Why does Facebook activate the microphone in Safari?

That's odd. ChatGPT (5.1) tells me Safari does not open an audio capture session for 'capability negotiation' that would show the mic icon.

I assume you have Safari > Settings > Websites > Microphone > facebook.com set to the default "Ask", or to "Deny"? Also check any installed extensions.

facebook is definitely listening. We have had many instances where wife and I discussed something and an ad appeared on fb related to that.

If chat GPT is to be believed, this sounds like a safari bug that Facebook exploits. Perhaps others do it too.

“Oh, Grandma, what big ears you have!”

“The better to hear you with, my child,” came the growling reply.

Regarding Facebook is listening, my girlfriend and I was taking few years back around 2021, we usually keep our call for more than 24hrs at a time. One evening we were talking then suddenly we heard a man, talking as if he is in an office then we both stopped and listened, and he just stopped as if he accidentally unmuted. This happened again the next, night but this time it is a woman. Same, as if they were in an office environment. They were talking in English, we are not listening to anything, we were just talking then suddenly we heard them, and also we are not a native English speaker, we do not talk in English during our call. That is the the time we decided to switch to Signal, which as many say is more secure.

There are way too many coincidences regarding in-person conversations and Facebook ads appearing.

What people don’t understand is that voice compresses extremely well. It doesn’t need to be stereo or high-def for processing. VoIP has been around for more than two decades and worked over 128kb connection speeds for actual phone calls. With LTE and 5G, it would be almost impossible to notice compressed and encrypted voice transmissions. It would look like any other HTTPS connection because it’s just data sent for processing. It’s not a two-way call. It’s compressed audio for transcription, if it’s not already being transcribed on the device itself.

So it can listen to you and serve ads that track your every movement, word and thought like an uncanny evil genie?

Better question, why are you still on facebook?

Cause they are listening to you to sell data to ad companies. all hail facebook

Remember when people paid $50 for amazon alexa to spy on all ur Conversations ?