It's right in the Terms of Service that you agree to Instant Messenger listening to audio and possibly the camera.

They don't hide it - You agree to let them when you use the app.

*nsfw

I wished we could physically disable the mic like covering up the camera.

This video has been flagged as being Not Suitable For Work - declared nsfw by ant.

silly man thinks he has a right to privacy

Slashdot had a post about an upcoming (about 1 year out) phone that can run pretty standard Linux distros. I took interest because I'm very annoyed about how UNconfigurable android is.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S2, very old by now, but hardware wise it still works fine. Software wise, it is shit. Android apps are massively bloated compared to when the phone was new, so the "system" partition of the phone is too small to install anything other than like 1-2 apps. From what I can tell, rooting might not help because there are still standard partitioning requirements? I dunno. Anyway, it is a big mess compared to a desktop, where I can partition things any way I want (which works great if you know what you are doing).

Anyway, I don't want to shill for Purism, the company that will be making the phone in the Slashdot article (for one thing, the phone is still a year or so away from final production), but they seem to be doing things right. They DO have some laptops on the market now, which apparently include a relevant feature mentioned in the write-up about their upcoming phone: hardware kill switches for the microphone, camera, and WiFi/Bluetooth.

If you read the ToS (hah! as if) for things like Facebook's app or the phones / OS themselves, you might see that you are "agreeing" to this kind of data collectionspying. If that sets the bar for "good" behavior, imagine what the bad guys (NSA, other agencies, state actors, unscrupulous advertisers, malware producers, etc.) can and will do. That's why any software solution is dubious. That's why electrical tape over your webcam is better than assuming that the record light is trustworthy. That's why a hardware kill switch is a good feature if you're concerned about this (like me).

Here's links to:
an article about the hardware kill switches in Purism's laptops, and
an article about their upcoming phone the Librem 5

I don't own any of their hardware. I don't like paid shills. That being said, I'm interested in what they are doing.

This really is pretty crazy isn't it? I know this is what I agreed to but it feels really wrong.

Has anyone else tried this? I would love to have this verified or debunked.

My wife and I tried talking about road flares around her phone, our need for more road flares, and questions about where we might find road flares....nothing, but I don't think she had the Facebook app open.

The 'you agreed to it' argument always makes me think of the human cent-I-pad episode of South park. Why can't they make it READ!?

TBH this looks fake and sensationalist. Two days later it showed up in their feed!? It only takes one search for a cat on the internet for it to affect EVERYTHING everywhere.

Is that model strong enough to run apps in the background and actively listening?

I know only SIRI on iPhone 7 is capable of actively listening and that is a much newer model than what was shown here.

Shenanigans!

you can. just plug in a unconnected microphone and you're good to go. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bungajungle/nope-20-live-free sound-blocker