Facebook has admitted that it scrapes the public photos, posts and other data of Australian adult users to train its AI models and provides no opt-out option, even though it allows people in the European Union to refuse consent.

In short:

Facebook is scraping the public data of all Australian adults on the platform, it has acknowledged in an inquiry.

The company does not offer Australians an opt out option like it does in the EU, because it has not been required to do so under privacy law.

What’s next?

Facebook representatives could not say whether an opt-out option would be offered to Australians in the future.

  • helenslunch@feddit.nlEnglish
    751·
    3 months ago

    Say it with me now:

    Everything you submit to a platform becomes property of that platform.

    • Shard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      This is what happens when you have a government with lack luster privacy laws.

      EU citizens have less to worry over this.

      • Paradachshund@lemmy.todayEnglish
        22·
        3 months ago

        This is a key factor. It’s not possible to avoid being in their system at this point unless you live under a rock.

        • micka190@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          I was having this discussion with a coworker after Apple’s event where they talked about their image scanning AI. Like, if someone takes a picture of me, and sends it to the AI’s servers, they’ll use it as training data, but I haven’t consented to it. So how does taking it down work?

          It’s obviously a rhetorical question. They obviously won’t, and they’ll tell me to pound sand.

          • Paradachshund@lemmy.todayEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            I think it’s a really important question though, and one that bears repeating again and again. AI was built on a complete disregard for consent, and that continued disregard makes it all very unconscionable.

      • seang96@spgrn.comEnglish
        9·
        3 months ago

        I had a person that hated me in high school and put up a fake profile with a picture taken of me at school. So don’t forget enemies posted!

    • AbidanYre@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      3 months ago

      But… I posted that copy pasta on my feed about how I didn’t give Facebook permission to scrape my data. Are you telling me that wasn’t legally binding?

    • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      38·
      3 months ago

      Ms Claybaugh added that accounts of people under 18 were not scraped, but when asked by Senator Sheldon whether public photos of his own children on his account would be scraped, Ms Claybaugh acknowledged they would.

      The Facebook representative could not answer whether the company scraped data from previous years of users who were now adults, but were under 18 when they created their accounts.

      Welp

      • jettrscga@lemmy.worldEnglish
        151·
        3 months ago

        The Facebook representative could not answer whether…

        This guy’s terrible at his job. Even I can answer that one.

        Abso-fucking-lutely yes.

    • BassTurd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      141·
      3 months ago

      If I post a picture on my private profile that only my friends can see, yes, that should be private.

      • dutchkimble@lemy.lolEnglish
        11·
        3 months ago

        Yeah but what if you post public stuff for the public to see? That’s what’s in question here I believe

          • Womble@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            Facebook admits to scraping every Australian adult user’s public photos and posts

          • dutchkimble@lemy.lolEnglish
            21·
            3 months ago

            It does say public, but I guess it’s a confusing article. In any case, I’m all for privacy and not defending social media at all, just that if someone else chooses to not be private then they shouldn’t be unhappy if it’s actually not private is what I meant.

            • BassTurd@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              3 months ago

              You’re right, I had misremembered the phrasing. I just hate that the current state of affairs is everything you put online is going into model training. I feel everything should be opt in. If a company wants to profit off of my stuff, they should have to ask, even if it’s hosted there, especially since when these social media sites first came about, the idea of training data models with user information wasn’t a thing.

              I’d begrudgingly accept a cutoff where anything prior to a date where terms were explicitly set to include language for data modeling was excluded. It’s really dumb that the advent of new technologies just allows companies to profit of anyone’s creations with permission.

  • wise_pancake@lemmy.caEnglish
    27·
    3 months ago

    Well that’s fun

    I’m not Australian, and I don’t post on Facebook.

    But my family posts on Facebook, including pictures of me. I hate that I didn’t consent to any of this, yet they’ve fed my face into their AI tools.

  • Paradachshund@lemmy.todayEnglish
    32·
    3 months ago

    My opinion is that if your data or work is within an AI training set you should be given free access to any tools using that data. That’s only fair considering these companies also think everything should be free for them to take.

  • auzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Jokes on them. Facebook in Australia is an absolute cesspool.

    And nobody from Facebook is doing anything with the reports

    So, the only application for this data is to build a bot which acts like an asshole and make photos of cars which assholes own.