Surprisingly, it was found that no Meta user was given the option to opt out of data-collecting practices. Now, the tech giant is asked why users’ data was scrapped to train its AI models.
As per reports from ABC News, Melinda Claybaugh denied all the claims at the start but after being pressurized to give more answers, she admitted that the company does indeed take part in scrapping all images and texts from social media posts that go as far back as the year 2007.
The only condition where that may not have taken place is if posts were put on private settings. Furthermore, she did admit how the organization is not offering Australians any option for opting out at the moment, similar to the benefits allocated for those in the EU.
She also confirmed that Meta does not take part in scraping user accounts of those below the 18-year age group. However, she did mention another alarming point on how it collects images and other data if it's posted to their parents’ accounts.
Then came the tricky part where she was asked why Australians don’t get any option for consenting to data collected. To that her response was vague, adding how the EU one comes as a reply to legal regulations. This is likely to be linked to the GDPR.
Meta did notify several users across the EU about how it was collecting their data for the sake of training AI unless they checked the opt-out feature.
While Meta might have agreed to the EU’s framework, she still thinks the legal query linked to interpreting any privacy law related to AI is questionable. Meta also opted to avoid rolling out new multimodal AI models and future variants as it feels unclear about what regulators really want.
A lot of issues are related to the issues that have to do with training AI models and using data from EU users while still being in line with the GDPR.
Despite legal queries related to adopting AI in the EU, the conclusion is that Meta is providing EU users more benefits than those in Australia. The reason is simple, they have no other option. Only if such a law is present in Australia can users benefit from similar functionalities.
Now is that really fair? To brush off users’ privacy rights for a poor justification like that does not seem like Meta is winning votes from policymakers in the country, any time soon.
The government has failed big time in terms of acting on privacy and therefore seems to be more focused on monetizing and exploiting the data collected by users. This includes minors on its Facebook app. What do you think?
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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World
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