[ulkesh]

I love how this is justified by "everyone is doing it so it's okay." That's the bandwagon fallacy and I don't buy it.

Twitter (I will not call it X, because that's just stupid), is free to attempt to change their Terms of Service, policies, etc, but we do not have to accept it or agree with it or be resigned to it. Also, it should not be retroactively applied to past content, and it should be an opt-in consent -- but that is pie-in-the-sky wishing at this point given the garbage heap Musk, and others, has made of Twitter.

[jamiequint]

You're free to delete your content and your account if you're unhappy. There's nothing it "should" be, it's not your company.

Also, it's pretty obvious that everyone was training on Twitter data already before they cracked down on scraping. It is, after all, a public forum.

[iuhaegpoinqhpoq]

If someone created an account back when AI was not a thing, they did NOT consent to their data being used for AI:

You cannot expect people to retroactively consent to a thing the existence of which they were not even aware of when they gave consent for some limited OTHER use.

Besides, it's just rude to do things for which there was no consent in general, no matter whether it is AI or anything else. No consent is no consent.

Further, you can't expect people who have a life in general to sit around all day just waiting to figure out where they have to delete accounts before they are misused.

Bazillions of websites nowadays want you to create an account, the normal behavior is that users just abandon accounts which they don't need anymore. Nobody has the time to delete all of them.

Your profile says you were "Senior Director of Monetization at Reddit". Considering all the outrage that company has caused with its users as well (redesign cough cough - just one example out of a truckload), and that the outrage-causing things largely seemed to be aimed at monetization, perhaps you should do some soul seeking to figure out whether your values are aligned with common societal morals.

Or in other words: How many more people will you make angry until you realize that maybe you're the baddie?

[jamiequint]

You can get mad all you want about people using “your data” that you posted on a public forum for whatever, doesn’t change the fact that you were dumb for thinking that your (not important, unique, or interesting) musings would be protected from people using them for whatever they want by posting it on the open internet, much less the website of the company you posted it on, get real.

[iuhaegpoinqhpoq]

The fact that you, Jamie Quint (look at his nickname, it says that), a previous Senior Director of Monetization at Reddit (see his profile), answer being accused of a poor moral compass by insulting the person who did (calling them "dumb", and trying to belittle everything they have to say as "not important, unique, or interesting") shows that you in fact have what you've been accused of - not only by me but by the community of reddit as a whole:

A poor, or even no, moral compass.

I'd lean as far out of the windows to speculate that what has often been said about people in positions of power applies here:

Those positions attract people who are completely unable to perceive empathy, and who act solely out of the desire for power and narcissism.

It's a shame, you cause so much harm for society - and you probably are unable to even perceive the harm you're causing because your brain is just not wired to be capable of empathy.

If you want to do the world a favor, go read up what a psychopath is, and by that I do NOT mean to insult you, but rather the actual medical term "psychopath".

Ask yourself whether it applies to you, and learn to protect society from yourself if it does.

[lsmeducation]

You most likely consented to future changes to the ToS. It's kind of like their version of asking a Genie for infinite wishes as one of their three wishes.

[iuhaegpoinqhpoq]

So they can just change the ToS to say "Your full bank account balance belongs to Twitter after YYYY-MM-DD" ?

[OmarShehata]

I'd like someone to address this. Surely there's a limit. The statement "your account balance belongs to Twitter" is not against the law (like they can say the service is worth whatever amount of money and that you owe them this money), but you're not allowed to do that, because you're not allowed to retroactively change a contract's terms.

So, surely, you can't change ToS retroactively and expect that any of it applies?

[ipaddr]

Let's breakdown what tos is. It's the terms they are enforcing to provide you a service. They can refuse you service at any point for any reason. You can have your own terms of service that they must follow or you will refuse to do business with them.

By adding that they can train AI they are trying to get out of a future lawsuit that may happen if the courts require consent for training (current anyone can train on anything).

Your right to sue them for using the data they hold might be lost if you continue to use after the term change.

If they asked for your car and you refused they could stop service but they can't take your car.

They can't change payment terms from the past and sue for them. But if they change the tos to say it costs more now your next bill will go up. If they say they can use your data now that they hold and you have an active account they could take that as an acceptance that past/future can be used to train ai.

A better example might be a right given. For a year you could download photos for AI training. Today they forbid that for all future and past posted photos. Anything downloaded before the date can be legally used to train.

[benterix]

Basically, they can ask anything that is not forbidden by the law. If you disagree, you can try to get them to court.

[iuhaegpoinqhpoq]

Please try imagining a society where everybody does the FULL extent of things which they can legally get away with.

Ask yourself whether that would be a place worth living in, or rather a hellscape.

[m3kw9]

So you think this will work? Every company/country auto transfers their networth to Elon? Do I have to explain to you like a child

[alexlur]

You can’t modify ToS without asking the user’s consent. See Sifuentes v. Dropbox, Inc. (20-cv-07908-HSG).

[ianferrel]

Given how many "deleted" posts recently resurfaced, you are in fact not free to delete your content, because it won't be deleted, just hidden.

[jamiequint]

Go through the GDPR deletion process if you care that much, will very likely be deleted because the fines are massive (4% of annual worldwide turnover)

[ianferrel]

I am not an EU citizen or resident, so I don't believe that avenue is open to me. Also, Twitter has not of late demonstrated significant susceptibility to regulations.

I will note that we've narrowed the claim from "you're free to delete your content" to "If you live in some countries you're very likely to be able to delete your content", which I agree is probably true.

[Ylpertnodi]

>I am not an EU citizen or resident, Resident is enough.

[Alupis]

In a very real, practical sense, GDPR can be safely ignored for most non-EU companies.

Europeans seem to believe things like GDPR apply to the entire world. They don't.

If your company has no physical presence within the EU - ignore EU laws as much as you want. There is nothing they can do about it.

[dhoe]

You would think so! I've requested deletion under GDPR and here's what you get in response: Thank you for your inquiry. You can deactivate your account at any time. When deactivated, your Twitter account, including your display name, username, and public profile, will no longer be viewable on Twitter.com, Twitter for iOS, and Twitter for Android. For up to 30 days after deactivation, it is still possible to restore your Twitter account if it was accidentally or wrongfully deactivated.

Keep in mind that search engines and other third parties may still retain copies of your public information, like your profile information and public Tweets, even after you have deleted the information from our services or deactivated your account.

[Raed667]

They don't have a form to request the information to be deleted under GDPR. I have looked everywhere under help.twitter.com and they just ask you to disable your account.

[crazygringo]

GDPR means absolutely nothing between an American customer and an American company. It's completely irrelevant.

And I'm not even sure it means anything even for users in the EU. If Twitter doesn't have any offices/subsidiaries/bank accounts in the EU, then even if the EU fined them, I'm not sure how that would ever be enforced?

[jedberg]

Twitter has an office in Ireland and is most definitely regulated under GDPR.

[crazygringo]

Is it still there? I knew they did previously, but last year there were reports it was possibly closing as part of Musk's layoffs.

Looking online I can't find any recent information.

Basically, given the way Musk has been ignoring other regulations and/or not paying for things, I'm wondering if he even cares about GDPR. And if he doesn't care and shuts down any legal European presence, then does it matter?

(Of course if the Ireland office is still active and receiving lots of European advertiser revenue, then of course the GDPR has teeth.)

[squarefoot]

I'm not sure the GDPR can be enforced outside of the EU, therefore one can't be absolutely certain the posts will not appear if accessed from elsewhere.

[fzeindl]

It is enforced internationally just like copyright law. It is a law for EU users no matter where their data resides. Meta was fined 1.3 billion dollars in spring for GDPR violation.

[Alupis]

Being fined != paying a fine.

Realistically, a company is only obligated to pay the fine if they have a physical presence within the EU, and care to keep that presence.

For some companies, the calculus says pay the fines and cooperate with EU laws.

But for most companies, they can and do safely ignore GDPR and other EU laws. EU laws do not apply outside the EU... despite what many Europeans want to believe.

[mattdeboard]

> There's nothing it "should" be, it's not your company

Well for a lot of us humans, ownership is not a stopper for conversations about ethics in technology.

[jamiequint]

The ethics argument is asinine. If you don’t like the rules, don’t use the product or start your own company. Just don’t be an insufferable whiner about it.

[singleshot_]

I think you may have meant “not asinine” or perhaps “I have a terrible attitude and should skip it.”

The ethical discussion is kind of the entire point. We all know what the law is.

[mattdeboard]

> asinine

> insufferable whiner

I don't think this is a proportionate response to a convo about ethics in tech.

[jamiequint]

If you pull the “we need to have an ethics discussion” card about public data posted on a website you can quit anytime, you’re an insufferable whiner. Sorry not sorry.

[mattdeboard]

Have a nice day.

[parker_mountain]

>You're free to delete your content and your account if you're unhappy.

>Senior Director of Monetization at Reddit

You of all people should know that "free to" and "should" and consent by default is perfectly legal. And yet, it's also gross and slimy. So I guess I'm not at all surprised to find out you're a monetization person.

Gross.

[marricks]

Comments like this act like the consumer has all the power to choose and create the world they want. We don't, companies own this world and major public forums and make decisions together like this which we are powerless to change.

Corporations have more power in our government than individuals. They have a better understanding and coordination. Acting like a public forum owned by a company is immune from criticism because it's a private company is sweeping so much under the rug.

I imagine you wouldn't be where you are in life if you didn't believe such things, though.

[fluidcruft]

Twitter: the public square that owns your speech.

[brokencode]

I don’t know how people can be so absolutely shocked that their public posts online could be used by anybody for basically any purpose.

If you want to keep your thoughts private, then maybe don’t post them publicly?

If WhatsApp or another private messaging app started doing this, I’d be right there with the people calling that absolutely unacceptable.

But I’m not surprised at all that Twitter is doing this, and I don’t know how anybody even remotely tech savvy could be.

[singleshot_]

If only there was some legal regime that turned this conundrum into a scenario whereby people could publicly share their intellectual property while still retaining control of their rights in the material.

This seems so critical to a functioning society that one would have thought it would have been considered in the Constitution. Oh well!

[brokencode]

If you think Twitter is violating the constitution or copyright law, then take them to court.

But by agreeing to the terms of use, Twitter retains certain rights over what you post on the platform.

If that is not acceptable, then don’t use Twitter. If you think your thoughts are too valuable for Twitter to use, then write them into a book or blog or some other venue where your intellectual property can be protected.

[singleshot_]

I do not think Twitter is violating the Constitution unless we are talking about some kind of state actor doctrine vis a vis misinformation censorship under previous ownership.

I do not think there are any violations of intellectual property law given that there is surely a waiver of ownership of posts in the TOS.

I, of course, do not have the kind of free time required to do something like engage with Twitter, and accordingly I have no account, cannot post, and have not agreed to the TOS.

I think you have misconstrued my post, but that’s ok.

[rambojohnson]

the ethical implications of using someone's data without explicit, informed consent for each specific use case is obviously problematic.

the data landscape is ever-evolving, and what was acceptable or even conceivable years ago may not be the same today.

companies should not only be transparent but also dynamically update users on how their data is being used and offer an option to opt-out.

ignoring this not only impacts individual users but also has broader societal implications.

consent fatigue is real; expecting users to keep track and delete their accounts across numerous platforms is neither practical nor ethical.

also, cancelling your account or laboriously deleting all of your content doesn't necessarily guarantee that all your data will be deleted on the backend... did you think your comment through at all?

[ulkesh]

I did. Right after Musk took over. Doesn’t mean I can’t also have an opinion on the matter.

[libraryatnight]

Something tells me Elon could announce he's going to shit on all your faces and you'd be like "it's his company he can do it!" While opening your mouth and looking up with a smile.

[dang]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. You may not owe $CelebrityBillionaire better but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

[parl_match]

It's been entertaining watching the pro-Elon crowd shrink and get quieter as he repeatedly screws up. I'm not saying every decision he's made has been bad (some, like revenue sharing and using Twitter Blue, are good imo). But he really has been screwing up bad, and in ways that are indefensible by anyone with common sense.

[check89]

> the pro-Elon crowd shrink and get quieter

Source?

> he really has been screwing up bad, and in ways that are indefensible by anyone with common sense.

Examples?

[alexvitkov]

You don't have to call it X, this is from https://x.ai:

> We are a separate company from X Corp, but will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission

Even they call it Twitter!

[unregistereddev]

I also will not call it X, because I think it's confusing.

Quite a few years ago I remember working in Paypal's X API. Part of me wondered if I misremembered this, but no ... there are still references to it online. Maybe Musk named it. He wanted to name the entire company X, right?

https://www.paypalobjects.com/webstatic/en_US/developer/docs...

[foderking]

yeah. wasn't that even part of the reasons he fell out with the other PayPal peeps

[NewYorkNewYork]

I can't imagine how a retroactive agreement would possibly hold up if this issue were to go to court. It seems like it invalidates the whole ToS if potentially anything can be added at any time to apply across time. Wild. Imagine if a rent contract could do that. You now owe rent for two year ago because your landlord change your contract now to take retroactive effect.

[EGreg]

Everyone is doing it, because it’s capitalism! Our public forums are privately managed and controlled by a few people. Venture CAPITALISTS invest in startups, get shares, prop up money-losing economics for years and then sell the shares to the public in an IPO. The corporations have quarterly earnings calls where they have to explain how they are extracting rents from their ecosystem, in order to make “number go up”, ie make shareholders happy.

Open source can liberate us from this, but we need someone to build really good and competitive alternatives to Twitter, Zoom et al.

I started Qbix to do it. LA Weekly just published this piece about my company and what it’s doing differently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37353229

[FactKnower69]

Capitalism isn't "things I don't like", capitalism is when investors are paid simply for "owning" things rather than being forced to sell their labor in exchange for a wage like everyone else. Your company is selling shares to external investors and is not worker-owned; it is a capitalist firm that pays dividends to people who didn't necessarily do any work for the company. Words have meaning.

[EGreg]

Words do indeed have meaning. Absolutely! And I am using the words advisedly, and in their original meaning. Venture capitalists are … well, capitalists! I don’t mischaracterize anything.

Capitalism is characterized by PRIVATE ownership of the “means of production”. That’s the term used in the 19th century, but today we could point to the technological infrastructure which enables each new user to engage with a network.

“Ownership” means exercising exclusive control over this, and excluding others from using (even a copy of) it.

Musk controls Twitter. Zuck controls Facebook. Durov controls Telegram. Moxie controls Signal. And so on. This is centralized control by people who won’t give you their back-end software. They’ll at best let you have your own custom client for a while, until they don’t (Reddit).

But in the meantime they’ll spy on you everywhere so they can mine your data and try to extract profits for shareholders. It’s called surveillance capitalism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

Cory Doctorow recently wrote about the “enshittification” that happens as the end result of all this private ownership. “I built it — I own it!” Well, if you believe that, you shouldn’t complain when a privately owned company does something, not even when they deplatform you. What you should complain about is the lack of open source alternatives.

Does Linus own Linux?

Does TimBL own the Web?

Does Rasmus Lerdorf own PHP?

Does Vitalik own Ethereum?

Just because one specific company in an ecosystem is privately owned does not mean the network infrastructure is centrally controlled by a few people.

In fact our company has experimebted with ways to reward contributors properly:

https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing-contributi...

Wordpress, Drupal, Magento, Linux etc. can be hosted anywhere. It is a free market. By contrast, Twitter and Facebook (oh sorry, X and Meta) are digital feudalism!

https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/

We also are working on utility tokens that, unlike shares, entitle people only to services in that free market, and not to expect rents to be extracted forever. If Qbix or Automattic extracts too much rents from their open source ecosystem, or doesn’t do the best hosting in, say, Hawaii, then a competitor can arise and compete with them, locally or globally.

In fact, Qbix can be used to host social networks in areas with bad internet, including rural villages, cruise ships and planes. They can help young people of all sexes be educated in rural areas with bad internet. Can the same be said of Google or Facebook? NO! Their capitalist ideas always involve sending the signals back to their own server farms. Whether it’s Project Loon (google) or the solar-powered drones (facebook), what they don’t offer is local villages to simply load their own forked copy of their backend software, and owe them nothing!

We do. We give the source code away and help hosting companies install it. We are working on creating an entire decentralized ecosystem where we don’t have centralized control … so if host locally, you NEVER have to worry about us training our AI models on your data, or any of the other thousands of things to ebtray your trust. It’s YOUR choice who will run your infrastructure — and it could be your friend on a local computer and connecting your town over a mesh network:

https://qbix.com/ecosystem

[danso]

For a long time, the top HN post about Elon Musk was "Elon Musk Deletes Own, SpaceX and Tesla Facebook Pages After #deletefacebook" [0], so he was definitely someone who prized being perceived as not doing what everyone else in Big Tech did.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/elon-musk-deletes-own-spac...

[ralferoo]

> Twitter (I will not call it X, because that's just stupid)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37352719

The Register has started calling it Xitter. I like that!

[hn1986]

I can't continue using Twitter after so many terrible decisions by Musk.

[nextaccountic]

> it should not be retroactively applied to past content

If they attempt this will open them to lots of lawsuits

[nerdponx]

Why would they? Most sites TOS already stipulate that by uploading data to the service, you grant a global irrevocable unlimited license to use all submitted data for any business purpose without your further consent. I'd be surprised if Twitter didn't have this for years.

[nextaccountic]

If they are changing the TOS now that's because past TOS didn't allow them to do it. And previous interactions are governed by past TOS

[nerdponx]

Most TOS documents are so broadly written that they are pretty much a blank check anyway. Seems like a CYA thing on the company's end.

[nextaccountic]

If that's the case, then Twitter would have no need to change the TOS; their usage would already be permitted and changing the TOS would serve only to bring additional scrutiny

[liendolucas]

> Twitter (I will not call it X, because that's just stupid)

LOL, it's the latest craze to change company names. When I see their "new" logo somehow my mind immediately associates it (correctly) with the X11 logo. Facebook another one that decided to change its name for something that maybe turns out to be biggest money burn a company has ever done. Maybe tomorrow we will wake up with Pear instead of Apple, who knows. Now that I mentioned FB, what's the current status of the so called Metaverse? Are we there yet? Or are they still furiously pouring millions and millions and getting nothing out of it?

[DistractionRect]

It's always weird when big, established names/brands attempt to rebrand.

Like "the artists formerly known as" Prince, Kanye, Snoop Dogg, etc. There's basically no getting away from the old branding because it has to be included with the new branding so one knows what we're even talking about.

As far as rebrands go, X just seems dumb. The more an article/news segment talk about X, it feels like an unfilled mad libs made it to air. Or it feels like they're talking about something general, like when X Company does Y thing.

[rurp]

Yeah this is probably the worst corporate rebranding I have ever seen. They replaced one of the most globally recognized brands with a generic and meaningless one. Plus the rollout was a mess, just like everything else post-musk Twitter does. Have they even gotten around to updating all of their own branding references yet?

[stronglikedan]

> given the garbage heap Musk, and others, has made of Twitter.

It's a more vibrant, open, and honest community than ever, despite the organized and coordinated (I wonder by who) advertiser boycott. If anything, a lot of garbage has been removed from the heap.

[rurp]

Lol yeah, the shadowy cabal of people who don't like neo-Nazis is conspiring against Musk.

People have been plenty clear about why they find him disgusting, if you care to look.

[mola]

Who?