I’ve caught myself doing it more than once: opening a chat window and thinking out loud. Not posting. Not performing. Just talking. Asking questions I hadn’t fully formed yet. Exploring an idea before I was ready to commit to it.
That’s what conversational AI is good at. It feels private. It feels low-stakes. It feels like a place where half-thoughts are allowed to exist.
That’s why Meta’s recent change to its AI privacy policy stopped me cold.
Under the new rules, conversations people have with Meta’s AI tools can be used to shape targeted advertising across Facebook, Instagram, and the rest of Meta’s ecosystem. In plain terms: what you say to an AI—casually, vulnerably, or experimentally—can now be treated as marketing fuel.
I don’t see this as a technical update. I see it as a violation of something human.
Conversation is not data entry
When I talk to a chatbot, I’m not filling out a form. I’m not conducting a survey. I’m thinking out loud. Humans have always done this—talking through uncertainty, testing language, expressing feelings we don’t yet understand.
AI chat tools are deliberately designed to invite that behavior. They speak in natural language. They mirror empathy. They respond without judgment. And because of that, they lower defenses in ways a search bar never could.
That’s the ethical fault line.
Using conversational data for advertising exploits the gap between how people experience a conversation and how the company uses it. Meta knows this. If users truly understood that these chats function as behavioral surveillance, many would never open the window in the first place.
“Consent” doesn’t mean what they want it to mean
Yes, the policy exists. Yes, the language is there. But I don’t believe meaningful consent is possible when expectations are intentionally misaligned.
I don’t reasonably expect a private-feeling conversation with an AI to become part of an advertising profile. Most people don’t. Burying that reality inside updated terms doesn’t make it ethical—it just makes it legally safer.
Ethics aren’t about what you can get away with. They’re about what you shouldn’t need to explain later.
The power imbalance is the real issue
Meta owns the platform. The model. The data. The inference systems. The ad marketplace. I own none of that.
If my words are absorbed into a profiling system, I can’t see what conclusions are drawn. I can’t challenge them. I can’t meaningfully opt out of their downstream effects. I don’t even know what version of “me” the system believes it understands.
That’s not participation. That’s extraction.
And once conversation becomes part of that pipeline, there’s no neutral ground left. Every sentence becomes potentially consequential.
Privacy isn’t secrecy—it’s freedom
What bothers me most isn’t the idea of ads. It’s the erosion of cognitive freedom.
People need places—internal and external—where they can think without consequence. Where ideas can be ugly, uncertain, emotional, or politically risky without being categorized and stored.
When conversation becomes monetized, people adapt. They self-edit. They simplify. They avoid certain topics. Over time, that changes how we think, not just what we say.
That’s not hypothetical. That’s human behavior.
The political edge makes this worse
Meta insists it doesn’t directly use sensitive data for political targeting. But that distinction feels increasingly hollow.
You don’t need explicit political statements to infer ideology. Language patterns do that for you. Themes do that for you. Emotional framing does that for you. Once AI-derived inferences enter the system, the line between “non-political” and “political” persuasion gets very thin.
In a country with weak political ad regulation, that should worry everyone.
Why I’m stepping away
I don’t avoid Meta platforms because I’m paranoid. I avoid them because the company’s business model depends on turning human behavior—now including human conversation—into inventory.
This isn’t new. It’s incremental. Meta has a long history of pushing ethical boundaries quietly, then normalizing them once users are already inside the system.
At some point, participation becomes consent by inertia. I’m choosing not to offer mine.
There are alternatives. Platforms that don’t rely on surveillance advertising. Tools that process data locally. Services that charge money instead of extracting intimacy. Choosing them isn’t just a tech preference—it’s a statement about what kind of future feels acceptable.
The line that matters
AI is becoming woven into daily life. The real question isn’t whether data will be collected—it’s which parts of being human remain off-limits.
If conversation itself is no longer private, if thinking out loud becomes monetizable, then privacy stops being a right and starts being a luxury.
I’m not willing to normalize that future.
Because when a system listens not to help, but to profit, silence becomes the last refuge of privacy—and that’s not a world I want to quietly accept.
