X is revamping its privacy policy to incorporate fresh language, empowering the company to share customer data with trusted “partners” and collaborate on AI model development. Starting November 15, 2024, a pivotal change is poised to revolutionize how external companies access and utilize knowledge from X, essentially enabling them to “buy-in” to Reddit-like initiatives where they can compensate for the privilege of leveraging this valuable information.
X’s latest coverage now includes an updated section on “Collaborations with Third-Party Developers.”
If you choose to rely on our services or share your knowledge, we may share or disclose your data with third parties. If you fail to decide, some recipients of your knowledge may leverage it for their own distinct purposes beyond those outlined in X’s Privacy Policy, including, for example, training their artificial intelligence models – generative or otherwise.
While the coverage notes that customers have the flexibility to opt out, it remains unclear how they can effectively exercise this right. The coverage options in customers’ settings menus appear to lack a management feature for opting out of knowledge sharing altogether? Although the coverage’s impact is delayed until the next month, there remains a chance to alter this outcome. The company received no response from X regarding their comment request.
If X were to start licensing its knowledge to other firms, it could unlock a significant new revenue stream for the social media company, which has experienced a decline in ad revenue from its core advertisers.
To bolster its privacy safeguards, X is introducing more stringent measures to deter entities from scraping massive quantities of tweets, including stiffer penalties for those caught in the act. The corporation warns that excessive usage may trigger liquidated damages: any individual exceeding 1,000,000 posts in a single day risks being liable for a non-negotiable fine of $15,000.
Protecting our customers’ intellectual property and safeguarding our system infrastructure are paramount concerns for our organization. You agree that, to the extent permitted by applicable regulations, if you breach the Terms or encourage others to take action, we may seek legal remedies, including liquidated damages, which shall be calculated as follows: for accessing more than 10 million posts (inclusive of replies, videos, images, and all other content) within a 24-hour period, you will be jointly and severally liable to us in the amount of $15,000 USD per 10 million posts.
Tesla proprietor Elon Musk has previously railed against “scraping.” Last year, the company swiftly blocked users from viewing tweets while logged out, as part of an effort by Musk to thwart scrapers. The move to reconfigure X’s API behind a veil of secrecy has significantly impeded researchers’ ability to monitor and analyze the platform’s activities, thereby limiting their capacity for informed scrutiny. He has also utilized claims of “scraping” as a pretext to justify targeting organizations that attempted to scrutinize hate speech and other content on the platform.
