WeTransfer just changed their ToS to allow them to train AI on any files you transfer through them.
Don't use there service, especially for work that you don't have the right to relicense to them (e.g., commercial work that's exactly the most likely to create the huge files WeTransfer specializes in).
(ETA: this is already going boom so I'm muting it.)
@Morpurgo @mwl That's because they have servers in US (Texas) and EU (Germany). As new user you can pick which ones you want to use, before this they defaulted to US and you could later migrate to EU for a small fee.
At least that is applicable for their account storage, can't say what's the default for pCloud Transfer.
pCloud AG is a Swiss company otherwise.
@mwl i use my #Nextcloud Instance. To Share any File with Full Control over it. Also i can create Dropoff Link if needed. So the Recipient of the Link can Upload the Files secure and directly to me.
In my company i see that some customers use #swisstransfer as alternative.
Gotta be kidding…
@mwl In case someone needs a tl;dr:
> You hereby grant us a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable license to use your Content for the purposes of operating, developing, commercializing, and improving the Service or new technologies or services
> Such license includes the right to reproduce, distribute, modify, prepare derivative works based upon, broadcast, communicate to the public, publicly display, and perform Content.
Thanks for sharing the relevant quote from their terms of service. I was going to ask what kind of language one has to look out for because there's no "training", "LLM", or "artificial" to be found.
Wondering how many times I may have "accepted" terms like these already 😓
@oliver_schafeld here you go:
> including to improve performance of machine learning models that enhance our content moderation process, in accordance with the Privacy & Cookie Policy. Such license includes the right to reproduce, distribute, modify, prepare derivative works based upon, broadcast, communicate to the public, publicly display, and perform Content. You will not be entitled to compensation for any use of Content by us under these Terms.
The combination of those sections is alarming
@llanciawn @mwl It's a internet term for cutting the garbage out and pointing straight to the core. I didn't wanted for folks to have to read the entire policy so I've extracted the juice and posted directly here.
@mwl Another alternative https://wormhole.app/
They do claim end to end encryption, so they should not be able to access your data. I have not validated this myself but have somewhat trust in the backing company.
Still if you are going to use a public file sharing service I would always make sure to add my own layer of security if and when it is needed.
@alstonvicar @mwl I’ll toss mine in here https://wsend.net
I also wrote a wrapper to end-to-end encrypt your file with gpg
Ah, WeTransfer the file-sharing transfer service! What an unexpected change in your ToS! And by unexpected, I mean, COMPLETELY EXPECTED!
You are probably wondering if there are any viable alternatives to file transferring services that don't rely on the use of artificial intelligence to steal data? Well, BEHOLD! MY WARPINATOR, AH HAHAHAHAHAHA! With it, I will be able to transfer files seamlessly from one device to the other on the same network without any delay!
@mwl
If you are a researcher* in the Netherlands and want to send large files, you can use SURFfilesender instead of #wetransfer.
Up to 2GB file size (and up to 1TB with HTML5 browsers) - for free!
Don't let your #researchdata end up as unauthorized AI training data, use #OpenSource based solutions instead.
*or anyone else with SURF access
Very good point. I've also updated my post.
to be specific: no, the WeTransfer ToS doesn't say they'll sell your stuff to AI people. it has a bunch of completely regular ToS boilerplate and then says they may use your stuff as part of internal machine learning models used to identify illegal content, which is entirely normal and reasonable for a file host. as usual it's just a company doing a regular legal language update and someone who doesn't know how to read ToS language has misinterpreted it as being nefarious.
@mwl sounds to me like we should be using that service to send AI generated media to each other to help speed up model collapse!
For those that are unaware, AI models trained on datasets made up of AI generated data produce lower quality outputs, which is a rapidly growing challenge for AI companies to manage
@mwl The Beeb is saying that because of the backlash, #WeTransfer have changed their ToS again to remove the "training" language and emphasise that they don't sell or make available our content to others: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8mp79gyz1o
No idea if that's true, but I can't now find the language I'm pretty sure I saw earlier!
@mwl If anyone is reading the answers, the #WeTransfer ToS do not actually say that they are using the users' data to train genAI models, see more explanations here and in the comments:
https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/114856595954614172
However, following the outrage they have clarified (narrowed the scope of) their ToS so maybe that's for the best?
to be specific: no, the WeTransfer ToS doesn't say they'll sell your stuff to AI people. it has a bunch of completely regular ToS boilerplate and then says they may use your stuff as part of internal machine learning models used to identify illegal content, which is entirely normal and reasonable for a file host. as usual it's just a company doing a regular legal language update and someone who doesn't know how to read ToS language has misinterpreted it as being nefarious.
Alternatives to #WeTransfer
#Wormhole, which is encrypted and direct, apps like #iyox or #Warp work great.
#FirefoxSend (now only send), encrypted and hosted by some providers or self-hostable.
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