Meta planned to start collecting publicly available user data and information shared with its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Meta AI to train its AI models in the UK starting June 26. However, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has told the social media giant to delay its plans to give the agency enough time to address user privacy concerns. Although such data protection measures are available at an institutional level in the UK and Europe, most of the world does not have them.
For example, since last year, Meta has been collecting data on its US users across all of its platforms and beyond. The tech giant also collects such data from users in a large number of countries including India. This means that any data a user has made publicly available or shared with Meta AI has likely already been used to personalize ads and train its Llama AI models.
According to Meta’s privacy policy, the platform collects a large amount of user data based on their activity on its applications and products. Some of these include all publicly available posts, comments, audio, photos and their descriptions, ads viewed or interacted with, apps and features used, hashtags used, in-app purchases and transaction history, as well as time, frequency and duration spent on a Meta-owned app. These apps include WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Meta AI on these platforms.
Some of the information, such as ads viewed, features used, and in-app purchases, is typically collected by most apps to improve products, create a more relevant experience, or personalize ads. However, some of the data collected by Meta is quickly entering a moral gray area. For example, the social media giant also collects user data outside of the product.
In its privacy policy, the company stated: “We collect and receive information from partners, measurement vendors, marketing vendors and other third parties about various of your data and activities on and off our products.” Some of this data includes device information, websites visited, apps used, purchases and transactions made outside of the product, demographic information, and more. In an older blog post, Meta also explained its use of user data to train its AI models.
With the recent DPC action, Meta is likely to delay collecting data to train its AI in the UK. In Europe, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other privacy-focused laws have led to unpredictable delays in the launch of Meta AI in the region. However, the social media giant will continue to collect data for its normal practices.
For users living outside the UK or EU, there is not much that can be done as the platform will collect public user data and interactions with Meta AI. However, users can still take a few steps to minimize the data a company has access to.
First, users can ask Meta to delete all third-party and non-product data it has collected about them. In order to do this, they will need to fill out a form entitled “Data subject rights for third-party data used for AI in Meta”. You can access this form here and you can fill it out within a few minutes.
Second, Instagram and Facebook users can make their account private to protect any future posts. On Facebook, users can go to Profile > settings > Tools and resources > Privacy check > Who can see what you share. Once there, users can manually change privacy settings for different activities.
On Instagram, users can go to Profile > Settings and activity (three horizontal lines in the upper right corner) > Who can see your content > Account privacy > Private account. Turn this on to make your account private.
Despite these measures, Meta will continue to access older public announcements and nothing can be done about it. Also, if a comment is posted on a public post from a private profile, the company can still access it.
