Hi, I’m Jamie Condliffe. Greetings from London. Here’s a look at this week’s tech news:

Big Tech is listening. Listening in, certainly. But listening to its critics? Well, maybe a little.

One trend of the past few months that I’ve not addressed here in detail is the drip feed of stories about what big tech companies are doing with user audio — particularly words uttered to A.I. assistants like Alexa and Siri, ones sent via Messenger or directed at your Xbox. It turns out that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have all been sending sound clips to third-party companies to have them transcribed.

This will surprise no one in Silicon Valley: Picking out information from those audio files helps improve the artificial intelligence systems that now underpin many of Big Tech’s products.

Still, it surprised users. And that’s really my main reflection on this news: It’s a reminder of Big Tech’s reluctance to embrace transparency. The companies rarely explain how data is being used and shared. “The main fear, I think, is that in opening a dialogue with users, they will become more paranoid,” said Max Van Kleek, an associate professor at Oxford University who works on human-centered computing.

But there is now, more than ever, pressure for this to change. And this week, we got a preview of how that could happen.

On Tuesday, Facebook introduced a new tool, called Off-Facebook Activity, that allows users to see the mountain of data held about them in browsing histories, gathered via “Login with Facebook” partners or the company’s tracking pixels, that sites and apps have shared with the social network. Users can also disconnect that data from their account, so Facebook can’t use it for targeted advertising.

What Facebook is offering here “is a good first step” to building systems that are more honest with users about the company’s data collection and sharing, said Mr. Van Kleek. And, if you’re feeling optimistic, you can imagine from the tool a future that Mr. Van Kleek would like to see, where we all have more control over our data: Maybe you’ll choose to give information to some algorithms when you’re willing to trade privacy for better service, but keep it away from others you don’t trust — a kind of licensing out of your data.

But that’s not what’s happening here. Disconnect your browsing data from your Facebook account, and the company can still make use of it; it just can’t be used to aggressively target ads. This is not the jump to the “delete history” feature that Mark Zuckerberg promised the tool would be. It’s not close to stopping Facebook’s collecting the data in the first place. But it’s a first step.

Facebook and Twitter this week identified and removed Chinese accounts from their platforms, which they said were sowing divisive messages about the Hong Kong protests. Facebook deleted a handful of pages, Groups and accounts; Twitter culled 936 accounts and banned state-controlled media from promoting tweets. (China disputes the claim of the social networks, that this was a state-backed disinformation campaign.) YouTube on Thursday joined them, deleting 210 channels that had spread disinformation.

Researchers who study disinformation told me that the swift action by the platforms demonstrated some progress. “In the past it was denial,” said Sinan Aral, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, about the past responses of tech platforms to misinformation. “Then it was slow reaction. Now things are moving in the right direction.” But, he added: “I wouldn’t say it’s where we want it to be. Ultimately it needs to be proactive.”