265
Tumblr and Wordpress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools
(www.404media.co)
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
For any Tumblr users here, this has already rolled out completely unannounced and is opt-in by default. You need to manually opt out, which can only be done on the desktop website. Odds are good that your data is already being sold to Midjourney and used to train their models.
To do so, click on your blog on the sidebar, click on Blog Settings on the other sidebar on the right, scroll down to the Visibility section, and turn the "Prevent third-party sharing for [your blog]" toggle to ON, not off. If you have any sideblogs, you'll need to manually do this for each of them as well. It's per blog and not account-wide.
Not bad that you can opt out though, I don't think reddit will give people an option
Wouldn't that be illegal in Europe with GDPR and other consumer protection laws?
I guess their TOS will cover them?
Pretty much, yes. The GDPR allows users to access, modify, and delete their own content. The TOS license all user content to Reddit. There might be a conflict if they try to sell previously licensed content that a user has blanked or requested to be removed, not sure how that one would work out, but any content still on Reddit is fair game.
I'm guessing Tumblr and WordPress have similar licensing clauses ok their TOS.