Social media platform This new policy is similar to the data licensing agreements implemented by platforms like Reddit and allows outside companies to train AI models by purchasing data from X.
The updated privacy policy shared by X includes a new section titled “third party collaborators”. This section states that, depending on users’ settings or if they choose to share their data, this data may be shared or disclosed with third parties. However, this information may be used by third parties for independent purposes other than those specified in X’s privacy policy, such as training artificial intelligence models.
Although the policy states that users have the option not to share their data, it is not fully explained how to make this choice. According to TechCrunch, there is no explicit control yet to disable data sharing, although this is pointed to the settings menu. However, there is a possibility that this may change as there is a month left until the policy comes into force. X has not yet made a statement on the issue.
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X users’ privacy concerns may increase
In addition to X’s updated privacy policy, its terms of service are also renewed. Stricter sanctions have been imposed especially on individuals or institutions that scrape large amounts of data from the platform. A new section titled “Punitive Damages” states that there will be a $15,000 penalty for people who view or access more than one million posts in a day.
This issue is explained in the platform’s terms of service as follows: “Protecting our users’ data and system resources is important to us. To the extent permitted under applicable law, access to more than 1 million posts (including reply posts, video posts, image posts, and all other posts) within 24 hours, in addition to all our other legal remedies, if you violate the Terms of Service or encourage others to do so. If you request, view or access, you will be subject to punitive damages of $15,000 for every 1 million posts.”
Elon Musk, the owner of X, is known for taking a harsh stance against data scraping. It is known that last year, Musk temporarily blocked the viewing of tweets without logging in in order to prevent data scraping activities. It also made it significantly harder for researchers to study X by making the platform’s API paid. Musk has also raised accusations of data scraping in lawsuits filed against organizations trying to investigate hate speech and other issues on the platform.