Facebook To Pay Users $5 For Their Voice Recordings

Facebook Inc. FB will pay users $5 for sharing their voice recordings, the company announced Thursday.

What Happened

The voice recordings would be used for improving Facebook's speech recognition technology, as first reported by The Verge.

Users of Facebook's Viewpoints app, aimed at the social media giant's marketing research efforts, would be able to record their audios under the "pronunciations" tab and get paid.

Only US citizens above the age of 18 are eligible to participate in any program under the Viewpoints app. They would be able to record a phrase called "Hello Portal," followed by the first name of one of the persons of their friends list on Facebook, The Verge noted.

Why It Matters

The participants would only receive 200 points on completing ten such rounds, and won't be able to cash out the $5 reward until having collected at least 1000 such points.

The rewards-like policies offer a way out for Facebook and other internet giants like Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, GOOG, Twitter Inc. TWTR, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, and Apple Inc. AAPL, all of which have faced criticism for data protection on their platforms.

Facebook previously admitted to third-party contractors listening to audio recordings of the users without their knowledge, as reported by Bloomberg at the time.

Price Action

Facebook's shares traded 0.27% lower at $214 in the after-hours session on Friday. The stock closed the regular session 1.34% lower at $214.58.