Meta Privacy Policy Update 2024: Who is tracking you (at home)?
Are you ready for all your data and content shared on Facebook, Instagram, or Threads to become a resource for training AI tools?
Well, get ready.
Meta has announced a new privacy policy update coming into effect on June 26th this year.
By accepting their terms and conditions (which you likely did when creating your account), you automatically give permission for them to use your information to develop their AI tools.
If you've forgotten what you posted on Facebook 10 or 15 years ago, Meta hasn't.
In addition to profile information, the privacy policy update allows Meta to use all your posts, photos, descriptions, comments, Stories, and even messages with chatbots for AI training. Allegedly, only private messages are secure, although according to Forbes, it’s an automatic permission to use both public and private user data collected since 2007.
This news has attracted global attention, especially as users in the UK and EU started complaining and sharing notifications and emails they received from Meta. Thanks to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), users in these countries had to be informed about the new changes.
What is Meta really doing with this privacy policy update?
According to Max Scherms, a lawyer from the Austrian privacy organization NOYB, as reported by Euronews, Meta essentially claims it can use any data from any source for any purpose and make it available to anyone worldwide, as long as it’s done through AI technology.
Meta doesn’t see anything wrong because they announced the changes to users and provided them with the option to “Opt Out” by clicking on the “right to object” option indicated in the notifications they received.
To do so, users must go to the settings of each Meta platform and reject the new privacy policy update by filling out a form explaining why they don’t want Meta to use their data accumulated over the years on these platforms.
However, Meta can reject this request, which it often does.
The seriousness of the threat is underscored by NOYB filing 11 complaints with data protection authorities across Europe and requesting an “urgent procedure” because Meta’s new privacy policy comes into effect in just a few days. They emphasize that processing years of valuable user content for AI purposes constitutes misuse of personal data of around 4 billion users.
What does Opt Out look like?
If you live in the UK or any EU country, take the opportunity to Opt Out:
- Go to Settings and then Privacy Policy.
- Below the Privacy Policy title, you’ll see information about updates and the words “Right to Object” linked.
- Click on “Right to Object,” which will take you to a new page.
- Fill out the details and explain why you don’t want Meta to use all your data for training their AI tools.
On Instagram, click on the burger menu at the top of your account, then go to About, and then Privacy Policy. When the page loads, click on “right to object,” and then fill out the form.
Who's watching you at home?
If only for a moment we could breathe, thinking the update only concerned EU and UK countries…
Immediately, concerned users from the US began sharing information. They can only Opt Out of some options for third-party data use, while other countries like Australia complain of having no Opt Out option at all.
Guess what—we’re all in the same pot, some of us just don’t have a ladle to escape over the edge.
Yet, after everything we’ve seen from Meta, we can’t really be surprised by this move. After all, we’re well into 2024, aware that we’ve already ventured deep into Orwell’s 1984. Sorry, I meant 2024.
Let’s be realistic (as the great Kazimir Hrastek would say), how else to avoid scandals like Cambridge Analytica than to legalize them by sweeping them under the AI carpet.
And what happens when we stumble over that carpet and get into trouble?
Oh my God, we fell ourselves – we killed ourselves because maybe that’s Meta, or maybe we just didn’t “Opt Out.”
By: Gorana Bošnjak
