this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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Hey guys, let's be clear.
Google now has a full complete set of logs including user IPs (correlate with gmail accounts), PRIVATE MESSAGES, and also reddit posts.
They pinky promise they will only train AI on the data.
I can pretty much guarantee someone can subpoena google for your information communicated on reddit, since they now have this PII (username(s)/ip/gmail account(s)) combo. Hope you didn't post anything that would make the RIAA upset! And let's be clear... your deleted or changed data is never actually deleted or changed... it's in an audit log chain somewhere so there's no way to stop it.
"GDPR WILL SAVE ME!" - gdpr started in 2016. Can you ever be truly sure they followed your deletion requests?
"lets be clear"
You're making things up and presenting them as facts, how is any of this "clear"?
How do you think Reddit is restoring posts that people have been deleting?
Do you think Google’s deal simply allowed them to scrape old.reddit? Hell no, there is probably a live replica of Reddit prod at Google somewhere, including deleted posts and all edits.
You don’t think they paid $60m just scrape, do you?
Since an IP address alone is not considered PII, can you prove that they did not provide IP addresses for each post?
Do you think it's more or less likely that ip addresses, account names, private messages and deleted messages and posts would be included?
Remember that they paid 60 million dollars for this information and web scrapers have been capable of capturing subreddit post data for over a decade as is at a $0 price tag from reddit.
Where does it say they have access to PII?
I would imagine reddit would be anonymising the data. Hashes of usernames (and any matches of usernames in content), post/comment content with upvote/downvote counts. I would hope they are also screening content for PII.
I dont think the deal is for PII, just for training data
So technically they haven't sold any PII if all they do is provide IP addresses. Legally an IP address is not PII. Google knows all our IP addresses if we have an account with them or interact with them in certain ways. Sure, some people aren't trackable but i'm just going to call it out that for all intents and purposes basically everyone is tracked by google.
Only the most security paranoid individuals would be anonymous.
Depends where and how its applied.
Under GDPR, IP addresses are essential to the opperation of websites and security, so the logging/processing of them can be suitably justified without requiring consent (just disclosure).
Under CCPA, it seems like it isnt PII if it cant be linked to a person/household.
However, an ip address isnt needed as a part of AI training data, and alongside comment/post data could potentially identify a person/household. So, seems risky under GDPR and CCPA.
I think Reddit would be risking huge legal exposure if they included IP addresses in the data set.
And i dont think google would accept a data set that includes information like that due to the legal exposure.
ML can be applied in a great number of ways. One such way could be content moderation, especially detecting people who use alternate accounts to reply to their own content or manipulate votes etc.
By including IP addresses with the comments they could correlate who said what where and better learn how to detect similar posting styles despite deliberate attempts to appear to be someone else.
It's a legitimate use case. Not sure about the legality... but I doubt google or reddit would ever acknowledge what data is included unless they believed liability was minimal. So far they haven't acknowledged anything beyond the deal existing afaik.
Gut feel based on common tech platform procedures, right? (As opposed to a sourceable certainty.)
I’d bet $100 you’re right. That said, I’d give a caveat if I were you and I were going with my instincts.
It would be PR suicide to disclose exactly what data is shared. Cambridge Analytica is a prime example of a PR nightmare with similar data.
I don't even need to look at reddit's terms and conditions to know that there is practically nothing stopping them from handing this kind of data over legally for anybody who hasn't submitted GDPR deletion requests. I never trust compliance of laws that cannot be verified independently either because i've seen all kinds of shady shit in my career.
They definitely won't be selling any of that to scammers /s
Makes me glad for my VPN and burner emails, but yeah... Privacy nightmare.
Although Google also has your email, location, IP, every website you visit, all your searches...