Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy • Hacker News Board

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#531

Post by benterix » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 10:33 AM UTC

Nevermark wrote: post #516

soraminazuki wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By default, you are opted in. Perfectly clear. That's called opt-out. You're doing exactly what I described: gaslighting people into believing that opt-in and opt-out are synonymous, rendering the entire concept meaningless. The audacity of you labeling people as "political" while resorting to such Orwellian manipulation is astounding. How can you lecture others about the purpose of languages with a straight face w…

I completely agree with you from a correctness standpoint, ... > Diluting the distinction between opt-in and opt-out is gaslighting > That seems like an ungenerous and frankly somewhat hysterical take. ... however, this comment was a reasonable response. Projective framing demonstrates your own lack of concern for accuracy, clarity or conviviality, that is 180 degrees at odds with the point you are making and the sit…

I can somehow understand the parent. If you control the language, you control the discourse. This is like the famous "I'm appalled at the negativity here on HN" comment threads when doing product launches etc. Or using euphemisms to avoid calling spade a spade.[0] People are fed up with these tricks, hence these emotional reactions.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26346688

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#532

Post by benterix » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 10:35 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #217

benterix wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of guarantee do we have this is true? Meta downloaded copyrighted content and trained their models on it, OpenAI did the same. Uber developed Greyball to cheat the officials and break the law. Tesla deletes accident data and reports to the authorities they don't have it. So forgive me I have zero trust in whatever these companies say.

We're having this discussion on an article about Anthropic changing their privacy policy. If you don't believe Anthropic will follow their privacy policy, then a change to the privacy policy should mean nothing to you.

Well, yes and no - it gives them more plausible deniability ("oh, this particular piece just ended up in the training set by accident") if they get caught when compared to the previous ToS.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#533

Post by benterix » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 10:39 AM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #231

benterix wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of guarantee do we have this is true? Meta downloaded copyrighted content and trained their models on it, OpenAI did the same. Uber developed Greyball to cheat the officials and break the law. Tesla deletes accident data and reports to the authorities they don't have it. So forgive me I have zero trust in whatever these companies say.

If it were a lie, why take the PR hit of telling the truth about starting to train on user data but lying about the specifics? It'd be much simpler to just lie about not training on user data at all. If your threat model is to unconditionally not trust the companies, what they're saying is irrelevant. Which is fair enough, you probably should not be using a service you don't trust at all. But there's not much of a di…

> These seem like randomly chosen generic grievances, not examples of companies making promises in their privacy policy (or similar) and breaking them. Am I missing some connection?

My point is that whenever we send our data to a third party, we can assume it could be abused, either unintentionally (by a hack, mistake etc.) or intentionally, because these companies are corrupted to the core and have a very relaxed attitude to obeying the law in general as these random examples show.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#534

Post by benterix » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 10:46 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #175

benterix wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of guarantee do we have this is true? Meta downloaded copyrighted content and trained their models on it, OpenAI did the same. Uber developed Greyball to cheat the officials and break the law. Tesla deletes accident data and reports to the authorities they don't have it. So forgive me I have zero trust in whatever these companies say.

> Meta downloaded copyrighted content and trained their models on it, OpenAI did the same Where did these companies claim they didn’t do this? Even websites can be covered by copyright. It has always been known that they trained on copyrighted content. The output is considered derivative and therefore it’s not illegal.

> The output is considered derivative and therefore it’s not illegal.

Well, this is what they claim. In practice, this is untrue on several levels. First, earlier OpenAI models were able to quote verbatim, and they were maimed later not to do that. Second, there were several lawsuits against OpenAI and not all of them ended. And finally, assuming that courts decide what they did was legal would mean everyone can legally download and use a copy of Libgen (part of "Books3") whereas the courts around the world are doing the opposite and are blocking access to Libgen country by country. So unless you set double standards, something is not right here. Even Meta employees torrenting Lingen knew that so let's not pretend we buy this rhetoric.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#535

Post by speckx » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 12:55 PM UTC

troad wrote: post #8

You can opt out, but the fact that it's opt-in by default and made to look like a simple T/C update prompt leaves a sour taste in my mouth. The five year retention period seems... excessive. I wonder if they've buried anything else objectionable in the new terms. It was the kick in the pants I needed to cancel my subscription.

I cancelled my subscription as well because of the opt-in by default.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#536

Post by danaris » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 1:04 PM UTC

handoflixue wrote: post #530

elashri wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That seems very transparent to me Implicit consent is not transparent and should be illegal in all situations. I can't tell you that unless you opt out, You have agreed to let me rent you apartment. You can say analogy is not straightforward comparable but the overall idea is the same. If we enter a contract for me to fix your broken windows, I cannot extend it to do anything else in the house I see fit with Implic…

How is it "implicit" to click "I agree" to a large pop-up that takes up most of the screen?

Courts in various jurisdictions have found clickwrap agreements to be generally only valid for what one would expect to be common provisions within such agreements.

Essentially, because they are presented in a form that is so easy to bypass and so very common in our modern online life, provisions that give up too much to the service provider or would be too unusual or unexpected to find in such an agreement are unenforceable.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#537

Post by op00to » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 2:47 PM UTC

BoorishBears wrote: post #89

op00to wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perplexity search seemed pretty solid to me. What hallucinations did you see?

If there's a primary source like the one I just shared and you link me to an AI summary of 28 sources, I'm treating the entire package as garbage.

k

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#538

Post by the_other » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 3:05 PM UTC

ezfe wrote: post #236

the_other wrote: post #215

I didn't trust them much to begin with, so I generally avoid talking too much personal stuff with Claude. But I had plenty of chats with surface level discussion of topics I'm interested in and some of my relevant experience and history with those topics. So, I have deleted all my chats and am closing my Claude account (as soon as customer services get back to me; somehow the self-serve option is missing for my accou…

This change didn't grant access to your old chats and can be opted out. Good job you overreacted without reading.

In the late 00s a few friends sent me “connect with me on Facebook” messages. I thought “this looks suspicious, I don’t want to, but it seems all my friends are communicsting here now…”. So I joined, and in 10years everything I worried could happen with FB did, and much much worse.

So, I’ll trust my gut more on this one.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#539

Post by the_other » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 3:06 PM UTC

ezfe wrote: post #407

SoftTalker wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For now. Once this settles in they will change the terms again, with no opt-out option.

It must be so tiring worrying about pointless future things that aren't happening yet.

The opposite happens. You make the decision to reject or leave that service, and then you no longer have to think about that thing any more.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#540

Post by igor47 » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 4:24 PM UTC

ljosifov wrote: post #500

soraminazuki wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Excellent. What were they waiting for up to now?? I thought they already trained on my data. I assume they train, even hope that they train, even when they say they don't. These are your exact words, not my imagination. You very clearly want consumer protection to be gone, because you said so . > For my claim to be true, one example suffices. To be clear, your claim is that we live in a world where there's too much…

Yes - my data, not your data. You stay away from my data. I stay away from your data. I don't care about your data. But I do want them to train on my data. And to serve me better. Was disappointed that they didn't do that already. But now you gave me ideas. ;-) Yeah - I think ideally we should go further, much further. Internet was not built by po-faced, lemon-sucking prudes, tut-tut-ing about everything and anything…

You should read "the cuckoos egg", written by a happy go lucky nerd in the 80s dawn of network systems. Already there were bad actors in the system and he fought an uphill battle to implement network security. You're already standing on the shoulders of giants like him who saved the net -- i don't believe it could survive without a robust permission structure.