Ask HN: Has anyone tried to debunk the myth that Facebook is listening?

48 points by momeunier 8 years ago | 86 comments

For weeks and months, there has been the same conspiracy about Facebook listening to their 2 Billion users to serve targeted ads.

Countless questionable youtube videos, reports of all sorts by people who have no idea what it would entail to perform such a stunt on a large scale.

After googling extensively, I still can't find any real scientific proof that it's either true or on true. It's mostly about some people relating their funny experience and mostly about Facebook saying "No we don't"

Anyone familiar with Charles Proxy would know it's pretty easy to spy on the traffic going from an app to the backend. I work in Facebook advertisement and I've been doing it for various reasons already many times. I've never seen anything that would like a speech datagram, but then again, it wasn't what I was looking for when listening to the Facebook app.

I would expect that given Google and Apple should be scrupulous about what the Facebook app does and doesn't, there should be a host of people who've been looking into that urban legend a number of time. Also the data plan of many people would simply explode too quickly for this to be true.

With my colleagues, we've been wondering if it would be possible to rely on a local text-to-speech engine running on the phone. Needless to say that would drain the battery pretty quickly and the dataset needed in the app would be pretty huge... But is it? And would it really drain the battery? More than Pokemon or the Facebook app...?

Who among you guys is a seasoned user of Charles and could run the experiment a tad further?

ricardobeat 8 years ago |

The lack of actual responses to your question here is a bit entertaining. "Of course they are not", "it's not possible", "iOS/Android is safe" etc. Almost like it is offensive to ask.

I can't help but remember my incredulous reaction to ECHELON in the 90s and how it turned out to be not just true, but much worse than the original "conspiracy theory".

A very relevant example: https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/36569

semperdark 8 years ago | |

This post was built to influence the largest number of people possible. The title is worded to reach people that don't click with the suggestion that the accepted view in the community is that they aren't spying. It's also by a newly-created account made by a Facebook Ads employee.

The microphone privacy invasion rumor has spread so far without evidence because people are tired of the 1000 other privacy invasions for which there is evidence. They don't care whether or not this specific instance is true. People are tired of FB being openly scummy at every other turn. FB is the least respected tech company for a reason.

momeunier 8 years ago | | |

Happy to debunk this in whichever way you want! I definitely don't work for Facebook. Also I have been consuming HN content for years without contributing. There has to be a first day...

I do work closely with Facebook (For a Facebook Marketing Partner called Smartly.io) and we collaborate closely on certain aspects. I think I have a very deep understanding of what Facebook is capable of and that's the reason why I want to debunk this. Also, I am really tired of hearing the questionable reports.

Look me up if you which: https://www.linkedin.com/in/momeunier/

cryoshon 8 years ago | |

can't help but agree with you.

people are scrambling to debunk an ill-defined phenomenon that's only exists anecdotally... and in the realm of those who ask "qui bono?"

who benefits if "facebook is listening"? what are the incentives?

the question of technical possibility is the first place people will go to... without realizing that if there is a will, there is a way.

superbrama 8 years ago | | |

Few question the feasibility of building a mechanism. The question is whether they’d try to hide any such mechanism in plain sight.

Native apps on a phone are not comparable to government spying on networks outside of your control. The attack vector in this case is entirely within the device in possession: the code, and interactions with the OS and hardware.

Entertaining the opposing view: If fb did build this, how is there no hard evidence of it? On iOS, their code is distributed via Apple, so they couldn’t doctor versions for specific users, and any attempt to build self modifying or self deleting mechanisms would be detected sooner or later for similar reasons.

superbrama 8 years ago | |

That’s not what’s happening. There’s no hard evidence and it’s not really a fair comparison between detecting government snooping on networks out of your control, versus a spyware mechanism hidden in plain sight, entirely in your pocket.

Nobody seems to be doubting the feasibility of building such spyware but rather are asking where’s the hard evidence and how could they get away with it (not legally necessarily but in terms of detection)?

godelski 8 years ago |

My answer to this has always been "Why would they need to?" It drains battery, it sends a lot of data, and would be a huge scandal. But you are already telling them where you are, who you're with, and they have information about your credit, etc.

Instead, I've been using this as an opportunity to teach people why big data is scary. In the past people often said they didn't care that Google could, and do, read their emails. Often responding with the ironic "I have nothing to hide" quote, or "I don't care, my stuff is boring." This pervasive rumor, of Facebook/Google always listening, has facilitated this conversation immensely. I've been able to better explain it to many who are not tech or statistic savvy in the least.

I don't believe Facebook is listening, because they don't need to.

ghughes 8 years ago | |

Or in other words, they are listening, just not to your voice. Their product is an intelligence-gathering apparatus that works at scale without microphones or other traditional surveillance tools.

godelski 8 years ago | | |

I'd phrase that as "they're watching" not listening. More like having a private eye tail you. They can't hear exactly what you say (well maybe) but they sure do see everything you do.

ben_jones 8 years ago | |

I try to put my mind in the head of whoever at Facebook would be making this decision. Chief of marketing? Chief of Technology? Mark Zuckerberg himself? A product manager? Some director?

And I believe all of them in fact would be perfectly fine with it - if it somehow helped them hit their quarterly bonuses or user growth numbers.

godelski 8 years ago | | |

My point is that I do not believe constantly listening would significantly improve their profit. I don't think they'd gain much information. And I'm sure they've discussed it.

2_listerine_pls 8 years ago | |

> it sends a lot of data

They could send just a transcript once every few minutes.

Techonomicon 8 years ago | | |

You probably wouldn't do that sort of processing constantly on device. Battery intensive

joshfraser 8 years ago |

I was at lunch with a couple friends and they were making fun of Juicero. I hadn't heard of it at this point. I didn't look it up on my phone, but at least one of my friends did. That afternoon I started seeing Juicero ads non-stop on Facebook. Was Facebook listening or did they connect the dots that my phone was in the same restaurant as friends who were Googling Juicero and figured we had been talking about it?

Another time I was on a road trip with a friend, driving through a food desert. We were talking about our food options -- stuff we never eat like McDonalds, Wendys, etc. Guess what pops up on Facebook moments later? An ad for Wendys! Were they listening? Or did they just connect the dots that it was lunch time, that we'd been driving for a long time without eating & that Wendys was one of the only options around?

In both instances, there were non-microphone explanations but creepy/impressive nonetheless.

notahacker 8 years ago | |

There's also the it's all about how you react explanation: brands blanket people with advertising which you wilfully ignore except for those rare instances where it coincides with something you want or something that happens to resonate because you were talking about it moments earlier. And maybe your friends were making fun of Juicero at the time after being prompted by being bombarded with ads for it, rather than you being bombarded with ads because your friends made fun of it...

I think I've got a lot of Facebook ads blocked, so I'm looking at a right hand column which is recommending me pages of random companies one of my friends has once liked and suggesting translations into two languages I don't speak which are spoken in countries I've never visited and have minimal connection with. Which I guess is an upgrade on all the dating ads which didn't even bother to match my "interested in"...

notatoad 8 years ago | |

>Guess what pops up on Facebook moments later? An ad for Wendys! Were they listening?

If you saw an ad for Wendy's in any other context, would you have been surprised?

I saw an ad for Wendy's shortly before coming to comment on this post. Are HN's advertising algorithms predicting the future, or is it just a coincidence due to the overwhelming volume of fast food advertising?

maxfurman 8 years ago |

Every one of my friends, including me, has a story about how they used a phrase in conversation that they don't typically say ("Renaissance Faire" in my case, which I have never attended and generally have no interest in), and then seeing an ad for it on either Facebook or Instagram right afterwards. This is purely anecdotal, of course, but it is creepy anyway. The only way to stop this "myth", if it is one, is for Facebook to stop doing whatever it is they do instead of listening to us to get to this unnerving level of targeting.

mverwijs 8 years ago | |

Alternate explanation: the person(s) you discussed this with did some google'ing and browsing. The tracking cookies do their thing and since you and those persons are linked, you end up with the ads served.

cryoshon 8 years ago | | |

a good alternative hypothesis, but also one that should be proveable, at least in some cases.

designing an experiment to test this would be quite easy.

ultimately your explanation could exist alongside audio snooping, perhaps even helping to resolve areas of ambiguity...

phpnode 8 years ago | |

Is this repeatable though? It seems like this could be explained by a combination of the Frequency Illusion / Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon[0] and the Birthday Problem[1].

That is - it is possible that the reason you were discussing the topic is the same reason that advertisers were targeting that particular phrase at that time. The Frequency Illusion could explain why you noticed that particular ad and why you were surprised. Also you presumably discuss topics all the time that you don't see ads for, but the probability of seeing an ad for any of those topics is quite high (the birthday problem).

[0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/153166/what-is-t...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

npkarnik 8 years ago | |

100% - I'm not sure why others are so dismissive. It's not that technically difficult, and FB has a reputation for being creepy. If only I could figure out how to get random one night stands out of my "People you may know" list...

Cenk 8 years ago |

The excellent "Reply All" podcast had an episode about it: https://gimletmedia.com/episode/109-facebook-spying/

mikeash 8 years ago |

It’s trivial to debunk by observing that many people who say they’ve experienced this are using iPhones. On iOS, apps can’t silently use the microphone in the background. A background app using the microphone is always accompanied by a red status bar saying that they’re doing it. This doesn’t show Facebook listening, therefore we can conclude that they’re not, at least on iOS.

It’s possible they might be doing it on Android, but once you show that a lot of people are imagining things, it’s a small leap to thinking that they all are.

Terr_ 8 years ago | |

> It’s trivial to debunk by observing that many people who say they’ve experienced this are using iPhones. On iOS, apps can’t silently use the microphone in the background.

The same way people believed iOS background apps couldn't record your screen? [0]

When you cannot trust the operating system manufacturer to be impartial, it stops being trivial to debunk.

[0] https://gizmodo.com/researchers-uber-s-ios-app-had-secret-pe...

gmemstr 8 years ago | |

Android 7.0+ does ask for permission to use the microphone when requested, and can be turned off in the settings. I believe this is also on 6.0 but I'm not 100% sure.

ben_jones 8 years ago | |

Wasn't there just a story about Apple giving Uber special permissions (which were not turned off after they were no longer needed) so they could do stuff on the Apple watch? Is it that much of a stretch to think they would also give Facebook special permissions?

mikeash 8 years ago | | |

Yes, it is that much of a stretch. Apple temporarily gave Uber that special permission in order to make their Watch app work better for their users. It’s extremely unlikely that Apple would give Facebook special permission in order to spy on users to no benefit to the people who actually pay Apple money. And somehow it’s gone unnoticed all this time.

cryoshon 8 years ago | |

given the below examples i'll contest that it'd be "trivial" to debunk on the iOS platform and also add that even if it were debunked on the iOS platform, that doesn't debunk the other platforms. why would they leave data on the table if they could scoop it up instead?

jesseddy 8 years ago |

All I know is that things that I have talked about with my phone around 1-2 days prior, I suddenly see ads for. Things I did not Google or mention on the Internet. In one case I started seeing ads on Instagram for a product that I posted a photo of and did not even include the product's name in the post. Dishwashing liquid that I would never even buy (I'm not the target user so it wasn't target marketing).

It's all a little too much for me to believe it's a coincidence.

nxc18 8 years ago |

The burden of proof falls on the people making claims that facebook is listening. Absent that, it seems extremely unlikely that facebook is recording audio and no one has posted in outrage about it - streaming audio would be quite conspicuous.

Even more troubling than audio recording in this case is that facebook has so much information about you that they don’t need it. The idea that facebook knows the approximate content of your conversations/thoughts to the point that it seems like they’re listening should be deeply troubling.

If facebook knows the content of your conversation, seemingly before or at the same time that you have it, what does that mean for free will? Agency? (Obviously free will is bs, but most people I’ve talked to refuse to acknowledge that - is this a wake-up call?)

What other predictions can they make? With the level of information given to facebook (browsing history, precise location, when you’re asleep and when you’re awake, and possibly much more, like your cell account info and the TV you watch) they can build a very complete picture of your life, and may even know things about yourself that you don’t know.

Of course, when facebook is actively listening to you (e.g. for facebook messenger) all bets are off. They already read your conversations anyway, so it’s not a far jump.

pcl 8 years ago |

I don’t think FB is listening because all the stories I’ve heard can be explained by their graph.

I think it’s hard to debunk because people don’t recognize how powerful their knowledge graph is at this point, and simultaneously underestimate how hard general-purpose speech recognition is, even with studio-level audio setups. And especially to a non-programmer, I think it seems so much easier to just figure out speech recognition than to maintain a huge knowledge graph about billions of people, their connections (explicit and implicit), their current whereabouts, the sites they are visiting, and the text they literally give to Facebook in the form of messages etc. But of course, each one of those things is a tractable problem, and can progress independently of the others, until all of a sudden it’s so good it seems like they must be inside our heads, or at least listening.

But here’s the thing: I think all that big data is actually waaaaay creepier. If they were just listening in and showing relevant ads, that’d be one thing. But instead they have all this data going back years, and can make all these inferences from the data. Just imagine what inferences could be made about non-advertising topics!

hyperbolejoe 8 years ago |

I proposed a thought to Reddit, but have no proof of its possibility either technically or practically.

The people we talk with are generally the people we are connected with on social media. It's feasible to me that a conversation happens and someone in the group makes a search, which then maybe causes algorithms using location data to push those ads to people in that location.

Further, what's being talked about is probably being talked about and searched by others in the area and/or with the same interests, so even if it isn't localized quite so much the possibility of what's being talked about to generate ads is heightened.

Finally, there's the confirmation bias and recency bias at play. Once something is known or on mind, it's more likely to be noticed. They may have already had those ads coming in and only noticed them after talking about it. Or, the ads might have even caused the person to subconsiouciously think about the thing.

The psychology at play in advertising is advanced.

wildanimal402 8 years ago |

"Facebook does not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed. Some recent articles have suggested that we must be listening to people’s conversations in order to show them relevant ads. This is not true. We show ads based on people’s interests and other profile information – not what you’re talking out loud about,” said Facebook in a statement last year. “We only access your microphone if you have given our app permission and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio. This might include recording a video or using an optional feature we introduced two years ago to include music or other audio in your status updates.”

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2017/10/31/faceboo...

tkb608 8 years ago |

Facebook listening to their customer's concerns about privacy? Yes, that myth has been throughly debunked.

jesseddy 8 years ago |

Maybe local text-to-speech is not plausible given the heavy processing and battery drain. What if instead there is a list of words/brands being listened for; my phone is always listening for "OK, Google."

scarface74 8 years ago |

I can't speak for Android, but there are a number of precautions on iOS.

The first one is that iOS gives users very fine grained control over what apps are allowed to use the microphone. It's not just a list of permissions, it asks specifically with a system dialogue box whether you want to allow an app to have permission.

Second, the status bar turns a very obvious red color when an app is using the microphone when it's in the background.

If FB was able to bypass both of those safeguards without Apple knowing, it would be a major story.

notatoad 8 years ago |

Install the facebook app on lineageOS, open up privacy guardian, and see for yourself exactly how often it uses your microphone. It's definitely not listening to everything you say.

superbrama 8 years ago | |

Just pointing out that this is far from a conclusive invalidation technique. Too many ways such spyware could still exist or operate.

notatoad 8 years ago | | |

i realize i'm fighting a losing battle by posting in a conspiracy theory thread, but okay: what are those ways that the facebook app could listen to you without the OS knowing it's using the microphone?

superbrama 8 years ago |

Without hard evidence (speech processing code, or evidence of the recordings over the wire), it’s reasonable to take the official account at face value. Frankly that account is far creepier. They’ve built AI so smart that it knows what you’re talking about.

Think about it for a minute. Fb and others have so much data on people and have trained algos so well, even they don’t understand how they work so well. It’s not difficult to imagine this is the case; a computer, especially one with extensive data on the lifes, behaviors and thoughts of billions of people, is far smarter and better at predicting behavior than any human could.

Scary is that it’s just the beginning. I fall squarely into the alarmist camp on the AI issue. Not now, but in the long run. One can see how this scenario with the fb ad microphone spying paranoia thats actually 1 million IQ AI flexing its muscle is but the beginning of a slippery slope.

chmike 8 years ago |

Facebook may only need to recognize a few keywords. The one that companies had payed for. It wouldn't be that many. An approximate recognition is good enough. So processing and data transmission could be small.

As long as there is no uncontestable proof, the doubt must benefit Facebook.

The testimonies are not uncontestbale proofs. Considering the million people uisng the facebook app, there will always be a small set of people who will see advertisement of what they just talked about. That is statistic. Some of these, understandably chocked, may be very vocal about it.

We also know that people are payed to spread fake news and manipulate people. So I'm cautious. The truth is unknown, and the longer it takes to get uncontestable proofs, the less credible the listening thesis becomes.

Facebook can't do much appart to let it rain. Open source is the way I would go. That is one way to calm down paranoid or conspirationist people.

cryoshon 8 years ago | |

>As long as there is no uncontestable proof, the doubt must benefit Facebook.

they have a history of privacy violations

they have an incentive to snoop further

i see no reason to offer the benefit of the doubt to either hypothesis, as anecdotes do not constitute data

but for what it's worth, my hunch is that there's some extra snooping going on that has yet to be unearthed. might not be audio, necessarily.

superbrama 8 years ago | | |

Interesting, curious to hear more. What techniques are you referring to? Some re-appropriation of mobile hardware for cross sensory applications? Data sharing of some kind?

Ninn 8 years ago |

I believe that facebook in no way can accomplish this at scale without getting caught.

Even so, i recon that your approach to test them is flawed, instead you should either of the following:

1. Reverse engineer the applications that has access to actually capture audio from the microphone to start with, i.e. the Messenger app on android.

2. Create a kernel module/microphone driver, which records when and which applications actually access the microphone. If the facebook apps are actually found accessing the microphone outside of a user initiated scope, one could bring the experiment to the next level and record the same audio recoding and save it for later review.

I recon 1. has already been done by several researchers, especially in relation to bug bounty programs etc. but that doesnt really mean that you should try to do it again for your own research.

burningion 8 years ago |

I think this is really something even more nefarious than background listening.

Facebook and Google are using machine learning and massive data sets about the mental worlds we inhabit when we think nobody is looking.

And these algorithms are optimizing for clicks in so many vectors of psychological need and vulnerability that it’s already become incomprehensible for how they can know the things we haven’t yet understood we will think about.

They know about our conversations because they know the searches of the people we talk to, and what they’re thinking about. What will be on the top of their mind.

There’s nothing to go looking for or debunk. It’s just the next step in the data collection experiment.

I’m guessing they’ll need to tone down the effectiveness of ad targeting, if they haven’t already.

cryoshon 8 years ago | |

for those of us who are digital natives, even if we spend great effort in covering our tracks, they likely know more about us than we know about ourselves.

they use this information to employ a system of psychological levers which results in us willingly handing their proxies our money.

is it a good business practice. certainly. is it simple theft? my instinct is to say no, and instead ask:

is this new mastery of knowledge about peoples behaviors and the ability to affect other behaviors on a mass scale the most terrifying form of feudalism that mankind has known?

jdblair 8 years ago |

Reply All, an entertaining podcast from Gimlet Media, tackled this topic a few weeks ago [0]. They explained the myth, explained how Facebook's advertising an be explained without surreptitious listening. In the last part they called believers in the myth and tried to convince them otherwise.

[0] https://gimletmedia.com/episode/109-facebook-spying/

Balgair 8 years ago |

Anyone with a heavy accent have these 'coincidences'? I imagine that a thick accent (Scots,etc) would be much harder to have this happen to.

enraged_camel 8 years ago |

I personally find the alternative far creepier: that Facebook can figure you out and predict your behaviors even if it doesn’t actively listen.

cJ0th 8 years ago | |

There certainly is a double standard. I.e.: it is creepy when FB listens to you conversations. But if they use AI to derive their knowledge about you that somehow makes it alright.

For me personally, the fact that they can learn so much about me is what's creepy and reason enough to not use their services. The how is merely an interesting bit of trivia.

retube 8 years ago |

is there any evidence cameras are used? I've recently been engaged in two activities in front of my phone and got scarily relevant ads that I've never seen before, and are can not be part of my graph. I am not on social networks and none of my browsing or search would be vaguely relevant.

kirykl 8 years ago |

It’s really amazing that people think Facebook is listening. It’s like wearing a name tag and assuming someone is psychic when they call your name.

timthelion 8 years ago |

This is pretty much impossible to debunk because:

A) Given Facebooks policy of A/B testing, it almost certainly isn't listening all the time.

and more importantly,

B) Now that everyone is talking about it, Facebook would have been stupid NOT to turn it off at least for now.

superbrama 8 years ago | |

Would they even take a chance on this with anyone knowing it’ll eventually be discovered or reverse engineered? Why not take their account at face value? (We’ve built AI that is so smart that it can predict your conversations).

Sir_Substance 8 years ago | | |

>(We’ve built AI that is so smart that it can predict your conversations)

We've built AI that can do a great job of slicing and restitching your old conversation into responses that are plausible responses to input sentences.

Whether that's good at predicting a conversations depends a lot on the conversationalist you're attempting to emulate using that technique.

timthelion 8 years ago | | |

Volkswagen

Ninn 8 years ago | |

In regards to B) there would still be a paper trail, in terms of old app versions etc. for ever available.

paulcole 8 years ago |

The people who believe it’s listening would never accept even the most ironclad “proof” that it’s not. This is a hallmark of conspiracy theorists.

So why bother?

logicallee 8 years ago | |

I believe it's listening based on an overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence reported all over the Internet. (Where there's smoke, there's fire.) Including by intelligent, scientifically-minded people.

At the same time, it wouldn't take much at all for me to believe otherwise: a simple blinded test where some people leave their phones in a room, researchers come and talk about some subject (absent the owners), then leave without ever interacting with the owners of the phone.

There are two ways to do the next part: The owners of the phone 1 week later could be asked if they've seen any facebook ads on (topic). A control group would have to be compared (where researchers didn't speak on the topic.)

Alternatively, the subjects of the study could be given 5 random topics when commencing the study and asked to record any ads they've seen on any of the 5 topics. The researchers could then speak on 1 of the 5 topics (differing from person to person) and a statistical analysis could be performed.

A "proof" is a statistically valid correlation between what the researchers talked about out and what the blinded subjects reported seeing ads about.

A refutation is a lack of such a correlation. Easy, and it would convince me personally.

By the way based on the anecdotal evidence I strongly expect this study to conclude "facebook is listening."

Note: there are a few loose ends to take care of. The researchers who are tasked with speaking on a subject are more likely to google it on their own phones. (Having been exposed to the topic), and those are in geographic vicinity. There are other similar possible mechanisms.

Perhaps the best approach is if subjects' phones are in a sound-proof vault and the researchers' speech is either fed into it via speaker/microphone, or not done so, but the researchers do not know for any specific phone whether it is able to hear them. (Making the study "double-blind", as neither the subjects nor the researchers know whether the subjects' phones have heard anything on a subject.).

momeunier 8 years ago | | |

I don't agree with your proposed way of studying this. You're trying to study a symptom and then conclude on the cause of the symptom. That makes no sense. If you want to prove that Facebook is listening, then prove that Facebook is listening. And don't try to prove that Facebook is listening and then targeting you with ads based on what you said. There are way too many levels of indirections that can trigger false positive for a vast number of reasons you don't control at all. What you are trying to do is replicate in large-scale displays of anecdotes but with a slightly more controlled environment. That won't prove anything since it will just be anecdotes and will again not sustain rational explanation by experts of Facebook ads mechanisms.

Without getting into the ads delivery part and the anecdotes, how would you prove that Facebook is listening? How would you prove that there is a set of information taken from your speech or your audible environment transferred to Facebook.

superbrama 8 years ago | | |

I disagree with your feelings about the anecdotes given there is an official account that’s more likely. Why would fb come out officially saying no, knowing they’ll be uncovered eventually if the answer ever were yes?

Also, your techniques could reveal a false negative both in the existence of a bug in the particular build of fb code being tested, and that such a mechanism could have existed in previous versions but already removed.

_l8fa 8 years ago | | |

> it wouldn't take much at all for me to believe otherwise

...goes on to describe multi-week, double-blind trials involving human subjects.

paulcole 8 years ago | | |

>an overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence reported all over the Internet

This is exactly why I believe pizzagate, am a 9/11 truther, etc.

superbrama 8 years ago | |

Not all people with such a belief are immutable in that view, nor are all conspiracy theorists.

There’s value in debunking a myth that seems plausible to the masses. In this case, the myth is plausible, and enough people without sufficient critical thinking skills believe it, therefore it’s worth debunking consistently at least within the tech community.