Is Instagram or Facebook spying on you? That’s a popular belief that many people seem to have, and it’s not hard to blame them. There have been so many times you talk to someone about a product, only to see an ad popup on your Instagram feed later. However, the company’s head Adam Mosseri has published a video reiterating that the company is not spying on users.
Instagram is not spying on you…or are they?
In the video, Mosseri was empathic in saying that Instagram is not spying on its users . For starters, he says that doing so would be a gross invasion of privacy. Secondly, he says that if they were listening to you through your phone’s microphone, you would know. There are built-in safety mechanisms in iOS and Android would alert you to the fact that your phone’s microphone had been activated.
But how is it so uncanny that we seem to get ads for topics we were just talking about ? Mosseri lists several reasons why that could happen. One reason is that you might have already been searching for that product before you talked about it. He acknowledges that advertisers share data with Instagram to serve up targeted ads. This is one reason you might see an ad for something you were just talking about.
He also says another reason is that Instagram shows users ads that they think users are interested in based on who they follow and posts they might have interacted with. Thirdly, another potential reason is that you might have already seen the ad but scrolled past it without giving it much thought. After that, you talk with a friend about it and suddenly the ad becomes more noticeable. This can give the impression that the ad only appeared after you talked about it.
Lastly, Mosseri says it could boil down to pure coincidence or randomness. Sometimes the universe just aligns in such a way that the thing you were talking about suddenly appears as an ad.
Do we buy it?
One post said, “That is exactly what I would say if I was listening to people’s conversations.” Another said, “Brother… it’s 2025, we already know y’all are listening. At this point I don’t even Google stuff, I just whisper it near my phone and wait for Instagram to do its thing.”
