A friend tells you about their last vacation in Cancun. A moment later, you take out your phone, open a social media app, and boom! An ad for an all-inclusive resort in Cancun. 

While you might think your phone is listening to you, examples like this illustrate the interconnectedness of the technologies and platforms we use. These connections are built on your data. Given that we put our personalities, interests, and entire lives onto these apps, it’s no surprise. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. 

Most social apps don’t require any payment for their standard service. So it’s only natural to wonder how they make money. Ads? Sure. But the relevance of these ads is an example of the usage of your data. As the expression goes, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. The sheer amount of data collected by these apps is in fact that payment.

Social audio is not so different in this regard. Most of these apps too do not require payment, but they do collect user data. Some of this collection mirror that of other apps. Some are novel due to the novel nature of social audio. Let’s explore.

What Data are Social Audio Apps Collecting?

1. User identity: Like most apps where you create an account, social audio apps collect the standard information in order to do so. This can include name, age, contact information, geolocation, gender, and profile photo.

2. Interests and preferences: This can be directly done by the app asking you to select from a list of interests, or by monitoring which posts you engage with. 

3. Access to contacts: Some apps will ask for access to your contacts in order to connect you with those contacts on the app. Bear in mind that this includes names, numbers, and other stored contact information. 

4. Conversation history: Apps that include direct messaging or chat functionalities store your conversations. That said, any reputable app will not access your messaging history unless required (such as by law enforcement). An app’s privacy policy will clarify this.

5. Audio recording: With permission (and sometimes even without), a social audio app may store your conversations and recordings. 

6. Usage data: This includes the time you posted, how long it was, who attended your chat or listened to your recording, which chats you attended or recordings you played, and any captions, photos, and other supplements associated with your post or chatroom. It can also include where you posted, your IP address, and the kind of device or operating system you used.

This is not an exhaustive list, as some apps may collect data specific to them. And also note that a fair amount of the collected data is optional. For example, giving your contact information is usually mandatory, but providing access to your contacts is typically optional.

What are Social Media Apps Doing with My Data?

Buzzwords often strike emotions within the listener. With data privacy, those emotions may include feeling duped, scared, or confused. As such, a lot of conversations about data privacy tend to jump to “how can I protect my data” when in reality, there’s a middle question here of “so what?”. 

Here I’ll attempt to demystify the mystery of data hoarding. This isn’t meant to endorse unadulterated data collection or the way in which some corporations use your data. Rather, I want to give you an idea of some general practices. Each organization is different. The way they collect and use your data is different. But hopefully, with this information, you can better understand the “so what?”. This can then guide you in deciding how to protect your data.

1. Serving you more relevant content: Not everyone is interested in everything, but every interest has someone. This means that there are pieces of content out there you may like, and some you may not like. Social apps powered by machine learning algorithms use your data in order to better customize your feed with posts you’re more likely to be interested in. In other words, your data feeds you more relevant content.

2. Serving you more relevant ads: Your usage behavior and demographics can inform the social media company which ads you’re most likely to interact with. The social media app may even collect data points from other partners, such as your search history, to further serve targeted ads.

3. Suggested accounts: Based on your location and interests, and especially if you share your contact list, social media apps will connect you with people they think you’d like to connect with.

4. New developments and refinements: Usage data can inform an app on which features users jump on and which either need improvement or should be dropped. 

5. Developers: Social apps may have APIs that allow third-party developers to access user data. An API allows two pieces of software to talk to each other, so one app can request data from the API of another app. Social apps’ APIs allow developers to access information such as profiles, posts, and activity in order to create services that integrate with said social app, such as social media management tools, analytics tools, or content curation tools.

6. Partnerships: Social apps may share your data with other companies to provide integrated services. For example, if a social app integrates with a music streaming app, it may share your data so that the music app can recommend songs or playlists that align with your tastes. In these cases, however, the social app typically holds the partner to its own standard of privacy.

7. Data breaches: While this isn’t something companies willingly do, it can happen to your data. Social media companies have a responsibility to protect their users' data and prevent data breaches, but they can still occur due to the constantly evolving nature of cybersecurity threats. As users, we must take care to not share anything we wouldn’t want in the wrong hands.

8. Selling your data: This is a common phrase thrown around but with a confusing meaning. Many social media apps are not selling your data in the traditional sense of transacting data for cash. Rather, advertisers know these social apps can serve their ads to users most likely to be interested in those ads. So in that sense, they are selling advertising space by using your data as bait. That said, some companies may actually sell your data. It’s best to read the privacy policies of every app you use if you’d like to know who may have access to your data.

Social media apps can use our data in a number of ways, but many of these things are not nefarious intentions. In fact, some ultimately benefit the user, but benefit is in the eye of the beholder. 

Data can curate feeds that keep people addicted to an app. Ambiguous privacy policies may not specify what data an app collects and what it shares with partners or advertisers. A user may not have the ability to use, delete, or even view what data on them an app has collected. These are all major ethical concerns that can only be assuaged with more transparency and accountability on the part of social media companies. It also requires vigilance on the part of the user with respect to what the user shares online.

A Note on Voicebox and Your Privacy

Let’s call a spade a spade. Voicebox is a social audio app. We are not above any of these data concerns. So let’s cover some basic questions:

1. What data of mine does Voicebox currently collect?
   • Name.
   • Contact information (phone and/or email) in order to verify you.
   • Profile photo (this is optional).
   • Geolocation (this is optional) in order to autofill the country code of your phone number (if you choose to give your phone number).
   • If you’re at least 13 (in order to use the app; we don’t collect your actual birthday).
   • If you create an account on Voicebox with your existing Google, Facebook, or Apple account, we will collect the name and email address associated with those accounts.
   • Your interests (this is optional) in order to build your “For You” feed. We do this by asking if you’d like to select from a list of interests.
   • Your usage (to measure our own performance):
     • When you were last active.
     • How many posts you’ve made.
     • Your post (including the recording, photo, and caption).
     • The engagement on your posts (number of likes, comments, echos, and plays).

2. What does Voicebox do with my data? Other than the explanations above, Voicebox doesn’t do anything else with your data as of this writing.

3. Then how does Voicebox make money? Voicebox is currently free to use. Without revealing too much of our future plans, we do plan to roll out paid features, but these features will have no bearing on our privacy policy, except where those features necessitate data collection in order to function.
   • For example, if we rolled out a feature for people 18 years or older, we would need to verify that you are in fact 18+ (typically done with self-verification).

4. Will Voicebox’s privacy policies change in the future? We will communicate any potential changes with full transparency and update our privacy policy accordingly.

My hope with this post is to put into one place all the information anyone might need regarding your data on social media apps. If you have any more questions regarding data usage, or questions specific to Voicebox’s privacy policy, please feel free to reach out on our contact form.

Social Audio Corner is a series where we discuss all things related to the audio segment of social media, from latest developments to use cases and more.