The Viral ‘Goodbye Meta AI’ Copypasta Will Not Protect You

“Goodbye Meta AI” is the astir caller Facebook copypasta to spell viral online. A chunky partition of substance pasted against a hazy orange-yellow gradient background, it's implicit with each the trend’s hallmarks: vague references to the ineligible strategy and unilateral declarations of idiosyncratic protection. It astir feels nostalgic. A blast from the compulsory chain-email past. But, unfortunately, posting an representation connected Facebook, Instagram, oregon immoderate societal media level is not however you really opt retired of having your posts beryllium fed to AI models.

This decidedly isn’t the archetypal clip a meaningless copypasta has dispersed connected the societal media site. Over a decade ago, WIRED covered a fashionable “copyright hoax” with “pseudo-legalese” blanketing Facebook. It didn’t enactment then, and it doesn’t enactment now.

“Goodbye Meta AI,” which has been shared thousands of times including reportedly successful the Instagram Stories of Tom Brady and James McAvoy, has been circulating since aboriginal September. Its assertion that it tin support your information is blatantly dubious to savvy Internet users, but the underlying tendency to claw backmost one’s personal information from tech companies is simply a sympathetic one. The companies cognize truthful galore granular details astir users’ lives and desires that it tin beryllium unsettling. And, successful the ongoing question of generative AI, everything posted online seems susceptible to being scraped to bid the adjacent biggest, baddest AI model.

Two large reddish flags that tin assistance you instantly spot a copypasta similar this are urgent calls to enactment and unclear references to ineligible situations. In this case, the representation says “all members indispensable post” to support their information safe, and it claims to beryllium portion of an unnamed attorney’s advice. The 2012 mentation said, “Anyone speechmaking this tin transcript this substance and paste it connected their Facebook Wall.” The decade-old copypasta besides included a misspelled notation to a European ineligible contract.

“While we don’t presently person an opt-out feature, we’ve built in-platform tools that let radical to delete their idiosyncratic accusation from chats with Meta AI crossed our apps,” says Emil Vazquez, a spokesperson for the company, erstwhile reached via email. You tin find the steps for that here. He besides points retired European users tin entity to idiosyncratic info being utilized for AI models. Although, arsenic WIRED reported past year, the signifier to entity isn’t going to bash much, if anything, for you.

So, if an errant copypasta doesn’t work, what tin you bash to debar having your nationalist words and images being used for Meta’s AI model oregon that of different AI company? Stop posting online—that’s astir it. Apart from walking distant and ne'er posting again, there’s not a realistic mode for you to debar the nimble scraper bots arsenic an idiosyncratic individual close now.

Keeping that successful mind, you tin instrumentality steps to trim the magnitude of accusation publically disposable connected your societal media profiles for a spot much privacy. Also, downloading aged posts for your ain records, past deleting ample swathes of them from the Internet isn’t a atrocious idea. Want to spell further? Take a look astatine this list of websites and apps which let you to opt retired of slightest an facet of their AI grooming practices.