The viral ‘Goodbye Meta AI’ post is a hoax you shouldn’t share

Nearly 600,000 people appear to have been duped by a fake social media trend encouraging them to share a post to stop Facebook and Instagram using their personal data.

Meta, the parent company of the two platform, as well as other tech firms, have been changing their privacy policies in recent months and years to allow them to train AI services, such as chatbots, with information posted on the sites.

But a viral post, which has been re-shared by several celebrities and other high-profile accounts, appears to have convinced many they can opt out of this simply by publishing it themselves.

But what are users worried about and will sharing the post make any difference?

What does the post say?

The statement reads: ‘Goodbye Meta AI. Please note an attorney has advised us to put this on, failure to do so may result in legal consequences. As Meta is now a public entity all members must post a similar statement.

‘If you do not post at least once it will be assumed you are okay with them using your information and photos. I do not give Meta or anyone else permission to use any of my personal data, profile information or photos.’

What has made people start sharing the post?

The growth of AI and what tech firms might be doing to develop AI services has been a growing source of anxiety for some for several years now.

While AI can be used for benign purposes, such as helping Google bring you the best search results or help you schedule your central heating, it can also be used for more nefarious purposes, such as deep-faking images or even video and audio recordings.

Developers rely on huge pools of data to ‘train’ AI models to allow them to do this.

And with an estimated three billion users across Facebook and Instagram, Meta holds a treasure trove of personal information which could be used for this.

Who has shared the post?

Current estimates suggest it may have been shared by more than 580,000, including several celebrities.

It has even prompted Meta to automatically blur the text and include a warning it may contain “false information”.

So will this post stop Meta using my data to develop AI?

No.

Sharing the statement, whether by the ‘story’ function or via a conventional post, will not allow you to opt out of Meta’s data sharing terms, which is including in the privacy policies accepted when creating an account.

According to Facebook’s legal terms, for example: ‘If you share a photo on Facebook, you give us permission to store, copy, and share it with others.’

However, users of Meta platforms in Europe can submit an objection to use of their personal data through a form accessible in the settings page of their account.

Mark Zuckerberg’s tech giant announced the roll out of its ‘generative’ AI products last year, which will use posts and images on Facebook and Instagram, as well as other publicly available content on the web.

In the UK, ‘training’ with Meta users’ data was announced last month, but will only use ‘public’ posts.