fabfianda
Joaquín BaldwinMeta/Facebook/Threads/Instagram is now using your content for generative AI. There is a form to opt out, although I don't know if it'll make a difference, but here it is: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/1266025207620918
Walden Wilde 
@joabaldwin Who could have guessed …
@cooner but they'll only use it to improve their service, for the good of humankind.
Patrick Gillam
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply 
@joabaldwin and yet there are all of these people out here talking about how good it is for the fediverse that meta is trying to pry their way in.
Siplick!@joabaldwin thank you for sharing the link!
Kyell Gold 🦊🏳️🌈@joabaldwin Just looking at the form, it looks like they’re allowing you to opt out your personal information, which might not be the same as “all my content,” even. :/
JonAnd it looks like you're only opting out of third parties using it, not Facebook / Threads / Meta
@kyellgold @joabaldwin
@kyellgold @joabaldwin
@kyellgold so they'll still be selling grandma's photos to third parties but just assign a random number to her.
@joabaldwin Exactly. Or they’ll take your uncle’s “let’s go Brandon” rant and strip his name out before training their ML model with it.
Sparky@joabaldwin You know what?
If companies, who are always so uptight about copyright when it comes to THEIR content, think it's perfectly fine to take OURS without even asking, let alone offering to PURCHASE it from us, then maybe I should reassess my stance on piracy, and do it more liberally.
If companies, who are always so uptight about copyright when it comes to THEIR content, think it's perfectly fine to take OURS without even asking, let alone offering to PURCHASE it from us, then maybe I should reassess my stance on piracy, and do it more liberally.
Eshu Marneedi@joabaldwin It won’t make a difference. All of your content, even on Mastodon, is being crawled by OpenAI’s bots daily and there’s no way to stop that from happening. Google too. If you make anything in the internet, an LLM is reading it and using it as training data. Don’t like that? Too bad, even the New York Times isn’t immune to it. This form doesn’t matter, no form matters. OpenAI customer or not, Facebook customer or not, it doesn’t matter. Your content is being used.
Delta Wye@EshuMarneedi @joabaldwin Some serious realpolitik to consider here. These systems go everywhere and answer to nobody.
I don’t think there’s any way to take a generated item and rewind it back to prove the source material. Like converting a cookie back into the flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and chocolate.
Plus, people will just outright steal what people make. I wouldn’t be surprised if people’s art and turns up used commercially somewhere in the world.
@EshuMarneedi I know that, we are beyond that threshold. But at least it gives us a glimpse into what the other social media companies are doing behind our backs.
mmby@joabaldwin which will remove any personally identifying information but if you upload pictures without your face attached via metadata, that's not affected by this opt-out, I'd imagine
Wendy Metcalfe@joabaldwin Thanks for this. Just went in and did mine.
Andy@joabaldwin There is also a very good chance that, without our knowledge or permission, someone somewhere is scraping all our public Mastodon posts and feeding it to a LLM.
Takiro 🎨@andyb There's also a good chance that you get robbed when going to McDonald's but it makes a difference if it's McDonald's whos inviting the robbers and telling them your there and are free to get robbed and also pays the people doing the robbery or gets payed by them to allow them to rob you.
@Takiro I’m not sure I follow the analogy.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I’m actually *more* comfortable with tech companies doing this sort of thing because there’s a chance we might be able to do something about it (either opt out or get compensated).
Whereas all our other public-facing content is probably getting scraped constantly by unknown people for unknown purposes, and there’s literally nothing we can do about it (except to remove ourselves from the open web).
sonja dolinsek@joabaldwin I tried to send it, but I cannot send it. Can you?
Tiffany@sonjdol @joabaldwin Mine wouldn’t send.
William Hamilton@joabaldwin This development makes my decision to #DeactivateFacebook even better.
Felicia Rabbitton@joabaldwin in an utterly hillarious development, the form is broken on iPhone Safari and the Facebook iPhone app n *different* places…
Craig Stuntz@feliciarabbiton @joabaldwin Also broken on Chrome Android. "Move fast and break things, especially opt-out forms. Break them fast and often."
Grant@joabaldwin I don’t see an “opt out” button on this page.
@grantonthenet seems it's only to avoid third parties from getting your private data. More an "objection" than an "opt out", reason why I don't trust it'll make a difference, but at least there is some kind of form.
Filbert 
@joabaldwin
Omg... I still have an account there with my old photos. Yeah, I have no access to the account, including the email address associated with it. So, I am currently punished for my stupidity.
Omg... I still have an account there with my old photos. Yeah, I have no access to the account, including the email address associated with it. So, I am currently punished for my stupidity.
Sergio@joabaldwin thanks for sharing. Just took care of that sneaky move they tried pulling on us. #cybersecurity #personalinfo
$8Troll@joabaldwin I'm downloading the data first to see what they have.
Dave Spector@joabaldwin don’t know if anyone else is seeing this but they are deleting info from the form on submit and telling me the form field (country) can’t be blank.
Seen this before -designed to make you give up.
Brian@Dhmspector @joabaldwin Same here unable to get it to submit.
D@joabaldwin It forced me to do 2 captchas to fill out the form. 🙄
This Is ARTman@joabaldwin NOOOOO Facebook? They'd never do that. Noooooo.
natriumchloride@joabaldwin new meaning to "you are the product"...
WarmasterPalakOpting out will put you on a list of people hostile to their business model and will be shared among tech companies so that your accounts can be flagged for suboptimal service. Effectively, your desire for privacy will be taken as a license to blacklist you from future opportunities.
This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Layla Low@WarmasterPalak @joabaldwin This reminds me of the notion that if you don’t do whatever the health professional says, you will be labeled “noncompliant” and receive suboptimal care.
Again not necessarily a bad thing.
Wendy Lady@joabaldwin lovely. No confirmation after the security check. 🙄
Wolfie Rankin@joabaldwin Interesting how the Country of residence vanishes when I hit return.
@Wolfie_Rankin there are ways to make it work when half-filling it and tapping it twice or something. It's glitchy. It's working as intended.
@joabaldwin Aye, seems like it.
Alyssa Voronin@joabaldwin Funny enough, to submit the form, I had to prove I wasn't a robot. What's good for the goose apparently isn't good for the gander. 
Huy Nguyen@joabaldwin I can’t complete the form because the first field (country of residence) gets reset as soon as it loses focus…
@huy desktop works better than mobile for some
Solarbird 
@joabaldwin torn between checking that off and making 50 fake accounts to feed it bullshit
newt (6398)@joabaldwin wait you need to have a Facebook account for that? 🤦♂️
Rai Aren 🖖✨📚🇺🇦@joabaldwin Good to know, thanks!
Bent Stamnes@joabaldwin and of course, the form “magically” doesn’t work (no matter what I put in here, the field gets emptied when stepping to the next field). I’m shocked — SHOCKED I TELL YOU — that this hidden and obscurely phrased form is designed 1) not to be found, and 2) to be hard to understand, and 3) not work at all.
Carlos Solís@joabaldwin I went and sent that form, and it said I'd get a reply via email (odd but okay)... and I received it today in the morning with the following platitudes:
Thank you for contacting us.We are reviewing your request regarding any third party personal information that may be used to train generative AI.
If you want to learn more about generative AI, as well as our work on privacy in this new space, please read the information we have in the Privacy Center.
https://www.facebook.com/privacy/genai
Sincerely,
The Privacy Operations Team#Facebook #Meta #GenAI
@csolisr yep, everyone gets that response a few hours after sending the form. It comes with a FB notification too, so it means they do link it to your account. I actually got two, for some reason.
MostlyTato@joabaldwin
The irony of a complex, difficult and longwinded CAPTCHA when this is submitted is not lost on me.
The irony of a complex, difficult and longwinded CAPTCHA when this is submitted is not lost on me.
Nick T@joabaldwin
The form is currently broken on Firefox Android as well, the Country field empties itself when it loses focus. Thanks Facebook!
The form is currently broken on Firefox Android as well, the Country field empties itself when it loses focus. Thanks Facebook!
Red Rabbit@joabaldwin @whatshisays can’t submit because it won’t let me fill in my country, just delete it.
Christine T@harrym @joabaldwin yeah I feel like it's multiple kinds of broken
@whatshisays @joabaldwin I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have interest in making it work…
Terri K O 🍁@joabaldwin I find it hilarious that it forces you to do capchas (which are absolutely used to train AI models in general) to opt out of your data being used for AI
SpeedStar@joabaldwin good grief
@@joabaldwin lol I got a ReCAPTCHA prompt that I had to complete in order to submit the form
Alper Sarikaya
Liz "Not A Convicted Felon" D.
Canadian Curmudgeon@joabaldwin Thanks. Like many Canadians, I have stopped using Facebook and Threads while Meta continues it assault on Canadian sovereignty.