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Social media platform X has updated its Privacy Policy to allow third-party companies to use user data to train artificial intelligence (AI), models, revised its data retention policy and inserted a new ‘Liquidated Damages’ clause in its Terms of Service to prevent unauthorised data scrapping.
Following the footsteps of Reddit and several media publications, X also seems to capitalise on user-generated content by licensing it to AI firms and filling its coffers.
The platform is experiencing declining ad revenue as many companies have left. Furthermore, users have shown an underwhelming response to X’s subscription-based services. X’s owner, Elon Musk, previously trained Grok, an AI chatbot, using X user data, which triggered an investigation by the European Union’s lead privacy regulator, reports TechCrunch.
The updated policy introduces a new section titled ‘Third-Party Collaborators’ under Section 3, ‘Sharing Information,’ which explicitly allows user data to be shared with external entities. The most notable addition is a clause stating that these third parties may use the information for any purposes, including AI training unless users opt-out.
“Depending on your settings, we also provide certain third parties with information to help us offer or operate our products and services,” says the privacy policy. ” If you do not opt-out, in some instances, the recipients of the information may use it for their own independent purposes in addition to those stated in X’s Privacy Policy, including, for example, to train their artificial intelligence models, whether generative or otherwise.”
While the policy points users to the settings page to manage data-sharing preferences, the exact mechanism for opting out remains unclear. Currently, X offers a toggle under the ‘Privacy and safety’ section for data-sharing with Grok and “business partners,” but these partners are described as entities helping X improve its products — not necessarily external AI firms.
This discrepancy led many to believe that the option to disable third-party AI data-sharing may not appear until the updated policy takes effect on November 15.
In addition to expanding third-party access, X has quietly revised its data retention policies. Previously, X pledged to retain user “profile information and content” only for an active account, with other identifiable data held for up to 18 months. However, the new policy removes these concrete limits, replacing them with a vague clause stating that X will retain “different types of information for different periods of time” based on service requirements, legal obligations, and security considerations.
For example, X notes that user posts and interactions may be kept for as long as an account remains active or until the content is deleted. However, the platform reminds users that deleted content may persist elsewhere, such as in search engine caches or through third parties that have previously accessed it.
In another aggressive move to protect its data, X has introduced a new “Liquidated Damages” clause in its Terms of Service to curb unauthorised data scrapping. Under the updated terms, any organisation that scrapes over one million posts within 24 hours will be fined $15,000 per million posts.
These additions have raised eyebrows regarding the safety and privacy of platform users. Moreover, the policy changes come when regulatory bodies worldwide scrutinise how tech companies handle user data.
Recently, X announced a change in the blocking process, allowing blocked users to see the public tweets.
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