Well, I feel a lot better now.
Now that Adam Mosseri has assured me that Instagram is not tapping into my phone conversations, and selling the information to advertisers.
Some readers may not know Adam Mosseri as well as I know him. He’s the Head of Instagram. Not the CEO, but something like the CEO.
I wouldn’t mind being the Head of something. Head of Household, for example. But I would not want to be a CEO, considering that being a CEO is almost worse than being a lawyer.
Being the Head of Instagram, Adam naturally has an Instagram account, where he posts information about — what else? — Instagram. He doesn’t have to pay for his account, because… well, nobody has to pay money for an Instagram account. We pay with our eyeballs. And with our sacred souls.
One of the things I know about Adam — whom, I want to be clear, I have never met personally — is that he has at least ten different pairs of glasses that he rotates, presumably depending on the subject of his particular Instagram reel. In the “We are totally not listening to your phone conversations to sell the information to our advertisers” posting, he wore the glasses with the clear, transparent frames.
Since he was being clear and transparent, about a certain myth going around. People have noticed Instagram ads popping up in their feeds, that seem directly related to phone conversations they had recently.
This has not happened to me. Just saying…
…but I’m only on Instagram, like, maybe once a month. Instagram is built upon following your friends, and then being followed by advertisers. I don’t have any friends. Except of course, Adam. Everyone is followed by advertisers, so that’s just par for the course.
Anyway, I had to visit Instagram yesterday. And I learned something.
Myth busting: I swear, we do not listen to your microphone.
Adam knew that we probably wouldn’t believe him, and he knew he’d likely get reamed in the comments for claiming that Instagram is totally not listening to our phone conversations, but rather, is innocently collecting and selling information about us whenever we show the slightest online interest in anything that can possibly be sold to us.
Mostly, I use Home Depot and Amazon when I’m shopping. Sometimes, Walmart and Target. Zappos, for shoes. eBay for second-hand stuff. But when you work as a journalist, you don’t have a lot of “spending money” after you pay for the cat food. (From Chewy.com)
Also, I have most everything I need already. I use the same coffee mug every morning, for example. And I still have some shoes I bought 30 years ago. (Dress shoes, to wear at weddings. But weddings have pretty much gone out of style.)
Despite the fact that no one was going to believe him, Adam made an honest effort to convince us that we are just imagining that Instagram is listening through our phone microphone to our conversations. For one thing, there’s a little light at the top of our phone screen that lights up when the microphone is being used. (On my phone, it’s orange.). Also, when we are in a shopping mood, we probably looked up the item a few days ago, and for some reason we decided to wait, but then we talked to a friend about it, looking for their advice, and now we think Instagram was listening to the conversation, but they already knew about the item days ago, when we first started shopping, and they instantly sold the information to every company that sells similar items. So it only looks like they were listening to our phone.
That’s probably where the name “Instagram” came from. Instantly selling my information to advertisers.
But they are not listening to our phone. Because if they were, the little light would light up.
I fully believe Adam when he explains this, but not everyone does.
Most of us are perfectly comfortable with Instagram following us online, and selling our shopping patterns and posts and texts and emails, but for some people, them listening to a phone conversation is stepping over a line on the sand.
Speaking for myself, I don’t draw lines in the sand. A line in the sand is simply an invitation for the tide to come rolling it and erase it.
But I do have strict boundaries. No cats on the kitchen counter, for instance. (Of course, this is not enforced when I’m out of the house.)
In the interests of keeping us calm about this whole controversy, Adam ended his reel with a very West-Coast type of sign-off. He held up two fingers in a Peace Sign and said, “Peace.”
That’s the kind of guy he is.
I don’t think I mentioned that Adam lives in San Francisco. Probably overlooking the ocean? If I lived in San Francisco, and was a Head of a big company, I would want to live on the ocean. I would want to, even if I was merely a ‘Head of household’.
Most likely, I will never live in San Francisco. But I can talk about living there.
And I don’t really care who’s listening.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.