Facebook admits to scraping Australian users' data for AI training without opt-out option

This is clearly raising privacy concerns...

Image credit: Image Creator in Microsoft Bing/DALL.E and Canva

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has admitted to scraping public data from Australian users, including photos and posts, to train its AI models, without offering an opt-out option.

Here are a few highlights:

• This contrasts with European Union users, who can refuse consent due to stricter privacy laws.

• Meta's global privacy director, Melinda Claybaugh, confirmed at a Senate inquiry that public posts from Australians dating back to 2007 are collected unless users explicitly set them to private.

• Although accounts of minors are not scraped, public photos of children shared by adults are still included.

• Meta claims it requires large amounts of data to build effective AI tools, but privacy concerns have been raised, especially as Australia’s privacy laws lag behind the EU's.

• The Australian government is set to propose reforms to update its Privacy Act.