Facebook Admits Scraping Australian User Data for AI Training, No Opt-Out Option
In a recent inquiry, Facebook admitted to scraping the public photos, posts, and other data of Australian adult users to train its AI models. This practice raises concerns about user privacy, especially considering the lack of an opt-out option for Australians, unlike users in the European Union.
Meta's global privacy director, Melinda Claybaugh, initially denied that the company was using Australian data for its AI products. However, Greens senator David Shoebridge challenged this claim, pointing out that unless users have consciously set their posts to private since 2007, Meta has been scraping all public photos and texts from their Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Claybaugh confirmed that accounts of people under 18 were not scraped. However, she could not answer whether the company scraped data from previous years of users who were now adults but were under 18 when they created their accounts.
Adding to the controversy, Meta offered an opt-out option to users in the European Union and the United States, but not to Australians. Claybaugh explained that this was due to legal uncertainty surrounding strict privacy laws in Europe.
This revelation has sparked concerns about the government's failure to act on privacy issues. Senator Shoebridge emphasized the need for strong privacy laws to protect Australians' data, especially considering the potential harm to young people.
The government is expected to announce long-awaited reforms to the Privacy Act in response to a 2020 review. However, the delay in implementing these reforms leaves Australian users vulnerable to data scraping and exploitation by companies like Meta.