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Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

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Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#391

Post by Y_Y »

stef25 wrote: post #337
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does OpenAI collect and retain for 30 days^1 chats that the user wants to be deleted It was doing this prior to being sued by the NYT and many others OpenAI was collecting chats even when the user asked for deletion, i.e., the user did not want them saved That's why a lawsuit could require OpenAi to issue a hold order, retain these chats for longer and produce them to another party in discovery If OpenAI was not…

> Why does OpenAI collect and retain for 30 days^1 chats that the user wants to be deleted When working on an e-commerce gig we would get "delete my data" requests from customers, which we're legally obliged to comply with. A script would delete everything we could from the DB immediately. Since we had 30 day backups, their data would only be deleted from the backups on day 31. I think this was acceptable to the GDPR…

> Going in to the backups to delete their data there in insane.

If I was legally obliged to delete data then I'd make sure I deleted, regardless of the purpose or location of the storage. If you can't handle a delete request you shouldn't collect the data in the first place.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#392

Post by SubuSS »

Y_Y wrote: post #391
stef25 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does OpenAI collect and retain for 30 days^1 chats that the user wants to be deleted When working on an e-commerce gig we would get "delete my data" requests from customers, which we're legally obliged to comply with. A script would delete everything we could from the DB immediately. Since we had 30 day backups, their data would only be deleted from the backups on day 31. I think this was acceptable to the GDPR…

> Going in to the backups to delete their data there in insane. If I was legally obliged to delete data then I'd make sure I deleted, regardless of the purpose or location of the storage. If you can't handle a delete request you shouldn't collect the data in the first place.

What you want to do is encrypt/anonymize per user information using a translation layer that also gets backed up. In case of a gdpr request, you delete this mapping / key and voila: data cleanup. The backup data becomes unusable.

But this obviously means building an extensive system to ensure the encoded identifier is the only thing used across your system (or a giant key management system).

In the past I’ve been a part of systems at exabyte scale that had to implement this. Hard but not impossible. I can see how orgs try to ‘legalese’ their way out of doing this though because the only forcing function is judicial.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#393

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #208
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #81

"The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations." As might any plaintiff. NYT might be the first of many others and the lawsuits may not be limited to copyright claims Why has OpenAI collected and stored 20 million conversations (including "deleted chats") What is the purpose of OpenAI storing millions of private conversations By contrast the purpose of NYT's reques…

If an analogy to the history of search engines can be made,^1 then we know that log retention policies in the US can change over time. The user has no control over such changes https://ide.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/w23815.pdf Companies operating popular www search engines might claim that the need for longer retention is "to provide better service" or some similar reason that focuses on users' interests rath…

Amusingly, this discussion thread is filled with replies that attempt to "answer" the question of "why" OpenAI collects chat histories even when it must have known it would be sued for copyright infringment

For users affected by OpenAI's conduct, an "answer" makes no difference. Anyone can construct any "answer" they want and we can see that in this thread. For users affected by OpenAI's conduct, it does not matter

In the above paper on search engines, the claim was that longer retention of sensitive data leads to better search. This was the "answer" presented in response to the question of "why"

But the "answer" is only misdirection. The companies have no reputation for being honest and their operations are non-transparent. Accordingly, user focus will be on the consequences for users of the company's practices, not "why"

Some readers are probably too young to have read through the AOL search data

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_log_release

Did anyone care "why" AOL released the data

IMHO, it is unfortunate that papers like the one above need to published

The question of "why" is rhetorical. It is meant to the draw attention to the consequences for users, not to seek an "answer"

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#394

Post by scotty79 »

reaperducer wrote: post #362
scotty79 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I would pay just as much to not see a single link to NYT content in my life. I can't pay for that? Well, that's my point.

I can't pay for that? You don't have to. You only need one line of CSS in your browser's supplemental CSS file to hide them. If you can't do that minimal amount of coding, you're on the wrong web site.

I wrote myself an extension to bypass all youtube adverts and used it for years. I'm perfectly capable of evading NYT garbage once the fury exceeds the lazyness. Still the issue remains. I'm not the only one bothered by paywalled links in search results, being linked from websites and suggested in feeds of mobile apps. Checkbox to filter them out was requested long time ago. Never implemented.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#395

Post by code_for_monkey »

johnwheeler wrote: post #141
wkat4242 wrote: post #120

If OpenAI hadn't used data from the NYT without permission in the first place this wouldn't have happened. That is the root cause of all this. I'm glad the NYT is fighting them. They've infringed the rights of almost every news outlet but someone has to bring this case.

Exactly. And the OpenAI corporates speak acting like they give a shit about our best interests. Give me a break, Sam Altman. How stupid do you think everyone is? They have proven that they are the most untrustworthy company on the planet And this isn't AI fear speaking. This is me raging at Sam Altman for spreading so much fear, uncertainty, and doubt just to get investments. The rest of us have to suffer for the las…

You got downvoted for this? That many people are doing 'Leave Sam Altman alone!'? kinda wild

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#397

Post by chasd00 »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #389
chasd00 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most likely explanation is whatever storage solution they’re using has a built in “recycle bin” functionality and deleted data stays the for 30 days before it’s actually deleted. I see this a lot in very large databases. The recycle bin functionality is built in to the data store product.

I'm doubtful that a data store product used at their scale can't be configured to not keep data for 30 days; for large clients that could be TB of deleted data or more. This would be neither cheap or easy to manage.

oh i realize that but deviating from those defaults they have now would require so much testing and all the risk that goes along with it that they'll avoid it at all costs.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#398

Post by [deleted] »

gausswho wrote: post #384
fenomas wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chatgpt.com is essentially a CRUD app. What you're saying here amounts to saying that it could conceivably have been designed to work dramatically differently from all other CRUD apps. And obviously that's true, but why would it be? It's a website! You submit text, that you'll view or edit later, so the server stores it. How is that controversial to a HN audience? Also: > the clients don't need to be running at the s…

> An always-on device that stores data in order to sync it to clients is a server. Yes. But it's my server. I burden myself to operate it so that persistence does not come at the cost of control. I think we might be tilting at different windmills here.

[deleted]

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#399

Post by reaperducer »

scotty79 wrote: post #394
reaperducer wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't pay for that? You don't have to. You only need one line of CSS in your browser's supplemental CSS file to hide them. If you can't do that minimal amount of coding, you're on the wrong web site.

I wrote myself an extension to bypass all youtube adverts and used it for years. I'm perfectly capable of evading NYT garbage once the fury exceeds the lazyness. Still the issue remains. I'm not the only one bothered by paywalled links in search results, being linked from websites and suggested in feeds of mobile apps. Checkbox to filter them out was requested long time ago. Never implemented.

Still the issue remains.

No, it doesn't.

The issue isn't the Times, since you've admitted that you have a way to avoid them, and other people have suggested solutions.

The actual issue is that you enjoy being angry and expressing that anger in front of strangers on the internet, as if that somehow validates your anger, or makes you feel good, or gives you some other kind of reward for grinding your personal axe.

This is destructive behavior. I recommend introspection. Failing that, seek professional help.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#400

Post by totallymike »

rpdillon wrote: post #343
totallymike wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prevent the loss of being the middle-man between events and users I'm confused by this phrase. I may be misreading but it sounds like you're frustrated, or at least cynical about NYT wanting to preserve their business model of writing about things that happen and selling the publication. To me it seems reasonable they'd want to keep doing that, and to protect their content from being stolen. They certainly aren't t…

> preserve their business model of writing about things that happen and selling the publication. To me it seems reasonable they'd want to keep doing that Be very wary of companies that look to change the landscape to preserve their business model. They are almost always regressive in trying to prevent the emergence of something useful and new because it challenges their revenue stream. The New York Times should be de…

This feels less like changing the landscape and more like trying to stop a new neighbor from building a four-level shopping complex in front of your beach-front property while also strip-mining the forest behind.

As for whether the Times should be developing their own LLM bot, why on earth would they want that?

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