Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared a public video definitively dismissing the persistent belief that Instagram listens to users' microphones to target advertising.
Mosseri explained the actual mechanisms behind ad relevance — including location data, browsing behaviour, and cross-platform signals — are powerful enough to produce the coincidences users interpret as eavesdropping.
The clarification comes as EU regulators intensify scrutiny of Meta's data practices. Mosseri's video was viewed as both a consumer education effort and a preemptive defence against regulatory inquiries.
'We don't listen to your microphone. We don't need to,' Mosseri said. 'The data signals we do use — what you search for, what you click on, what your friends engage with — are more than sufficient to predict your interests.'
Privacy researchers generally agree that Meta does not use microphone data for advertising. However, they note that the alternative reality — that Meta's data collection is so comprehensive that it can predict your interests without listening — raises its own set of privacy concerns.