Are our phones listening to our conversations? Tech expert unpacks social media’s creepy ‘coincidences’

Many of us have had the unsettling experience of chatting to someone about a certain topic or product, only to see ads for it on our social media hours later. 

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, insists it does not eavesdrop on private conversations, but as tech expert Siphumelele Zondi points out, the suspicion lingers because social media algorithms are so good at predicting what we’ll look at next.

"The way Meta explains it is that they're not just looking at your algorithm, they are looking at the algorithm of your friends that you have on various social media platforms. They are also looking at the algorithm of people who could be in the same geographical area, people who could have similar interests to you, and that's essentially how they figure out what you could be interested in."

Zondi notes that Meta and Google’s advertising systems are designed to make money by connecting users with relevant products. 

That’s why searching for a certain product can trigger weeks of ads, and why TikTok or LinkedIn might even show people you’ve been viewing. 

For those concerned about privacy, Zondi advises tightening settings and opting out where possible, but warns this often means losing access to features. 

He also flags the risks of artificial intelligence, which can mislabel people, spread false information and scrape data from across the web. 

Siphumelele Zondi was in conversation with Ray White on The Money Show.

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