Meta admits to scraping Australian users’ public data to train AI, The ABC says

Meta has admitted to scraping every Australian adult Facebook and Instagram user’s public data to train AI, with no opt-out, The ABC’s Jake Evans reports. The company does not offer Australians an opt out option like it does in the EU, because it has not been required to do so under privacy law, Evans writes. Labor senator Tony Sheldon asked whether Meta had used Australian posts from as far back as 2007 to feed its AI products, to which Meta’s global privacy director Melinda Claybaugh responded “we have not done that.” The Facebook representative could not answer whether the company scraped data from previous years of users who were now adults, but were under 18 when they created their accounts.