# 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:** 7\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2023, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/121 "2023-06-18T10:39:34Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > If you upload content to Facebook, you grant 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 (consistent with your [privacy](https://www.facebook.com/help/325807937506242?ref=tos) and [application](https://www.facebook.com/help/1727608884153160?ref=tos) settings)” Why would they need that licence? Why couldn’t they just use your stuff? Think carefully. The answer is because of copyright. That’s why it’s a copyright licence. It’s a licence, to do with copyright. And frankly, if you think that “the copyright holder retains ownership of the intellectual property” and “a licence to use uploaded content in a limited number of ways” are not a form of copyright licence then you need to go and do some really (really) basic reading on copyright licencing from some third party. You aren’t going to listen to me, quite clearly. It is, in fact, an absolutely classic form of limited copyright licence of a type I write into, and enforce, regularly. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > Facebook licences your uploaded content for the purposes of providing and improving our Products and services, and you grant them licence to display your work. If you delete that content, the licence is revoked. I’m not going around again. You aren’t dealing with my point. You keep saying this, I keep pointing out why you are wrong, and you just say the same thing. We’re done here. ---
**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 18, 2023, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/122 "2023-06-18T11:09:44Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Why couldn’t they just use your stuff? …think carefully about this: **it might not be your stuff.** Which is why its a licence to use the content you’ve uploaded, **and not a copyright licence**. People upload stuff all the time that isn’t their own intellectual property. From memes, to family photos, to video snippets from their favourite TV shows. The Facebook TOS doesn’t require that you _own_ the copyright to the content you upload, simply that the right or permission to upload it. In many cases fair use would apply, at other times, like with family photos, an implied licence is granted to the uploader. The DMCA Safe Harbor provides cover here for obvious infringements. The original holder of the copyright retains copyright of any uploaded content. Facebook is granted a temporary licence to display that content and to use it to improve products and services. But the moment that content is deleted, the licence is revoked. > [@Princhester](#): > > And frankly, if you think that “the copyright holder retains ownership of the intellectual property” and “a licence to use uploaded content in a limited number of ways” are not a form of copyright licence then you need to go and do some really (really) basic reading on copyright licencing from some third party. I licensed over 500 images to a client last week. I didn’t assign them a copyright licence. It was a _usage_ licence. It allowed my client to use the images in a limited number of ways, as per the licence. I have, in my entire career, transferred copyright to my clients three times. All of them involved a substantially higher fee, all of the language in the contract made it explicit that it was a copyright transfer, and once the copyright transfer was complete I no longer had any rights to those images. I even had to include in the contract _the right for me to continue to archive the original RAW files_. > [@Princhester](#): > > I’m not going around again. You aren’t dealing with my point. You keep saying this, I keep pointing out why you are wrong, and you just say the same thing. I’m not wrong. At all. We are only going around in circles because you are claiming the licence agreement says something that it doesn’t. If you think that the Facebook TOS involves the granting of a copyright licence to Facebook in any way please point out the language. But you won’t be able to point that out _because it doesn’t._ ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2023, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/123 "2023-06-18T13:00:12Z")
Let me see if I can put this In a way that might resonate with a photographer. You are saying that an agreement to permit usage of images and text is not a copyright licence because you are used to certain sorts of licences and you think that’s all there is. This is like someone who has only ever used an Instamatic telling you your SLR is not a camera because it doesn’t have a built in flash like they are used to. It is that level of gobsmacking error. You really should stop. Really. And it doesn’t matter anyway - whether you call it a copyright licence or a bike licence or a fubar licence does not have any relevance whatever to my point. ---
**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 18, 2023, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/124 "2023-06-18T13:23:44Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > You are saying that an agreement to permit usage of images and text is not a copyright licence because you are used to certain sorts of licences and you think that’s all there is. …I’m saying it isn’t a copyright licence because **it isn’t a copyright licence.** If it were: then that would be somewhere in the TOS. It isn’t in the TOS because it isn’t a copyright licence. > [@Princhester](#): > > This is like someone who has only ever used an Instamatic telling you your SLR is not a camera because it doesn’t have a built in flash like they are used to. It is that level of gobsmacking error. Nope. It simply what the TOS says. > [@Princhester](#): > > You really should stop. Really. > [@Princhester](#): > > We’re done here. I mean: you can stop any time you like. > [@Princhester](#): > > And it doesn’t matter anyway Well, no, it does, because your argument (that Facebook can use your content to build an AI and then sell it) is _contingent_ on copyright. But Facebook is limited in what they can do with your content. And those limitations are explained in the TOS. They can only use your content while it is being hosted on their site. If you remove it from the platform, the licence is revoked. That includes any licence to transformative works, which is what would be included in an AI that was prepared for sale. And my question to you remains: > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > If you think that the Facebook TOS involves the granting of a copyright licence to Facebook in any way please point out the language. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2023, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/125 "2023-06-18T16:04:27Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > If you remove it from the platform, the licence is revoked. I didn’t raise this when you posted the TOS up-thread because I didn’t want to hijack the discussion, but the TOS is a bit more specific: > [@](#): > > This licence will end when your content is deleted from our systems. FB controls that event and I didn’t see an obligation in the TOS. If FB chooses when to delete your content from their system, then they can choose to never delete it – regardless of whether they display it. Obviously this doesn’t apply in the EU. Furthermore, for AI training inputs are typically preprocessed into embeddings or fingerprints. These values maintain the information useful to the AI, but are useless to humans. It’s unclear to me if they consider it necessary to purge these AI inputs as part of deleting user content. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2023, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/126 "2023-06-18T17:45:28Z")
I don’t think you can delete the AI inputs after training, because they are smeared by changes from other inputs. Once training is done, I suspect the only way to remove a specific document would be to re-do the training. But maybe I’m wrong about that and there is some technique that works for that. ---
**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 19, 2023, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120/127 "2023-06-19T00:50:11Z")
> [@CaveMike](#): > > FB controls that event and I didn’t see an obligation in the TOS. > **[How do I delete a photo I uploaded to Facebook? | Facebook Help Center](https://www.facebook.com/help/208547132518386)** > > You can only delete photos that you've uploaded to Facebook. > [@Facebook](#): > > You can only delete photos that you’ve uploaded to Facebook. Bear in mind that once a photo is deleted, you won’t be able to get it back. > > To remove your photo from Facebook: > > 1. Go to the photo you’d like to delete. > 2. Click the photo to open it. > 3. Click and select **Delete photo**. > 4. Click **Delete** to confirm. …as you correctly point out, under the GDPR delete has to mean delete. So that wouldn’t apply in the EU. But there is nothing to indicate that it doesn’t apply everywhere else. Because what the TOS says actually says is: > [@Facebook TOS](#): > > This licence will end when your content is deleted from our systems. > > **You can delete individual content that you share, post and upload at any time.** It goes onto talk about deleting your account, and how that process might mean that it could take a bit longer to ensure that all of your content (including things that are in shared albums or a page that you may admin) might take to delete. But individual content (excluding caches, etc) looks to be controlled by the uploader, and not by Facebook. If the uploader deleting individual content _doesn’t_ actually delete individual content, and if Facebook continued to use that content for its own purposes and _then_ built an AI that used that content then sold it, that would be legally problematic IMHO. I don’t think the TOS allows that to happen though. > [@CaveMike](#): > > Furthermore, for AI training inputs are typically preprocessed into embeddings or fingerprints. These values maintain the information useful to the AI, but are useless to humans. It’s unclear to me if they consider it necessary to purge these AI inputs as part of deleting user content. Again, this is all part of the “this hasn’t been tested yet” by the legal system. In the scenario discussed above, a reasonable person based on a plan-text-reading of the TOS would conclude that deleting a photo you’ve uploaded would end Facebooks temporary licence to that uploaded content. If FB continued to host that photo, then later used it to “train their AI”, thats an issue. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-affecting-stack-overflow-and-reddit/985120.md?page=6)