Instagram boss: ‘We’re not eavesdropping on you’

The head of Instagram has denied claims that the app eavesdrops on users’ conversations to sell adverts.

Adam Mosseri said he wanted to “set the record straight” on how the photo-sharing app targets adverts to its three billion users.

Tech giant Meta’s social media apps Instagram and Facebook have long been dogged by the myth that they listen to people’s phone microphones to sell adverts, with social media users claiming that products or companies they have mentioned in conversation crop up later as digital adverts. Mr Mosseri said this would be a “gross violation of privacy”.

Mr Mosseri said: “We do not listen to you. We do not use the phone’s microphone to eavesdrop on you.”

Instagram’s chief said there were several reasons ads might appear on the app around the same time they cropped up in conversation.

This could be because the user tapped an advert or searched online for the product, since Meta and other advertisers share data about their audiences across their digital networks.

Adverts can also appear if a user’s friends show an interest in certain products. Mr Mosseri said: “It could be that you were talking to someone about a product, and they had actually looked for or searched for that product. Or that, in general, people with similar interests were doing the exact same thing.”Instagram boss Adam Mosseri says there are lots of reasons users might be shown particular adverts - Drew Angerer/Getty Images

He also said that sometimes people might see an advert on Instagram and not realise it, before bringing up that product in conversation. “Sometimes you internalise some of that,” he said.

Users might also see adverts about products they have spoken about by random chance – with hundreds of millions of users being served adverts every day. “Random chance, coincidence, it happens,” he said.

Meta has announced plans to use conversations users hold with its AI chatbots to influence what adverts they are shown. The tech giant has flooded its apps with new AI features and chatbots such as its Meta AI tool.

However, Meta said it would not use these conversations to target in Europe or the UK.

Meta does, however, now provide an alternative to targeted adverts on Facebook – launching an option to pay a £3.99 subscription to avoid personalised ads on its social media apps.

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