Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has acknowledged using the public data of Australian adults and public photos of children on their parents’ accounts to train its AI models without consent. While they offer opt-out options in the European Union (EU), users in Australia and other countries do not have a similar choice.
The above revelation was made by Melinda Claybaugh, Meta’s global privacy director, when facing questions from Australian lawmakers, reports ABC News.
Meta’s practice of scraping public posts and photos from platforms like Facebook and Instagram has been applied to Australian users, raising alarm about how far back this data collection goes.
During the inquiry, Labour senator Tony Sheldon pressed Claybaugh on whether data from as far back as 2007 had been used to train Meta’s AI. Although initially denying this, Claybaugh later conceded, under questioning from Greens senator David Shoebridge, that any public data not set to private was indeed subject to scraping.
Claybaugh confirmed that while data from users under 18 was not included, public photos of children on their parents’ accounts were still being collected, further intensifying privacy concerns.
The company was unable to clarify whether data from users who were minors when they joined Facebook but are now adults as part of the dataset.
In stark contrast to European users, who are protected by stringent privacy laws, Australians have no opt-out option when it comes to their data being used for AI training.
Meta introduced these opt-out measures in the EU earlier this year, driven by the region’s tough privacy regulations and ongoing legal debates about AI’s compliance with such laws.
Claybaugh acknowledged that while Australians can set posts to private, the company has not extended the same opt-out protections offered to Europeans. She emphasised that Meta requires vast data to develop “flexible and powerful” AI tools while reducing bias.
The inquiry added to growing pressure on the Australian government to tighten privacy laws. The federal government is expected to announce long-overdue reforms to the Privacy Act, responding to a 2020 review that identified the need for updated legislation.
Last month, reports emerged that Meta and YouTube entered into a secret deal targeting teenagers on YouTube. In May, the EU launched a formal probe into Meta’s impact on minors.
In January this year, we reported that Meta received user data from thousands of companies.
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