Adam Mosseri, who spearheads Instagram's business operations, recently took to his personal account to publicly dispel the persistent rumors. These rumors allege that Meta (Instagram's parent company) is able to achieve precise ad - targeting by surreptitiously monitoring users' microphones. For quite some time, a prevalent notion has been circulating that Meta (previously known as Facebook) covertly activates the microphones on users' phones and records their conversations, all in the name of more effective ad - targeting. Despite Meta issuing numerous official statements denying these claims, this conspiracy theory keeps resurfacing time and again.