We have for sure experienced the various social media apps showing us ads about things we were looking for at least once. What’s creepier is when we are just talking about that thing one moment and the other minute an ad about it pops up. However, Instagram claims that it doesn’t follow the drill as other apps.
In an interview with CBS News‘ Gayle King, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has ‘promised’ that the photo-sharing app doesn’t listen to users’ conversations to show ads accordingly.
During the interview, King raised concerns and doubted if Instagram was listening to users, to which Mosseri tried explaining the whole ad-popping process.
Mosseri has suggested that the incident when a user sees an ad about products he or she just talked about is mere dumb luck. Another reason that he cites is more on the psychological level and suggests that when we talk about things fresh, they remain in our minds (even though sub-conscious) and when ads related to that appear on our screens we doubt the apps.
While what Mosseri suggested could be a possibility, ads showing on Instagram and even Facebook about stuff we have been searching for is a common thing. While I haven’t witnessed ads about things I have been discussing, it was just yesterday when my fellow colleague was talking about cars and saw a car ad later on.
Although the whole idea of tracking a user’s habits and showing ads according to his or her interest could be helpful, it sometimes gets uncanny when we know the apps are probably spying on us all this while.
All I can hope for is that Instagram does not follow in the footsteps of its parent company Facebook and only acquires the information from us that is required.
Have you ever experienced a phone cover’s ad showing up when you just spoke about it or anything similar? Let us know in the comments section below!
