Australian Facebook users’ posts from as far back as 2007 are being used to train Meta’s artificial intelligence models, the company conceded on Wednesday at a tense Senate inquiry in Canberra.
The tech giant was accused of flouting laws and its efforts to protect local users were branded “a joke” by senators probing the company’s approach to deepfakes, algorithms, online safety and tax.
Meta representatives confirmed Australian users have no blanket opt out option for AI training because there is no legal requirement for one, unlike in Europe, and that users aren’t reading its 20,000 word privacy policy that details the AI training.
The situation means unless an Australian user consciously set posts they made more than a decade ago to private, their data – including images of children – is being used to train the tech giant’s AI.
“The truth of the matter is that unless you have consciously set those posts to private since 2007, Meta has just decided that you will scrape all of the photos and all of the texts from every public post on Instagram or Facebook since 2007, unless there was a conscious decision to set them on private. That’s the reality, isn’t it?” Greens Senator David Shoebridge said.
Meta privacy policy lead Melinda Claybaugh replied: “Correct.”
Ms Claybaugh, who worked for the US competition and consumer regulator before joining Meta, said no data from accounts of users under 18 is used for AI training but if an adult publicly posts images of children, these photos are used.
In July, Meta shelved plans to deploy its advanced AI model in Europe because of the EU’s tough data privacy and AI laws, and offered European users a blanket opt out from AI training.
But there is no plan for a similar opt out option in Australia currently because of a lack of similar legal requirements, Ms Claybaugh said.
RMIT associate dean Dr Dana McKay said the company may have breached European laws if it included photos of Europeans posted by Australians.
“Social media companies have operated on the precedent set by search companies where online information is there for the scraping. There are good historical reasons for search being this way; it basically couldn’t exist without it, and data owners were happy to exchange scraping for exposure. In this case, Australian people were unaware and it’s not clear the scraping has benefited them,” she said.
“This is a clear sign we need new privacy laws, although Australia has been pretty good at regulating social media.”
Meta representatives were also grilled on its acquisition and subsequent shuttering of the CrowdTangle insights tool that had helped researchers and users track discord and misinformation on Facebook and Instagram.
“The authorities and the public relied upon the data provided from CrowdTangle to help shut some of the hate-filled posts down. That help deal with the extremism,” Senator Shoebridge said.
“And now Meta has made a decision to shut down CrowdTangle. I can’t comprehend why it did that.”
But Meta’s regional public policy lead Simon Milner would not provide information on how the tool works or why the company shut it down, taking both questions on notice.
Independent Senator David Pocock, who posted deepfake videos to the company’s platforms over the weekend to draw attention to lax political advertising laws, questioned how seriously the company is taking election integrity.
Mr Milner said Meta has its own disclosure policies for deepfakes and collaborates with election authorities during campaigns, but revealed the local Meta policy team is only “around four people”.
Senator Pocock said the staffing commitment was “a bit of a joke” for a company that records billion-dollar local revenue and has become a key part of millions of Australians lives.
“We hear from the social media giants just how much you care about all these things. But then when you dig a little bot deeper, you don’t actually have a big team in Australia despite taking billions and billions out of this country and somehow paying to your international partners or parent companies,” Senator Pocock said.
Chair Senator Tony Sheldon foreshadowed consequential findings in the committee’s report, expected later this month, as the Parliament is expected to debate new laws for privacy, election integrity and social media age limits.
“I do think that people around the world are sick of tech giants going doing whatever they want, completely ignoring laws and rights as they go. Because having those things [data and copyright] taken off people, they feel as if their inherent right has been taken off them. I do expect governments to do something about it,” Senator Sheldon said.
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