Facebook has also used subcontractors to listen to recordings of user conversations. Facebook confirmed this on Tuesday at the Bloomberg news agency.
But since a week this is no longer happening, the company emphasizes. Previously, Google, Apple and Amazon were discredited because they had employees listen to recordings from their speech assistants.
Facebook involved audio clips from Messenger users who themselves indicated that they wanted their audio to be written, for example, for a message.
Facebook has a computer-controlled application for this.
The external forces that listened in did so according to the social media company to check whether the computer was working correctly. They would not have known where the recordings came from or why they had to be written down.
Facebook has not reported to its users that third parties could listen to their conversations.