I believed they maybe weren’t listening because those cases that people claim as “proof” of listening can usually be explained in other ways as well. People tend to assume they were listening because its the easier explanation but with the amount of data that Meta has, they can easily lead people into thinking about things by showing specific posts on the Facebook timeline and also predict to some extent what people may end up talking about based on things like how many times you replay a certain video and how long did you keep certain posts in focus on the screen and that sort of stuff that people often don’t realize is also data for them.
Still, I would never put my hand on fire for them and never completely discarded the possibility of them listening.
That may be the main reason why people use or even create emulators, but there are still legitimate uses for emulators. It’s like banning couples from riding the same motorcycle because two people on a bike is usually a robbery.