Facebook uses Australian adults public photos/posts to train AI, without opt-out

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-11/facebook-scraping-photos-data-no-opt-out/104336170

by nreece • 2 years ago

83 79 2 years ago

abc.net.au

nwbort2• 2 years ago

Presumably, the opt-out is not to make photos/posts public

agilob• 2 years ago

Or post AI generated images.

chrischen• 2 years ago

Doesn't work if someone else violates your privacy in the first place by posting it publicly. To take it to the extreme, someone could break into your house (where you presumably do have a reasonable expectation of privacy), take photos of you and upload them publicly.

nwbort2• 2 years ago

Well yes, but if you're assuming that, then that other person who violates your privacy could also choose to allow the photos to be used for AI training even if there is an opt-in or -out.

daghamm• 2 years ago

So what happens if I am at a party with a trigger happy social-butterfly assuie?

Should I wear a mask at all time?

fph• 2 years ago

Pretty simple. If you don't make it illegal, they will do it.

moi23882• 2 years ago

And even if you do make it illegal they will still do it, since fines are a mere fraction of the revenue generated from said illicit activities

scarab9210• 2 years ago

One thing that annoys me about western society is this default assumption that everything should be illegal.

How about we wait until someone can demonstrate real harm in the real world.

Then we can discuss what mitigations are available, what trade offs we want to make, then as an absolute last resort we can make things illegal.

This also applies to censorship. Looking at you Britain.

defrost8• 2 years ago

Speaking of Australian adults, public photos, and one (of many) of HN's favourite writers:

    I am the science fiction writer Greg Egan.
    There are no photos of me on the web.

~ https://www.gregegan.net/images/GregEgan.htm

~ https://old.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/5nr5d7/has_anyone_...

roylez• 2 years ago

Yandex image has his photo listed literally in the first position. Cool website and idea though.

defrost8• 2 years ago

Does it? Is that an actual photo of Greg?

Did you read his claim that many photos exist that purport to be him but not one is an actual photo of the West Australian Sci Fi writer that he sees in the mirror daily?

seszett2• 2 years ago

The first image I get on Yandex is "Professor G.K. Egan" on the "staff-fake.html" page of a University website[0]. Aside from the "fake" part of the URL, it's not "the" Greg Egan we're talking about.

The second image is his profile picture on X/Twitter[1], which one can assume is fake since he says himself that his only puts fake photos (and that picture seems to be nowhere else on the Internet).

The third image is a speaker on the French-speaking Belgian radio that has one episode of his show about Greg Egan[2].

The fourth image is Knuth Berger, a journalist that has a discussion with Tim Egan about a book[3].

[0]https://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/staff-fake.html

[1]https://xcancel.com/gregegan

[2]https://auvio.rtbf.be/media/entrez-sans-frapper-de-la-hard-s...

[3]https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/journalist-...

swarnie• 2 years ago

Isn't that just what social media is? When you sign up and begin uploading text or files they become the exclusive property and rights to exploit for commercial purposes of the platform.

This means, for example, that if you share a photo on Facebook, you give us permission to store, copy and share it with others (again, consistent with your settings) such as Meta Products or service providers that support those products and services. This licence will end when your content is deleted from our systems.

niemandhier• 2 years ago

Friends of mine use scripts to modify every foto of them to slightly move face recognition markers.

The images exist, the person on them looks very similar to them so aunts and uncles don’t mind, but the human you see is a fiction.

graemep• 2 years ago

Can you tell me where to get such scripts?

ipsum2• 2 years ago

The article does not make clear whether the photos are used to train recommendation systems (eg newsfeed, ads) or generative image models. The article makes it appear like the latter, but is most likely the former.

afro88• 2 years ago

Why would it be most likely the former?

kleiba• 2 years ago

First, I suppose "scrape" is not the correct word here, if fb is just using the photos people uploaded to their servers.

Second, what was the license agreement between users and fb at the point they uploaded their pictures? I wouldn't be surprised that this is completely legal and covered by fb's TOS...?

omeid2• 2 years ago

You can't agree to something that wasn't even conceived at the time. Maybe it is "legal" by the letter of the law but it is hard to argue that it is inline with the spirit of the law.

bhawks2• 2 years ago

According to the article there is no law in Australia regarding this - but EU and US (probably specifically California) laws cause them to offer the option to citizens of those countries.

dotancohen5• 2 years ago

Clearly these users opted in when they signed up for Facebook and then uploaded their photos. They had an option not to use Facebook.

I'm dead serious. I do not have a Facebook account for this and other reasons. If you don't want a company using your photos / contacts / other personal details, then simply don't give them this information in the first place.

linuxandrew2• 2 years ago

Clearly these users opted in when they signed up for Facebook and then uploaded their photos.

Not correct. For instance I, an Australian, had an old Facebook account that I forgot about. I never agreed to any new conditions. In June I received an email from Facebook notifying me that they would be updating their ToS and begin processing public posts and photos. I have been trying to delete the account since but Facebook is refusing to without reason. The account appears to be locked and unrecoverable.

They had an option not to use Facebook.

That's nice, and I can appreciate this point to some degree, but people can and do change their minds. It's very American style viewpoint that contract law trumps all, e.g. arbitration clauses which aren't really a thing around the rest of the world. Privacy and consumer laws can and should trump Meta's sneaky invasion of privacy.

ktosobcy• 2 years ago

Quite often you are coerced by social pressure - not necessarily family - for example school requiring it for communication :/

left-struck4• 2 years ago

Even if the users opted in when they signed up by agreeing to some privacy policy they didn’t read, that no one ever reads, that doesn’t make it okay for facebook to do this.

prewett• 2 years ago

I didn't opt in when FB got my friends to tag me in photos, thus providing them with image recognition training data. I also didn't opt in to FB slurping up my contact info via their import-your-contacts feature they push.

iamnotsure• 2 years ago

Oculus quest it is.

wodenokoto2• 2 years ago

There was a similar discussion when facebook started running facial recognition on all pictures.

But is is interesting if the image generators from facebook will be able to generate pictures of non-celebrities just from their name. Although it would be fun to see what the average Joe _actually_ looks like.

thih9• 2 years ago

The article talks about using images for training. Your scenario would require using both images and names. Is there a reason to believe this is happening?

wodenokoto2• 2 years ago

Is there a reason to believe this is happening?

I don't know what counts as a "reason to believe", but they have the data, users have accepted a TOS that gives Facebook right to use all data, and all things equal, the more you know about a picture, the better training you can do with it.

So for me its more a question of "is there a reason to believe that they are not supplementing photos with other user data"?

Facebook uses Australian adults public photos/posts to train AI, without opt-out

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