10mo ago

Facebook admits to scraping every Australian adult user's public photos and posts to train AI, with no opt-out option

www.abc.net.au

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.

33 comments

- And your family posted, and your friends posted.
  
  This is a key factor. It's not possible to avoid being in their system at this point unless you live under a rock.
  
  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!
- 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?
- This is what happens when you have a government with lack luster privacy laws.
  EU citizens have less to worry over this.
It’s probably not just adults
- 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
  
  The Facebook representative could not answer whether...
  This guy's terrible at his job. Even I can answer that one.
  Abso-fucking-lutely yes.
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.
- I think you should be able to get all of your data in any dataset or tool deleted whenever you ask them to. Not possible? That's their problem not yours, should've thought of that before collecting all information known to man
  
  I definitely agree with this too
  
  Yeah, it already exists in the EU
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.
I mean, the data was public. Literally anyone could scrape it
- I read this in Trump’s debate voice.
I appreciate the honesty.
Yes, but they are all up-side down.
- That's ok, so is the population distribution.
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.
How much you wanna bet the didn't just stop at the adult accounts
So stuff people post publicly should be private?
- If I post a picture on my private profile that only my friends can see, yes, that should be private.
  
  Yeah but what if you post public stuff for the public to see? That’s what’s in question here I believe
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33 comments