Privacy Policy Update Allows Meta to Use Your Data
Meta’s privacy policy update gives it the right to rob you of all your data, public and non-public, disregarding consent.
- It will use the collected data to train any of Meta’s undefined AI model.
- The company believes that its legitimate interest trumps EU citizens’ protected right to control their own data.
A privacy policy update allows Meta to employ its users’ data to train any AI model without consent, demonstrating why we need to thoroughly read platforms’ policies and conditions.
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives people the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict processing, and object to automated decision-making. It also forces organizations to be transparent about their data collection and how they then employ said data.
Advocacy group NOYB (none of your business) took a closer look at the notification that Meta sent informing its users of a privacy policy update. It turns out that the company is planning to “use years of personal posts, private images or online tracking data for an undefined AI technology” without user consent.
This AI system “can ingest personal data from any source and share any information with undefined third parties,” and Meta believes “it has a legitimate interest that overrides the fundamental right to data protection and privacy of European users.”
What Meta Says
So, Meta wants to use all the data, public or otherwise, that it has collected since its early days to train any undefined AI model. Your data is included even if the last time you used Facebook, Barack Obama was in office. It can collect/scrape data from any “third party” and online source. And while messages between individuals are off limits, your messages with companies are up for grabs.
Instead of giving its users the option to opt out, Meta argues that it has a “legitimate interest”, trumping the fundamental rights of users. This claim is a tactic that the conglomerate has tried before but got rejected. NOYB founder, Max Schrems, wrote that the courts have already dismissed such a claim. “Yet the company is trying to use the same arguments for the training of undefined ‘AI technology’. It seems that Meta is once again blatantly ignoring the judgements of the [Court of Justice of the European Union].”
The NOYB ended its report by asking for an “urgency procedure” before the privacy policy update comes into effect on June 26th. The watchdog has also filed complaints in 11 different European countries.
Get Your Reading Glasses
Since the dawn of the Internet, we’ve been ignoring the privacy policy, terms and conditions of service, and their updates, as they are usually large bodies of text, half of which may make no sense to the layperson. What we keep forgetting is that among the legal jargon and the run-on sentences lie snippets of true intentions.
These companies are doing their part, disclosing the information regardless of how clear it is for the user. Now, more than ever before, it is necessary to sift through it all because it has gone beyond conduct instructions, “no bullying,” and “no explicit content,” and straight into surveillance territory.
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