Instagram is not spying on its users in order to target them with advertising that seems to match things they're interested in seeing or buying, the company's CEO Adam Mosseri insisted in an interview airing Tuesday.
"We don't look at your messages, we don't listen in on your microphone," Mosseri told "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King during a wide-ranging interview. "Doing so would be super problematic for a lot of different reasons. But I recognize you're not gonna really believe me."
King had asked Mosseri if he could help her understand how she could be having a private conversation with someone about something she's interested in, only to see an advertisement pop up in her Instagram feed.
"There are two ways that can happen," he told her. "One is dumb luck, which can happen. The second is you might be talking about something because it's top of mind because you've been interacting with that type of content more recently."
"I haven't searched for it, I haven't talked to anybody about it," King told Mosseri. "I swear I think you guys are listening. I know you're gonna say you're not."
"So maybe you're really into food and restaurants," said Mosseri. "You saw a restaurant on Facebook or Instagram and you really like the thing. It's top of mind, maybe it's subconscious and then it bubbles up later. I think this kind of thing happens often in a way that's really subtle."
King's interview with Mosseri is airing on "CBS This Morning" Tuesday and Wednesday.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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