we can’t trust it.”
After all, Facebook was recently in trouble for receiving millions from working with the National Security Agency’s PRISM, a public electronic data surveillance program, despite denying their affiliation.
The petition has grown from a goal of 250,000 signatures to 750,000.
With just over 602,000 and growing, we’ll see if the petition has any affect on Facebook’s proposal, which is set for release on both iOS and Android devices in the coming weeks.
