# AI affecting Stack Overflow and Reddit **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Tags:** ai\ **Created:** [June 6, 2023, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120 "2023-06-06T21:44:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/21 "2023-06-07T22:26:46Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > If I were able to filter out 2022 and 2023 I would find many references, not just obscure ones. If you click on “Tools” you can set a date range. As you say, it’s easy to find other references, like this one: > **[A.I. Is Our Future. What Happens When the Data It’s Trained on Is Biased and...](https://slate.com/technology/2017/10/what-happens-when-the-data-used-to-train-a-i-is-biased-and-old.html)** > > Nothing good. It’s almost indistinguishable from something that would have been published yesterday. Like: > One thing that would help would be clarity about whether using copyrighted data to build A.I. systems should be considered fair use and therefore not a violation of copyright law. That’s an issue that hasn’t been litigated in the courts yet Well, it still hasn’t been resolved. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/22 "2023-06-07T22:33:20Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Why wouldn’t they think that? …why would they think that? > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > It’s not like we haven’t been down that road before. Search engines do exactly the same thing: scrape publicly available data and convert the content into some internal form. What search engines do and what monetized AI does are not the same things. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > One wonders what goes through people’s heads when they make their content available to every networked computer on the planet and then act confused when computers process that content. “Processes content” and “monetizes content” are not the same thing. > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > You have done it to me several times in AI-related posts recently and you are doing it again right now. I said older references were hard to find _ **because they are flooded out by recent references** _. You can search by _date-range._ [https://uc45136344dad2e96b8b102f4481.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/thumb/AB4AGsMhz9vkOgAQLXGpFJ1SzkfLzPqUVfvP0fvCKXBkL8V5sJXs42rXh5RM39DTxg-ZbXymAgvw\_Co5CQjox4t7qfnkUMriZEdnP3HQawU8MXLq2Jma-O6vfcWPrcsTRCwxGIF6e9PMuym8YRp1b0FTr56aEPfVPXPUiLT\_PJElmSeVRZcBLKezBMN74l7W9SjEHj4mHYSZe\_Wui1XWYNnVD2w4kzg91mF3w\_Q7vpqgEL0J5rqZ7uo2t8li8npo-IkAXiv6e6\_RuJe\_oIX7pbVjIK5kNXSEg\_NNZQIv0G9IA1j2h59GJWbVBJv49DNbZPTEDLeHb9D9gj\_1zy4WloeKJZeev015V4q-5kUURg25\_zdhxyDzXmQ-JcCIXvq0a4ynqMzh5t9BgH5jfT4\_q4p8/p.png](https://uc45136344dad2e96b8b102f4481.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/thumb/AB4AGsMhz9vkOgAQLXGpFJ1SzkfLzPqUVfvP0fvCKXBkL8V5sJXs42rXh5RM39DTxg-ZbXymAgvw_Co5CQjox4t7qfnkUMriZEdnP3HQawU8MXLq2Jma-O6vfcWPrcsTRCwxGIF6e9PMuym8YRp1b0FTr56aEPfVPXPUiLT_PJElmSeVRZcBLKezBMN74l7W9SjEHj4mHYSZe_Wui1XWYNnVD2w4kzg91mF3w_Q7vpqgEL0J5rqZ7uo2t8li8npo-IkAXiv6e6_RuJe_oIX7pbVjIK5kNXSEg_NNZQIv0G9IA1j2h59GJWbVBJv49DNbZPTEDLeHb9D9gj_1zy4WloeKJZeev015V4q-5kUURg25_zdhxyDzXmQ-JcCIXvq0a4ynqMzh5t9BgH5jfT4_q4p8/p.png) ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/23 "2023-06-07T22:34:37Z")
Nvidia’s famous face generator, for example, > **[AI Generates Incredibly Believable Faces of Humans That Don’t Really Exist](https://mymodernmet.com/ai-realistic-photography-nvidia/)** > > These faces are all computer-generated! was trained on a dataset of 70,000 photos culled from Flikr. > **[Exposing.ai: FFHQ](https://exposing.ai/ffhq/)** > > 0 This is explicitly mentioned in the PDF linked in the article. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/24 "2023-06-07T22:38:30Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > “Processes content” and “monetizes content” are not the same thing. So are you okay with scraping as long it is in free, open-source, non-monetized models? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/25 "2023-06-07T22:39:39Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > What search engines do and what monetized AI does are not the same things. They are both taking publicly available data, processing it in some fashion (that doesn’t involve direct local storage), and then making money off of that transformation (by advertising or otherwise). > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > “Processes content” and “monetizes content” are not the same thing. Last I checked, Google had a $1.5T market cap. You think they aren’t making money by scraping content? ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/26 "2023-06-07T22:41:24Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > So are you okay with scraping as long it is in free, open-source, non-monetized models? …as I said earlier in the thread, I’m _unsure_. I’m conflicted. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > I’m not entirely sure what my position is at the moment 😃 > > My baseline position is that people should be able to control how their intellectual property is used by others, largely in accordance with the Berne Convention and other relevant laws and agreements. That using other people’s IP in a training dataset is not the same thing as “a human looking at an image” or a “human reading a book”, and that people should be able to say “you need my permission before you train your AI on my work.” ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/27 "2023-06-07T22:47:18Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > This is explicitly mentioned in the PDF linked in the article. **BB** might have a point if all these examples were buried in academic papers. But they aren’t; they’ve been in mainstream news since forever. Like: > **[Rise of the racist robots – how AI is learning all our worst impulses](https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/aug/08/rise-of-the-racist-robots-how-ai-is-learning-all-our-worst-impulses)** > > There is a saying in computer science: garbage in, garbage out. When we feed machines data that reflects our prejudices, they mimic them. Does a horrifying future await people forced to live at the mercy of algorithms? > In 2012, Google researchers fed their computer “brain” millions of images from YouTube videos to see what it could recognise. Or: > **[Facebook's New AI Engine Understands Text To Improve Messenger, Search And...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2016/06/02/facebooks-new-ai-engine-understands-text-to-improve-messenger-search-and-curation/)** > > Facebook has unveiled a new in-house artificial intelligence (AI) engine called 'DeepText,' built to understand the meaning and sentiment behind text on the social network. > DeepText was built on top of Facebook’s AI backbone, FbLearner and uses Facebook pages, in part, as training data. It goes on and on. All this information has been out there for many years in the mainstream media. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/28 "2023-06-07T22:54:57Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > It goes on and on. All this information has been out there for many years in the mainstream media. Right. The people suprised by it just haven’t been paying attention. It is like me not knowing that soccer fields came in different sizes until I learned in on _Ted Lasso_. It isn’t something that was kept secret just because I didn’t know about it. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/29 "2023-06-07T22:55:15Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > They are both taking publicly available data, processing it in some fashion (that doesn’t involve direct local storage), and then making money off of that transformation (by advertising or otherwise). …the legality of what search engines do have largely been settled in law. > **[Search Engines, Indexing and Copyright Law](https://www.practicalecommerce.com/Search-Engines-Indexing-and-Copyright-Law)** > > In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, intended to extend intellectual property rights to the web and to limit liability for online service providers. Since then, search engines have used their web... What AI does has not been. That distinction is important here. We really need to stop with the overly simplistic analogies. They just don’t hold up under scrutiny. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Last I checked, Google had a $1.5T market cap. You think they aren’t making money by scraping content? I think that I can no-index my website to block automated crawling of my website so that Google will be unable to index it. (in fact, I once accidentally did just that, and my website just dropped off the face of the earth) I can’t _no-index_ my images that might be being hosted somewhere else with my permission. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/30 "2023-06-07T22:58:43Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > **BB** might have a point if all these examples were buried in academic papers. But they aren’t; they’ve been in mainstream news since forever. Like: …you’ve cited an example that is buried in an article about “racist robots”, that is buried in a puff-piece about Facebook’s “DeepText” (which practically nobody has even heard of or cares about), and your examples seem to be proving _my_ point, not yours. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/31 "2023-06-07T23:02:26Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > We never had the chance to opt out of the process. > **[Stability AI plans to let artists opt out of Stable Diffusion 3 image training](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/stability-ai-plans-to-let-artists-opt-out-of-stable-diffusion-3-image-training/)** > > Artists must register and manually flag matched images in the LAION database. (Which doesn’t cover the older versions, of course.) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/32 "2023-06-07T23:02:45Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > What AI does has not been. That distinction is important here. I certainly agree that things have not been settled. But courts tend to work by analogy with previous law. And as you note, search engines have been found to be non-infringing due to their transformative nature. It seems very likely that AI will prove to be the same. Because, contrary to popular belief, they are not simply storing the original content. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > I can’t _no-index_ my images that might be being hosted somewhere else with my permission. There should probably be an AI equivalent of robots.txt. But let’s not pretend that it has any real effect. It’s just a suggestion to the most polite search engines. “Malicious” clients will just ignore it. And if you post your data to social media–well, they just own all of it anyway. You can’t deny access to your own posts except by not using the service. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > and your examples seem to be proving _my_ point, not yours. I see. No matter how many examples you’re provided with, in fact they somehow prove that you were right all along. How convenient for you. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/33 "2023-06-07T23:27:53Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > [Stability AI plans to let artists opt out of Stable Diffusion 3 image training | Ars Technica](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/stability-ai-plans-to-let-artists-opt-out-of-stable-diffusion-3-image-training/) …its interesting that you’ve linked to an article about plans for Stability AI to opt out, and not the link to the opt-out page on the Stablity AI website. Because when I click on the Tweet that the article cites, it leads me to this third-party website that doesn’t allow me to opt out. [https://haveibeentrained.com/](https://haveibeentrained.com/) So I google “stability ai opt out” and your article is the first thing I found, and this was the second: > **[Stable Diffusion 3 to Let Artists Opt Out - Briefly](https://aibusiness.com/nlp/stable-diffusion-3-to-let-artists-opt-out---briefly)** > > Stability AI will now let artists opt out of the training dataset for Stable Diffusion 3, according to an artists’ group. At least, for about the next two weeks. But an analyst said this is not going to work long term. > [@AI Business](#): > > Stability AI will now let artists opt out of the training dataset for the next version of its popular text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, according to an artists’ group. > > At least, for about the next two weeks. > > The window closes when Stable Diffusion 3 starts its next training, according to Mat Dryhurst, co-founder of Spawning, which is behind the ‘Have I been trained?’, a website that lets artists check whether their art or likeness is in training datasets. > **[Stable Diffusion 3 to Let Artists Opt Out - Briefly](https://aibusiness.com/nlp/stable-diffusion-3-to-let-artists-opt-out---briefly)** > > Stability AI will now let artists opt out of the training dataset for Stable Diffusion 3, according to an artists’ group. At least, for about the next two weeks. But an analyst said this is not going to work long term. You may well be able to opt out of Stability AI. But they sure don’t make it easy to do so. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > But courts tend to work by analogy with previous law. That isn’t how courts tend to work. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > It seems very likely that AI will prove to be the same. This doesn’t seem likely to me. But YMMV. And this ignores the fact that the law isn’t standing still here. Lawmakers are actively working on this. Because the concerns of people that create content are real. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > There should probably be an AI equivalent of robots.txt. But let’s not pretend that it has any real effect. It’s just a suggestion to the most polite search engines. “Malicious” clients will just ignore it. We were using your example of “search engines.” Do malicious search engines exist? Sure. But they aren’t really relevant to the conversation. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > And if you post your data to social media–well, they just own all of it anyway. This is factually incorrect. You still own the rights to any work you post on any reputable social media network. You typically grant that network the right to upload and share your work > [@Facebook Terms and Conditions](#): > > grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free and worldwide licence to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate and create derivative works of your content [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms?paipv=0&eav=AfZ04PY4J6AIbqQCSTwK5gNvBk77oX1hnrchzEyHyIv_M_NM47w6PGIeOllDh5dfVdg&wtsid=rdr_0go6iE3UuhnTsz7zU&_rdr) Which, in laymans terms means: > [@Facebook Terms and Conditions](#): > > This means, for example, that if you share a photo on Facebook, you give us permission to store, copy and share it with others (again, consistent with your settings) such as Meta Products or service providers that support those products and services. This licence will end when your content is deleted from our systems. This _isn’t_ a transfer of ownership or even sharing of ownership. Facebook don’t own anything you post or share on their platform. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > No matter how many examples you’re provided with, in fact they somehow prove that you were right all along. Random news stories about tangentially related AI-things do _not_ demonstrate that “most people _did_ know that things they may have posted on the internet have ended up being part of a dataset that is being monetized.” _This_ is what you were intending to prove. A story about racist AI or Facebook’s “DeepText” _don’t_ prove this. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/34 "2023-06-07T23:32:29Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …its interesting that you’ve linked to an article about plans for Stability AI to opt out, and not the link to the opt-out page on the Stablity AI website You start a hell of a lot of posts with this “its interesting” crap, like you caught someone trying to sneak something past you. I had no nefarious intent behind the link I posted not being the one you think I should have posted. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/35 "2023-06-07T23:33:57Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > I had no nefarious intent behind the link I posted not being the one you think I should have posted. …didn’t mean to imply nefarious intent, my apologies. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/36 "2023-06-07T23:41:30Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …didn’t mean to imply nefarious intent, my apologies. Accepted. (Eta) and the opt-out option is another thing that wasn’t obscure for people paying attention. It was all over the news at the time (with “the news” being “searching Stable Diffusion mentions in Google News”.) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/37 "2023-06-07T23:42:26Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > Lawmakers are actively working on this. Because the concerns of people that create content are real. Sure. But they wouldn’t need additional laws if they thought existing copyright law was sufficient. It’s basically an explicit recognition that this stuff probably is legal for the time being. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > Do malicious search engines exist? Sure. But they aren’t really relevant to the conversation. It’s more relevant for AI than search. As we’ve seen, it doesn’t actually take that many resources to train your own AI. And I’d fully expect that non-commercial users (whether driven by malice, ideology, or just wanting their own porn generator) will ignore these. Search is different in that robots.txt files aren’t really excluding anyone from the “good stuff”, and also the scale makes it almost impossible for third parties to build their own engines. So while robots.txt files are semi-pointless, no one is particularly motivated to bypass them. The same won’t be true of an AI equivalent. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > This _isn’t_ a transfer of ownership or even sharing of ownership. What a useless nitpick. The TaC gives Facebook the ability to do almost whatever they want with your work, including re-selling a license to others without your permission. Ownership implies a measure of control. You hand over every bit of that when you put your work on Facebook. About all you have left is the ability to regain control if you delete your account. Unless they already used it in their AI training, in which case it’s too late. Then you’re shit outta luck. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/38 "2023-06-07T23:55:43Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Sure. But they wouldn’t need additional laws if they thought existing copyright law was sufficient. …except: > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > It’s basically an explicit recognition that this stuff probably is legal for the time being. There are lawsuits happening right now under existing laws. We don’t know how they will play out. There is uncertainty at present. But there isn’t an “explicit recognition that this stuff probably is legal.” Many people think it currently isn’t legal, and are taking the appropriate action. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > What a useless nitpick. It most certainly is _not_. It isn’t even a nitpick. Facebook don’t gives Facebook the ability to do almost whatever they want with your work, they certainly don’t have the right to re-sell licences to your images without your permission, and I have absolutely no idea where you get that impression. This isn’t how any of this works. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Ownership implies a measure of control. Ownership is ownership. And the ownership of intellectual property rights have been settled for a very long time. You don’t get to redfine the word here. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > About all you have left is the ability to regain control if you delete your account. The limits of Facebooks ability to use the work you post are quite explicit in the terms and conditions. You _do_ have control. And you don’t need to delete your account to revoke the licence. Removing the content is enough. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2023, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/39 "2023-06-07T23:59:53Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > they certainly don’t have the right to re-sell licences to your images without your permission That’s what “sub-licensable” means: > **[Who Owns the Media on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter?](https://nyccounsel.com/who-owns-photos-and-videos-posted-on-facebook-or-twitter/)** > > Know your legal rights when posting on Social Media like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Who Owns the Photos and Videos You Post? > This means that Facebook can license your content to others **for free** without obtaining any other approval from you! > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > Removing the content is enough. Fair enough. I was mistaken on that point. However, it doesn’t change the fact that if Facebook has already done something with your content, like used it for AI training, you have no means of withdrawing permission after the fact. All you can do is prevent them from using it in some future training round. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2023, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/40 "2023-06-08T00:13:06Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > That’s what “sub-licensable” means: > > [Who Owns the Media on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter?](https://nyccounsel.com/who-owns-photos-and-videos-posted-on-facebook-or-twitter/) …thats a 2012 opinion. We’ve had over 13 years of these terms being in place on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and they haven’t to my knowledge re-sold licences to your images without your permission a single time. Because the intent of that clause is to allow them to sublicence to different entities: ie Facebook cross-posting to Instagram. You retain ownership of anything you post to social media. That isn’t something up for debate. It isn’t a nitpick. Its just a fact. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120.md?page=3)