1
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by duncesplayed@lemmy.one to c/privacyguides@lemmy.one

It feels like we have a new privacy threat that's emerged in the past few years, and this year especially. I kind of think of the privacy threats over the past few decades as happening in waves of:

  1. First we were concerned about governments spying on us. The way we fought back (and continue to fight back) was through encrypted and secure protocols.
  2. Then we were concerned about corporations (Big Tech) taking our data and selling it to advertisers to target us with ads, or otherwise manipulate us. This is still a hard battle being fought, but we're fighting it mostly by avoiding Big Tech ("De-Googling", switching from social media to communities, etc.).
  3. Now we're in a new wave. Big Tech is now building massive GPTs (ChatGPT, Google Bard, etc.) and it's all trained on our data. Our reddit posts and Stack Overflow posts and maybe even our Mastodon or Lemmy posts! Unlike with #2, avoiding Big Tech doesn't help, since they can access our posts no matter where we post them.

So for that third one...what do we do? Anything that's online is fair game to be used to train the new crop of GPTs. Is this a battle that you personally care a lot about, or are you okay with GPTs being trained on stuff you've provided? If you do care, do you think there's any reasonable way we can fight back? Can we poison their training data somehow?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] jonah@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

The biggest problem to me is what I just saw you post in another reply, that these models built upon our knowledge exist almost solely within proprietary ecosystems.

and maybe even our Mastodon or Lemmy posts!

The Washington Post published a great piece which allows you to search which websites were included in the "C4" dataset published in 2019. I searched for my personal blog jonaharagon.com and sure enough it was included, and the C4 dataset is practically minuscule compared to what is being compiled for larger models like ChatGPT. If my tiny website was included, Mastodon and Lemmy posts (which are actually very visible and SEO optimized tbh) are 100% being scraped as well, there's no maybe about it.

this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
1 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy Guides

16263 readers
1 users here now

In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.

This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.


You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:

Learn more...


Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!

Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!


This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.


Moderation Rules:

  1. We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
  2. This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
  3. No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
  4. Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
  5. Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
  6. Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
  7. News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
  8. Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
  9. No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
  10. No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
  11. Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
  12. General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.

Additional Resources:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS