Facebook will pay you for a voice recording

Last year, several smart speaker manufacturers came under heavy fire for recording users’ voices and sending those recordings to human transcribers without the consent of the users. Now, one of those companies has plans to pay you for those recordings.

Facebook has plans to pay users for their personal data, including voice recordings, through its Viewpoints market research app. Facebook claims that the recordings will be used to improve devices like the Portal smart home speaker and software centered around voice recognition. 

Through the Viewpoints app, certain users will be invited to record themselves saying the phrase, “Hey Portal” and 10 friends’ names. Selected users will need to go through this process 5 times for each friend in order to earn points that can be exchanged for US $5 in cash. 

According to Facebook, the recordings will not be used for any other purpose. Facebook won’t share the recordings with third parties. However, as Ars Technica points out, the data policy in the Viewpoints app authorizes Facebook to use any data gathered therein for targeted advertising. Further, Facebook can share that data with third parties. As such, there’s a bit of a quandary surrounding how exactly Facebook will use the voice recordings. 

What are your thoughts on Facebook’s new offer? Is your voice worth $5? Let us know in the comments.