Spotify to test "always on" voice activated ads (if you've activated Voice Search)

Community Tech Policy & News
1

Unlike saying “OK Google,” this has the full potential of staying on if you’ve enabled permissions to do so for your microphone to be accessed by the app for their “Voice Search” feature.

There’s an opt-out… for now. Who knows about down the line though when the data can be used as an extra metric point that’s valuable enough to leave the microphone on even if the ad has finished playing.

1 Like
2

Orwell was an optimist.

2 Likes
3

Things like that makes me wish every phone had a hardware key to physically disconnect the microphone from the circuit board.

It’s just too easy to use dark patterns to trick users into enabling the Mic permissions. Leaving the controll to software is just not enough.

1 Like