this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected (theconversation.com)
submitted 18 hours ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 2 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

We should have the right to not have our data harvested by default.

I would maybe not go quite that far but at the very least this should apply to commercial interests and living people.

I think there are some causes where it should be acceptable to have your data usable by default, e.g. statistical analysis of health threats (think those studies about the danger of living near a coal power plant or similar things).

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I disagree. Yes, there are benefits to a lot of invasions of privacy, but that doesn't make it okay. If an entity wants my information, they can ask me for it.

One potential exception is for dead people, I think it makes sense for a of information to be released on death and preventing that should be opt in by the estate/survivors, depending on the will.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago

But they literally can't ask you for it if it is about high volumes of data that only become useful if you have all or close to all of it like statistical analysis of rare events. It would be prohibitively expensive if you had to ask hundreds of thousands of people just to figure out that there is an increase in e.g. cancer or some lung disease near coal power plants.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

That implies that having data be harvested for companies to make profits should be the default.

I sure hope those studies are not being done by for profit companies!