Facebook Wants to Creep on Your Audio Choices (and Tell Everyone About It)

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Apparently, typing in your own Facebook status is not good enough for telling your friends what's pleasing your ears these days. Instead, Facebook felt inclined to create an audio-recognition tool to do it for you.

The new feature is somewhere between Shazam and Status Updates. It doesn't have a real name yet, so let's call it Shazbook. (Faceam sounds weird.) Shazbook will use your phone's microphone to automatically identify what you are listening to, be that music, radio, or audio from a TV show or movie. Then it will upload that information straight to a post on your wall, because Facebook users can't even be bothered to type it in themselves (apparently.) For songs, Facebook will even offer a thirty second preview. For TV shows, it will specify the episode you are watching as to avoid spoilers.

As if Facebook weren't creepy enough, it will also allow you to link the song to your mood, drink and snack preferences and location. So when you're listening to that break up playlist you made in high school, you can let your buddies know you're feeling sad, miss your beau, and are eating bonbons in your bed alone. Oh, and then your friends can ask you if you're now single using Facebook's not-at-all invasive new "Ask" feature for a user's Relationship Status. 

While the feature is interesting, it is one of Facebook's less cleverly veiled attempts at gathering user data. Remember, the more user data it gathers from their 1.2 billion accounts, the more target ads they can sell.

Happy Shazbooking, Internet. 

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.