11 steps to keep Meta from stealing your data to train AI

You only have until June 26, 2024 to say no to Meta taking your personal photos and words and using them to train their generative AI. Here are step-by-step directions for opting out.

Yes, normally this publication is all about women’s health, books, personal stories, and other stuff I find fascinating, but given the urgency of the deadline of Meta’s data grab on June 26, 2024, and my own frustrations with trying to find the proper way to opt-out of this IP theft, I’m providing today’s missive as a gift to all, to keep you from the hours upon hours of frustration I experienced before I, a tech luddite, figured out how. Enjoy!

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I joined Facebook in 2008, when my older son’s elementary school urged us to do so. Kids were being bullied online, we were told. To be a good parent, you needed to be on top of this, especially now that Facebook was finally allowing the oldsters to join. That same year, my publisher also urged those of us launching books to join Facebook. They weren’t sure back then why it was important, they just thought it might be, and they were correct. After I posted about my 2008 novel on Facebook, it immediately sold out its first printing. Whoa! Cool. A new way of getting the word out. Then, in 2011, my son’s life was saved by three friends on Facebook who diagnosed his Kawasaki disease from the photos I’d posted online, and I was hooked. Social media, I thought, was a greater good. I even went on the Today Show, when they asked, to share our story.

Fast forward to today. Facebook has led to all sorts of horrors, including an orange-haired, coup-instigating felon in the White House; Russian interference in our elections; and elder scams a plenty. I’m embarrassed to admit how much raw material of my life I’ve handed over to the company now called Meta, which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. Especially given that, starting on June 26th, unless you make a formal request to opt-out, Meta will be stealing and scraping your data to train AI. Apparently, they have run out of other sources to feed the beast.

If you, like me, do not feel comfortable having Meta harvest your data to train their AI and make it more powerful or god knows what else they’re going to do with it, you can make a request to opt out of this theft. But of course—here’s the catch—they make it extremely hard to find the correct link to do so. Moreover, if you live in the U.S., your formal request may not even be heeded. Unlike the U.K. and the European Union, countries with stronger laws about what kinds of shenanigans online companies can do to track and abuse their users, we are not protected from having our intellectual property and online habits stolen. But while all of these issues are making their way through the U.S. court system, you might as well make your objection known to Meta before the June 26 deadline.

I have spent hours in abject frustration trying to do this so that you don’t have to. First of all, don’t even try to make your request on Instagram on your phone. I filled out the whole, teeny, tiny form on my teeny, tiny screen, only to be stymied by Meta hiding the SEND button too low on the screen to hit it. The next day—I needed a break—I tried doing it via Facebook, on my laptop this time, and that’s how I finally succeeded in submitting my request. I see it as my civic duty now to help you.

Herewith are the 11 steps you must take to tell Meta you do not want them to scrape your data to use it to train generative AI (the 12th is kind of a joke, but feel free to do it anyway):

1. Log into your Facebook account on your laptop. Not your phone. This is way too complicated for the phone. I’ll use screenshots from my account to show you what this means. See that little circle at the top right with your photo in it? The one I’ve circled in red and drawn arrows to? Click that. (On your own profile, to be clear. Not mine.)

2. Select “Settings and privacy.” You’ll see it in gray below.

3. Now click “Privacy center.”

4. On the far left side of the screen, you’ll now see the (so-called, lol) Privacy Center. Now you’re going to click “Other policies and articles” under that list and a new menu will appear, with one option being “How Meta uses information for generative AI models and features.” Isn’t this fun? Click on that, as in the grayed out bar below.

5. Now you’re going to see this really annoying, deliberately long and confusing document. The top of it looks like this:

6. Start scrolling. Keep scrolling. Because those assholes deliberately hid the link deep into this document. Keep scrolling all the way to the bottom. Are you there yet? You’ll get there. Eventually. What you’re looking for is this third to last paragraph, below, beginning with, “We are committed to being transparent” (hahahahahahah!!!!!) with the blued-out words, “Learn more and submit requests here.”:

7. Hit those blue words, “Learn more and submit requests here.” It will take you to this form:

8. Exhausted yet? You’re almost there! Don’t give up now. You’re going to click on the teeny, tiny circle before the words “I want to delete any personal information from third parties used for building and improving AI at Meta.” When you do this, an even longer form appears. So long, I can’t show you the whole thing in one photo, so here are two photos:

9. Now you have to fill in the whole form except the part that asks you to choose a file. Choose a file? What? Guess what? You don’t need to choose a file, photo, or screenshot. That choice is just there to confuse you. I wasted an entire hour trying to figure out what kind of screenshot Meta wanted me to send them only to realize it was just a fun little extra exercise to drive you crazy. Now is the important part: you must tell Meta, in plain legalese, what you want them to do. Twice! In both of those empty boxes. They should have written out these words for you with a little check box next to it. But no. They’re making it as hard as humanly possible for you to opt out of their theft. Imagine a burglar coming into your house, grabbing your jewelry, and saying, “If you do not say the correct password to keep me from stealing these from you, I’m gonna steal them,” to which you say, “Is it Rumpelstiltskin?” and he laughs, demonically, and says, “Sorry, that’s not correct, hahahahaha, byeeeee!” and off he goes with your gold. Here’s what I wrote. Feel free to cut and paste: “I wish to exercise my right under data protection law to object to my personal data being processed.” I stole this line from the MIT Technology Review, so, you know, we’ll have to trust that they know what they’re talking about.

10. Now, finally, you can hit send. But wait! You’re not done yet! Facebook needs to send you an OTP to make sure it’s you. (“Are you effing kidding me,” say to yourself. “Of course it’s me, I’m signed into my Facebook? OMFG.” It’s like they’re following the health insurance playbook: just make getting anything done extremely hard-to-impossible so people—not you!—give up.) This magic OTP number can be found in one of your spam folders, the one marked “Social” if you use gmail. Trust me! I learned the hard way. I kept asking Facebook for the OTP. It kept not arriving. It’s in your “Social” spam folder. I promise! Check there!

11. Enter your secret OTP number from the email Facebook sent you. It expires in an hour, so do not tarry or get distracted by your phone or that pile of dirty laundry. Press the blue confirm button. Give a fist pump. You are finally done.

12. Say, out loud, stealing Meta’s own words, “‘We are committed to transparency’…my ass!” Laugh. Sigh. Worry about the future of humankind. Then send this list of instructions to your mother, your grandmother, her friends, your friends, and their friends, because I tried to follow the instructions from all those cool looking, Gen-Z influencers with their hip, super-fast TikToks and Instagram reels telling me how to make my objections known to Meta before it’s too late, and despite my best attempts, I failed, over and over and over again. And there is no way your mother (or you or Granny or her best friend Sheila) will be able to follow those fast instructions either. I’ll make this list free to read and share. Please let me know how it went in the comments below.

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