Platforms are finally recognizing that people don’t want to consume AI slop. A growing number of sites and apps now have tools and policies to flag, label, and ban AI-generated content.
I’m sorry. I wholeheartedly agree with the article, but this bit:
I had no idea that my online interactions would one day be scraped en masse for AI model training. I didn’t ask for Instagram to enable deepfakes on my account. I didn’t want Google to push AI-generated answers at the top of search results. I woke up one day, and generative AI features were stuffed into every corner of all the software I rely on without my consent.
You post something in public, it is public. You post knowing others might do things you don’t like with it; that’s the bargain. Especially on social media.
Instagrams owns you. They own every ounce, every dimension of your content on the platform; they can do whatever TF they want, and you have zero legal recourse.
No one made you use Google search instead of one of many alternatives, including alt Google frontends.
The fundamental issue here is that people, apparently even journalists, still see these Big Tech platforms as benevolent public squares where they have rights. And fairness. That is an illusion, and this is kind of thing keeps happening because everyone believes the lie.
And they don’t bother to even look for alternatives.
Are they really gonna keep getting surprised when platforms keep squeezing them, yet the platforms don’t stop because no one will leave anyway?
I don’t agree. Yes, under our current rules, posting things in public means people can do things you might not like with your work. And technically you agreed to Instagram’s BS when you made an account. But for all practical purposes, the rules changed after the fact for most people.
Someone who made their Facebook account in 2009 couldn’t reasonably have guessed that their posts might be used to train misinformation machines that would be forced into everything in 2026. Most people could have conceived of strangers looking at their photos and maybe even photoshopping them, but could never have conceived of gen AI in its current form until it arrived. Bloggers could have conceived of people plagiarizing them or taking their words out of context, but not of having their own past work used to feed tools designed to replace most of their future work opportunities while also spreading hallucinations. And some people might have made very different choices if they’d known, myself included. No one gave informed consent for all that data to be used for LLM training, because no one could have imagined what they were consenting to. Even now that we can, we’re being held hostage in a sense. You can’t meaningfully opt out of AI scraping without giving up participation in society, not when leaked private data and copyrighted works end up being used for AI training too.
As for looking for alternatives, it’s true that you can leave Instagram and use a different search engine. But there are limits. Most people are stuck with whatever software their job or school forces on them, even if they use alternatives in their personal lives. I can’t just tell my boss I’ll no longer be using Google collaboration tools or Microsoft products. I can recommend alternatives, but I don’t have the power to make the entire organization switch, especially when said boss actually likes AI. And almost every other office job in my country will likely require using the same software.
You’re right that we should never have seen big tech as a benevolent public square. You’re right that from a legal perspective, this person has no grounds for complaining about Instagram. But from a human perspective, they do. I think it’s quite reasonable to be upset that anyone who ever posted anything publicly for other humans to appreciate has been effectively forced to contribute to gen AI training. I think it’s reasonable to be frustrated that many of the common collaboration tools most of us are forced to use (for now, at least) have had AI stuffed into them. In a better society, we’d be able to share things publicly with other humans while opting out of tech we find harmful.
You post something in public, it is public. You post knowing others might do things you don’t like with it; that’s the bargain. Especially on social media.
And people act like I am strange for not wanting my fucking personal ID tied to every online account!
It’s actually a bit infuriating after a decade of tech savvy people screaming that any data given to these corporations was eventually going to be used for something they wouldn’t like. This isn’t some unforseen consequence.
The problem is that we have allowed them to be benevolent monopolies and now that they control practically the entire market in their respective spaces they are not so benevolent any more. Nobody cared to choose a different search engine because google just worked, nobody bought things from a different website because amazon was fast and had everything. Now google search is just a way to sell me an ad for the thing I’m looking for and Amazon is just a way to sell me an ad for the chinese manufacturer who paid them off to push their results to the top or in some cases it’s their own competing product.
Posting something on a private platform is actually not public. It is the private property of the platform owner and they can make it public or private any time they want or find ways to commodity it in their terms of service when you sign up.
I say this to back up what you say about the myth of the digital commons. Most online networks are not a commons at all, they are the exact opposite, they are an enclosure to extract profit from what would otherwise be a commons, usually built by finance capital to have appealing features at first, generated at a loss, and then once profit needs to be taken the alleged “commons” is increasingly closed and monetized. Journalista don’t really understand this, sure, but neither do most people. They expect, correctly, that social interactions should be analogous to chatting with someone on the street or at a public square, and social networks try to give that illusion.
Regarding individual choice, well a person is surrounded by the exact opposite of what we are saying and all their friends are on their addiction habit social networks so what would you expect them to do. These things don’t just happen on their own, people must work to organize and educate on the way capitalism turns their social lives into profit.
You post something in public, it is public. You post knowing others might do things you don’t like with it; that’s the bargain. Especially on social media.
Yes the point is that they were ignorant, but also they have a point. For a long while, people have been ignorant of just how invasive data harvesting is. They usually don’t see the forest for the trees. They track your scroll speed to see how long you look at things, video playback times, view counts, referrer addresses, links you clicked on, geolocation history, comment/chat history, voice data, literally anything they can get their hands on. Those are just the trees within a very large forest.
Instagrams owns you. They own every ounce, every dimension of your content on the platform; they can do whatever TF they want, and you have zero legal recourse.
Meta, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit takes things further. Their forest air is filled with 0.02% opium, so you constantly want to be there. Content serving algorithms that dynamically optimize for engagement, forever scrolling, auto-play, strategically timed notifications, …
No one made you use Google search instead of one of many alternatives, including alt Google frontends.
Yeah some people are just ignorant. I think many of them just walk a different path in life, may have never taken surveillance seriously as a concern. I don’t know if they’re all clowns, but I’m happy to see some of them are opening their eyes.
And they don’t bother to even look for alternatives.
That’s got to be a cultural issue because people seem unmotivated to teach themselves basic computer skills / knowledge. If it doesn’t “just work” then they don’t want it. If you can make it work, you’re some kind of magician to them. They let their fear stop them from accumulating basic research skills, even.
What’s kind of ironic is, this is the same crowd that loved AI and thought it would love all their problems.
I’m sorry. I wholeheartedly agree with the article, but this bit:
You post something in public, it is public. You post knowing others might do things you don’t like with it; that’s the bargain. Especially on social media.
Instagrams owns you. They own every ounce, every dimension of your content on the platform; they can do whatever TF they want, and you have zero legal recourse.
No one made you use Google search instead of one of many alternatives, including alt Google frontends.
The fundamental issue here is that people, apparently even journalists, still see these Big Tech platforms as benevolent public squares where they have rights. And fairness. That is an illusion, and this is kind of thing keeps happening because everyone believes the lie.
And they don’t bother to even look for alternatives.
Are they really gonna keep getting surprised when platforms keep squeezing them, yet the platforms don’t stop because no one will leave anyway?
I don’t agree. Yes, under our current rules, posting things in public means people can do things you might not like with your work. And technically you agreed to Instagram’s BS when you made an account. But for all practical purposes, the rules changed after the fact for most people.
Someone who made their Facebook account in 2009 couldn’t reasonably have guessed that their posts might be used to train misinformation machines that would be forced into everything in 2026. Most people could have conceived of strangers looking at their photos and maybe even photoshopping them, but could never have conceived of gen AI in its current form until it arrived. Bloggers could have conceived of people plagiarizing them or taking their words out of context, but not of having their own past work used to feed tools designed to replace most of their future work opportunities while also spreading hallucinations. And some people might have made very different choices if they’d known, myself included. No one gave informed consent for all that data to be used for LLM training, because no one could have imagined what they were consenting to. Even now that we can, we’re being held hostage in a sense. You can’t meaningfully opt out of AI scraping without giving up participation in society, not when leaked private data and copyrighted works end up being used for AI training too.
As for looking for alternatives, it’s true that you can leave Instagram and use a different search engine. But there are limits. Most people are stuck with whatever software their job or school forces on them, even if they use alternatives in their personal lives. I can’t just tell my boss I’ll no longer be using Google collaboration tools or Microsoft products. I can recommend alternatives, but I don’t have the power to make the entire organization switch, especially when said boss actually likes AI. And almost every other office job in my country will likely require using the same software.
You’re right that we should never have seen big tech as a benevolent public square. You’re right that from a legal perspective, this person has no grounds for complaining about Instagram. But from a human perspective, they do. I think it’s quite reasonable to be upset that anyone who ever posted anything publicly for other humans to appreciate has been effectively forced to contribute to gen AI training. I think it’s reasonable to be frustrated that many of the common collaboration tools most of us are forced to use (for now, at least) have had AI stuffed into them. In a better society, we’d be able to share things publicly with other humans while opting out of tech we find harmful.
And people act like I am strange for not wanting my fucking personal ID tied to every online account!
It’s actually a bit infuriating after a decade of tech savvy people screaming that any data given to these corporations was eventually going to be used for something they wouldn’t like. This isn’t some unforseen consequence.
Exactly!
I could have summarized my rambling post as:
The problem is that we have allowed them to be benevolent monopolies and now that they control practically the entire market in their respective spaces they are not so benevolent any more. Nobody cared to choose a different search engine because google just worked, nobody bought things from a different website because amazon was fast and had everything. Now google search is just a way to sell me an ad for the thing I’m looking for and Amazon is just a way to sell me an ad for the chinese manufacturer who paid them off to push their results to the top or in some cases it’s their own competing product.
Posting something on a private platform is actually not public. It is the private property of the platform owner and they can make it public or private any time they want or find ways to commodity it in their terms of service when you sign up.
I say this to back up what you say about the myth of the digital commons. Most online networks are not a commons at all, they are the exact opposite, they are an enclosure to extract profit from what would otherwise be a commons, usually built by finance capital to have appealing features at first, generated at a loss, and then once profit needs to be taken the alleged “commons” is increasingly closed and monetized. Journalista don’t really understand this, sure, but neither do most people. They expect, correctly, that social interactions should be analogous to chatting with someone on the street or at a public square, and social networks try to give that illusion.
Regarding individual choice, well a person is surrounded by the exact opposite of what we are saying and all their friends are on their addiction habit social networks so what would you expect them to do. These things don’t just happen on their own, people must work to organize and educate on the way capitalism turns their social lives into profit.
Yes the point is that they were ignorant, but also they have a point. For a long while, people have been ignorant of just how invasive data harvesting is. They usually don’t see the forest for the trees. They track your scroll speed to see how long you look at things, video playback times, view counts, referrer addresses, links you clicked on, geolocation history, comment/chat history, voice data, literally anything they can get their hands on. Those are just the trees within a very large forest.
Meta, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit takes things further. Their forest air is filled with 0.02% opium, so you constantly want to be there. Content serving algorithms that dynamically optimize for engagement, forever scrolling, auto-play, strategically timed notifications, …
Yeah some people are just ignorant. I think many of them just walk a different path in life, may have never taken surveillance seriously as a concern. I don’t know if they’re all clowns, but I’m happy to see some of them are opening their eyes.
That’s got to be a cultural issue because people seem unmotivated to teach themselves basic computer skills / knowledge. If it doesn’t “just work” then they don’t want it. If you can make it work, you’re some kind of magician to them. They let their fear stop them from accumulating basic research skills, even.
What’s kind of ironic is, this is the same crowd that loved AI and thought it would love all their problems.
One day someone will pick up on my obscure references. One day…