Tech firms, best you stop ogling home videos

THE WATCHWORDS these days for internet companies are transparency and control.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and other companies want to make it more clear – in theory – what information they’re vacuuming up. And, in theory, they’re letting people limit what data is collected or how the companies harness that information to target ads or improve their computerised systems.

This is great, in theory. In practice, transparency and control can be less than they seem. What if internet companies also used the sophisticated technology called “common sense”?

For example, when Facebook was caught using phone numbers that people entered for account security to target ads, the company (belatedly) said it should have told users what it was doing.

On Tuesday, Twitter disclosed it might have targeted ads based on the information people entered to keep their accounts secure. Twitter said it was an error.

Was the problem that Facebook and Twitter didn’t disclose the activity? Yes. The other problem is that the companies were using personal information in ways that people should not and could not reasonably expect.

Most people wouldn’t think entering a phone number into their account for security purposes might be used for advertising. Ditto for the recent reporting about Facebook and other companies having humans transcribe text from users’ audio snippets. Yes, it was wrong that Facebook didn’t tell people who turned on an audio transcription feature in Messenger that humans might be listening to chats.

Dave Limp, the Amazon executive overseeing Alexa-powered devices, said on Wednesday that he wished his company had been more transparent about the human reviewers of Alexa audio recordings. Hours later, Bloomberg News reported that Amazon workers review select video clips captured by the company’s Cloud Cam home security cameras.

Amazon does not tell people who own a Cloud Cam that humans are reviewing their video snippets to improve the device’s motion-detection software.

Amazon said the video clips were provided voluntarily, but two sources told Bloomberg that the video review teams had picked up private activity of homeowners, including instances of people having sex.

Limp said Amazon considered allowing human review of audio clips from Alexa-powered devices only if the device owners agreed to it. Ultimately, he said, Amazon decided human review was essential to improve the

Alexa technology.

Regardless of what Facebook, Amazon, Twitter or other companies do or don’t disclose in the fine print, do people using audio transcription, motion detection video cameras and voice-activated assistants like Alexa and Apple’s Siri expect humans to listen to snippets of their conversations or watch clips of video filmed inside their homes? Of course not.

Companies shouldn’t use data without giving people an informed choice, but companies also shouldn’t do stuff in the first place that people wouldn’t expect.

If Siri or Alexa stay a little dumb because they can’t harness people’s voice clips and home video to train them, so be it.