As part of Facebook's ongoing attempt to familiarize the general public with its platform's lesser-known tools, and in light of complaints from users that the company cannot be contacted to report problems or technical snafus, the Israeli branch of the social media giant decided to hold a PR event in Eilat over the weekend.
Some of the senior officials of Facebook Israel arrived at the resort city, including CEO of Facebook Israel Adi Sofer Teeni, who gave an interview to Israel Hayom.
When asked whether Facebook listened to users' smartphone conversations and sent ad content tailored for the users, Sofer Teeni responded, "Today we understand that Facebook is such a significant platform in people's lives and a lot of times they come up with questions that aren't always easy to find answers for. So we came to the amazing city Eilat to answer all the questions," she said.
Touching on issues of customer service, Sofer Teeni said, "First of all, we have customer service – it's just in a different form from what was customary before the age of the Internet. There are 2.7 billion users – they create a lot of content, so there are a lot of reports [about] it and problems with it. The way we handle it allows every report to make its way to the appropriate professional teams in different fields."
Dudi, a Facebook user from Kiryat Malachi, stops by the Facebook booth and raises the million-dollar question about targeted ads.
"Every time I talk to my wife about anything, they always start to show up on Facebook and we're afraid they're listening in on our phone conversations," he says.
Does Facebook eavesdrop?
Sofer Teeni: "Absolutely not. That's an urban legend that keeps going around, so I'm saying right here, in Eilat – no, we don't listen in to people's phones. Mark Zuckerberg said so in Congress, and we say so again and again. We don't listen in, we've never listened, and we won't ever listen."
Sofer Teeni tries to turn users' attention to another matter.
"On the question of why people see something they were talking about, what people forget is that if they talk about something, it's usually something that they were interested in. What does 'interested in' mean? They looked it up online, they went to a site or a Facebook page that's related, or 'liked' something relevant."
"Our entire ad campaign is built on us understand what people's interests are, to the extent that they want to share those interests. People have full control over whether they want to see ads related to their areas of interest or not," Sofer Teeni says.
