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.
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.