Imagine telling someone ten years ago that one day, people are going to voluntarily record their phone calls and sell the audio to AI companies for pocket money.
They’d laugh you out of the room.
But fast-forward to today—and that’s literally what’s happening.
The #2 app on the entire Apple App Store right now isn’t a new game or a social network… it’s an app that pays you to record your phone calls and then sells your voice data to AI companies.
Yep, it’s called Neon Mobile—and it’s blowing up like crazy.
Here’s how it works:
Neon claims you can earn “hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year” just by letting it capture your conversations. They pay about $0.30 per minute, up to $30 a day, plus a little extra if you refer friends.
And guess what? People are eating it up.
The app shot from rank 476 in the App Store’s Social Networking category all the way to number two in just a matter of days. That’s insane growth.
Now before you start tallying gossip hours to cover rent… let’s talk about what you’re really giving up.
Neon’s fine print says it records your side of calls. If the other person’s on Neon too? Then it’s the entire conversation, bundled up and sold to AI firms for training.
But the real shocker is what happens after. The terms hand Neon royalty-free, transferable, irrevocable rights—basically, once your voice is in their system, it’s not really yours anymore.
So here’s the bigger question: Why are people so chill about this?
A few years ago, the idea of a company recording phone calls would’ve caused absolute outrage.
But now? People just shrug and go, “Look, if our data’s gonna get scooped up anyway—between social media, smart gadgets, and all those ‘free’ apps that actually tax privacy—they might as well get paid for it.”
We’ve basically been numbed to privacy drama. Stuff that would’ve caused outrage a few years back barely raises an eyebrow today.
And that’s where the conversation gets interesting.
Is this just Black Mirror with a paycheck? Or is this the start of a world where our personal data actually becomes a legitimate income stream?
Honestly… both could be true.
At the end of the day, Neon forces us to confront a tough question:
How much is our privacy worth?
Would you trade your voice for thirty bucks a day? or is this crossing a line we really shouldn’t mess with?
Here’s where you can dig deeper.
