If you still have an account on academia.edu, you should probably delete it.
I'm not sure how their new terms are legal: they give the site the right to use your data *in any manner*. This is mainly to help them scrape academic work and republish/mangle parts of it through AI without credit: but these terms go way beyond that into your likeness, your voice, even your signature.
Please boost this to academics you know. Further PSA elements in thread:
Further PSA 1, how to do account deletion on Academia.edu without agreeing to the new terms of service on the way:
If you want to delete your account, open academia.edu, do NOT click accept to the new terms, but instead click "privacy policy". You can then go to the top left dropdown menu with your name on it, click "account settings", scroll to the bottom of the page, and there's the account deletion option. You can even leave them a little note if you want though I doubt they'll read it.
Further PSA 2, where do we go instead?
Probably the current best option is Knowledge Commons, which is run as a nonprofit and can be found at hcommons.org (they also run the hcommons.social mastodon server). Knowledge Commons gives you essentially the same profile-building tools as Academia with far less slop and more control over what's going on.
Further PSA 3: Mitigations/Caveats to the above:
- Sites do need a rights clause to be able to share your posts.
- The rights clauses have two limiters: first, you grant rights "in connection with operating and providing the Services": but this explicitly includes making derivative works, which I suspect aren't thus limited.
- Second, Academia agrees not to sell user content for a profit (but, again, derivatives)
I'm unconvinced that these limiters protect against AI-churning content at all.
PSA 3a: Other notes
- As noted earlier, it's possible that a bunch of this stuff is unenforceable in some jurisdictions. I don't advise testing this, lawyers are expensive.
- For comparison, the hcommons terms could do better on delimiters: they could set out more limits on content reuse. One advantage the hcommons ToS has though is that their license to use content stops if you remove the content: conversely the Academia licenses are irrevocable.
(Nb: am not a lawyer, so take my notes w/salt)
@JubalBarca All these things are solved problems. The only hurdle to be overcome is the decision to do it.
This reminds me of when someone seriously argued that it would not be possible to run a conference if one didn't use Google docs, that other solutions were just not practical. I was like, we used to run conferences just fine before there were even computers.
It can easily be done. It just needs the will to do it.
I am very very sorry, but it is 'lying', not 'laying'.
I usually can contain the urge, but academia.
@JubalBarca But does deleting the account also void that license? 
And wow is that a fucked up clause in a contract. Handing something like this to non-lawyers should be illegal.
@JubalBarca
So my questions to academia are:
- Am I understanding correctly that this gives you the right to generate adaptations and derivative works of non-profit works that you can publish commercially?
- If yes, do you trace for-profit content in your training data?
@JubalBarca Thanks for the heads-up. I deleted my academia.edu account (was planning to do this for a long time). At least I think so β suspiciously, they didn't send any confirmation mail, nor did they ever inform me about their new terms via e-mail.
Anyway, my current employer (university) has installed a Phaidra server last year, and I have migrated all papers there.
@JubalBarca I can't access my account to download what's there and delete it, without accepting the new T&Cs and Privacy Policy.. π₯΄
(I will not be accepting..)
@JubalBarca Aha, thank you. Yes, I saw that drop-down; although, the site won't allow me to access any of my files, image, etc., to download before I delete.
So, I've sent an access request under GDPR, via the contact listed in their non-compliant Privacy Notice..
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