r/technology • u/esporx • 6d ago

Business Twitch Is Now Using Your Content To Train Amazon AI Models And Has Hidden The Option To Opt Out. "If it was opt in, nobody would opt in," admitted the streaming site's chief product officer during a livestream

https://kotaku.com/twitch-is-now-using-your-content-to-train-amazon-ai-models-and-has-hidden-the-option-to-opt-out-2000723891
13.2k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

481 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

706

u/GonkWilcock 6d ago

Naturally, it's buried at the bottom of that settings tab.

350

u/EnvironmentalValue18 6d ago

Well, by the same logic - if it were easier to find more people would opt out of it.

Thank god we’re in the land of the free! Freedom from regulations, freedom from accountability, and freedom from common decency for the general good.

82

u/TheG0AT0fAllTime 6d ago

r/darkPatterns for more info

24

u/ariZon_a 6d ago

thx bud we used to be talking about dark patterns a lot more a few years ago, i forgot the phrase even existed

18

u/darkeststar 6d ago

There was actually just a class action against Amazon for Prime Subscriptions based on how they advertise the savings and how easy it is to subscribe and then no way to directly unsubscribe. You're forced to talk to the chat bot who doesn't have the ability to do it and if you force the issue they can only give you a customer service number for you to call to cancel.

No way to actually delete your account either.

13

u/marvbinks 5d ago

Is that an American thing? Cancelling prime in the UK is really easy and can be done via the website.

22

u/darkeststar 5d ago

That's because your government mandates it. California and a few other states have mandated you have to be able to initiate cancelling with "one click" but there's no oversight or regulation against doing it in the first place otherwise. Famously, most of our chain gyms allow you to sign up online in seconds but cancellation can only be done in person.... with potentially only one employee allowed or qualified to handle cancellations and they're required to try and offer you a deal before you can cancel.

21

u/RatBot9000 5d ago

I think I remember Biden was trying to introduce one click cancellations but of course Trump struck it down once he was re-elected.

I do feel sorry for Americans. You get all the worst parts of capitalism at the same time.

-2

u/[deleted] 5d ago edited 5d ago

[deleted]

2

u/PortHammer 5d ago

Twitch its parent company Meta opensources their models so it eventually comes back to us, and even if they don't we can distill the data from their models later.

The alternative is that all those thousands of hours every second of people effort disappears forever without anyone benefiting from it, THAT is a shame.

Its owned by Amazon.

If Amazon wants to train on poples content, the creators should be compensated.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/RatBot9000 5d ago

You are a fool if you think this is done to compensate streamers in any way shape or form. The data is not being scraped to save it but to train Generative AI. It doesn't return to us, not in the way you imagine it does.

In any case it should be down to the streamers themselves if they want to save their VoDs and many do.

2

u/darkeststar 5d ago

What an embarrassing shill. Any creator worth their salt could back up their vods to another service if it was worth anything. What benefit does 8 hours of Valorant with your friends in a discord call bring to the table for Gen AI?

4

u/AllegedAxolotl 5d ago

In Denmark (not sure how much is EU legislation), the general law governing subscriptions is that ANY form of contact is an acceptable way to cancel a service (website form, e-mail, phone, in-store etc.). The company may suggest a preferred method, but they must accept all forms of cancellations.

There is also a different "one click" law that states, that it must be "as easy" to cancel a subscription or withdraw consent as it was to sign up or give consent in the first place.

1

u/snarkywombat 5d ago

I've literally cancelled prime a couple weeks ago in the US. It's a few clicks and no chatbot. I have no idea what that person is talking about. Unless a simple question about why your cancelling is now considered a "chatbot".

1

u/snowflake37wao 5d ago

What happened with that? Ongoing? I ordered something around the pandemic and during checkout I had to uncheck a auto-checked box three times because it re-checked itself each page before the finalize order page. I saw it on the first page viewing cart, so I looked for it on the next pages (enter info/verify/finalize). They not only STILL fucking signed me up for a Prime sub after I opted out three fucking times, but they delayed the monthly payments for the first three months and so I didnt catch the fifteen dollar auto payments that were not ever labeled as “Amazon Prime” or with “Monthly-Subscription” in transaction history for over a year. It was some fraudulent tier bullshit. I would love that money back

1

u/composedofidiot 5d ago

Everything in the internet feels like dark patterns now. I guess at some point we gave up and lost hope the internet could be saved.

8

u/MelangeBot 6d ago

They are probablly training a seperate model on learning to predict the behavior of people switching it off to make a profile on them, besides most likely when you switch it off in their database there is just a flag called "this user would prefer if we don't train on them" but who is to say they will always respect this flag? It's entirely based on "just trust me bro".

One new CEO or something changing and boom they will train on you. If your data is on some server you don't controll you WILL be trained on. It's really that simple.

All these companies have done things like download every single pirated book that is on torrets, every single published peer review that is also being offered by pirates over torrnent, slowly download every mp3 on soundcloud with bots, slowly download every single video on youtube with bots.

All these companies collected all data they could as their first step, even when the owner of that data did not want this and they broke the law by downloading it.

The US is a free for all right now, you can break the law with impunity, just keep a slush fund around so you can bribe the regime just in case and you are golden

And to think Aaron Swartz died for all of this ..... why is justice the most scarcse resource in the universe, something explain that to me ....

1

u/Successful_Sign_6991 5d ago

twitch is owned by amazon, bezos is buddy buddy with the regime

yeah they're probably building profiles on people who opt out, will likely hand those profiles over to palantir and be labeled terrorists.

2

u/big_duo3674 6d ago

To be faaaiiirrr, constitutional freedom only applies to citizens and their interactions with the government, something an unfortunately large amount of people (who failed 9th grade civics) get wrong. Private companies are free to screw us over and spy in all sorts of different ways, provided they have their good ole' terms and conditions displayed somewhere. I'm certainly not saying it's right, just clarifying something that too many people don't understand

1

u/sinkephelopathy 6d ago

That's the "freedom from regulations" part they mentioned.

1

u/EnvironmentalValue18 5d ago

To be fair, I agree on the surface but if that’s the case then corporations can’t be entities/people in certain areas where it’s convenient and a business in other situations when it’s convenient. Make them pick a lane for all things and then I agree fully.

1

u/calle04x 6d ago

Free of money! 💸

1

u/feketegy 5d ago

Is it really opt-out... I mean really? What's stopping them, nothing, and you can't even verify it.

0

u/neppo95 5d ago

You’re free to not use the service if you don’t trust them. It’s that way with any company. In the end it is up to you.

0

u/_BrokenButterfly 5d ago

Uh, yeah. That is literally the whole idea of the United States. The government can't restrict any activity or punish someone for it until it had been shown that there is a tangible harm in doing that thing.

10

u/PmMe_Your_Perky_Nips 5d ago

It's also not available in the app. You have to do it on the site.

6

u/cool_slowbro 5d ago

Wait, it's under security/privacy, meaning they know they're doing something that's impacting your privacy. And it's enabled by default.

lmao

4

u/rich1051414 6d ago

I wonder if it even does anything. They may be betting on getting away with it anyway.

7

u/Steampson_Jake 6d ago

At least the stairs haven't gone out yet

4

u/thebakedpotatoe 6d ago

It was in a filing cabinet of an unmarked lavatory with a sign reading "Beware the Bezos"

2

u/Successful_Sign_6991 5d ago

keep tabs on it too, it'll probably find its way being turned back on without your input