Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/21/microsoft-contractors-listened.html
Contractors working for Microsoft say they listened to audio captured by Xbox consoles
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Many of the unintentionally made audio recordings were of children.
Being listened to by adult strangers outside of the home.
If they were purposefully/targetedly listening to children, that would be somewhat creepier than purposefully listening to adults.* But if they are listening to everyone who interacts with the device, why is it more problematic to be listening to children interacting with the device than adults?
*Only somewhat because kids likely will be interacting with Xboxes differently than adults, and so would be a good user group to understand if you want to make devices that work well.
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[Evil voice assistant corporation] contractors listened to [innocent public victims] audio recordings of [innocent activity] to improve voice command
I’ve templated that for you 
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oh, god, no, please, just tell me, not chiiiiildren?! Nooooooo!
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Evidently the voice commands cause a lot of issues, such as gamer tag trolling.
I mean, I like playing games with the kiddo, but if she were to use it alone I’d make sure to turn all that stuff off. Hell, I don’t talk to my PS4, but I guess I should research and make sure all that stuff is turned off.
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I forget; are we in favour of moral panics this week, or are we still against them?
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I have a hard time getting worked up about this.
You’re putting a listening device in your home, and you know that. It’s going to record stuff and it’s almost certain those recordings are kept somewhere at least part of the time. There’s no magical way to tell whether a recording is a child or an adult or a young-sounding old person or what. Therefore yes, unavoidably recordings of your kids will be kept around, and occasionally a human will end up listening to them.
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My mind shudders with thoughts of the many variations of “stupid poopy head” they must have transcribed.
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Ha! This is actually a story about the horrors of being a Microsoft contractor!
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I’m sure it was just kiddie audio; the fairly sophisticated optics package was, no doubt, carefully ignored in all cases.
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I can’t shake the feeling that they heard a lot of ethnic, gender, and sexual slurs and insults.
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Thus a moral panic about moral panics was triggered.
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Oh, you must not have kids or be around them much. Kids are now frequently just as foul as adults. They can get astonishingly nasty and hateful in their speech. Not that it matters. Why delay the inevitable?
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Things like this are both why I got rid of Skype when bought them and got rid of Microsoft operating systems for Linux the second I could learn it.
I trust American corporations with my privacy the same way I trust Trump is a real Christian which is to say not at fucking all. I trust Microsoft and their ethics even less and that should tell you something
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Consent is an issue among other things. There is a common legal/regulatory assumption that younger children don’t have enough maturity/understanding to consent to collection and use of their personal data by 3rd parties. COPPA in the U.S. for example restricts collection from kids under 13 unless their parents provide a positive opt-in. GDPR (EU) is similar but the consent-capable age can vary by member state from 13-16.
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I’ve seen these gamertags around, right when I first got mine. Super funny.
“XboxTurnOffYes”
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You can filter out high frequencies. You may lose some women and fewer men, but you’d probably avoid nearly all children.
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Yet they’ll keep voting for him.
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…which means you have microsoft contractors listening to Xbox audio recordings of children in their homes.
