By Simon Perry
Not everyone realises that everything – yes everything – that you upload to Facebook they pretty much can use as they wish. Sorry to freak you out if you didn’t realise this, you can read more about this below. It’s in their terms and conditions.
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Well, on top of that, Meta (who runs Facebook) now wants to use your uploads to build their AI – so they can then make even more money out of your personal data.
If you’re OK with that, that’s all fine and dandy – just stop reading here.
What you can do about it
If you don’t like the idea of your personal photos of your friends, family, even children being used to make Mark Zuckerberg and many, many others even more wealthy than they already are, from using your data, read on.
They haven’t made it very obvious (wonder why?), so here are the steps you need:
Protect your data from Meta’s AI
While logged into Facebook, visit their ‘Privacy’ centre.
Hidden in the block of text that’s near the top of the page that currently starts, “We’re getting ready to expand our AI at Meta experiences”, there’s a link in the second paragraph on the word ‘object’ – click on that.
You’ll be taken to another page currently titled “Object to Your Information Being Used for AI at Meta”.
The email address you use for Facebook should be filled in.
The next field in the form is optional (why give them more data?), so leave it blank.
Then just click the Submit button on the bottom right of the form.
You should then see that says, your data will not be used, “going forward”, so we can but assume that every photo, public posts and comments you’ve ever put on Facebook or Instagram has already been sucked in to their AI – but at least your future personal data should be safe.
Licence Granted to Facebook
By uploading, you give Facebook a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide licence to use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform, or display your content.
This licence ends when you delete your content or your account unless your content has been shared with others and they have not deleted it.
You can read about it in section “3. The permissions you give us” section of Facebook’s terms and conditions.
• This article originally appeared in On The WightOn The Wight. There’s a very similar process to follow if you want to do the same on Instagram, also owned by Meta.
Photo by Timothy Hales Bennett on Unsplash