And why the backlash to Meta AI, LinkedIn and PayPal's new advertising business is a good thing

Forget viral TikTok trends. One of America's hottest online phenomena is freaking out about a company leveraging your data to "train" its artificial intelligence or for other potentially unwelcome uses.

Just in the past month, there was a popular X post griping about PayPal starting to harness data about you to advise merchants. (PayPal said the X post wasn't related to its new business targeting advertisements based on your purchase activity.)

People were also furious that LinkedIn gave itself the right to use information you posted to train its artificial intelligence. And some celebrities posted on Instagram to deny permission for all their posts to fuel Meta's AI supercomputers. (Those posts won't work.)

I have instructions below to opt out of those uses of data or step up your privacy protections from companies eager to use your data like coal shoveled into the Titanic's engines.

It's also important to recognize what the relentless data panics have in common. They are progress, of a sort, that show you're paying attention and fed up with companies acting entitled to make money from every morsel of your life.

What the freak-outs get wrong and mostly right

Companies aren't listening to what you're implicitly saying every time there's a backlash to uses of your data such as in the cases of PayPal, LinkedIn, Meta AI, Sonos, Udemy and Zoom Video.

You're saying that you don't trust companies to do the right thing with your personal information. And you hate feeling like you have little control over your data. That self-awareness is healthy.

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Shira Ovide

(Patrick Dias for The Washington Post)

Tech Friend writer Shira Ovide gives you advice and context to make technology work for you. Sign up for the free Tech Friend newsletter.

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"What you're seeing is an increasing awareness from the public that companies are abusing our personal data," said Caitriona Fitzgerald, deputy director of the consumer advocacy group the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Even when people get the details wrong in those freak-outs, the principle remains sound.

You can probably tell it's not legally binding when celebrities shared similar posts on Instagram saying, "I don't consent" to Meta using their posts to coach and improve Meta AI.

But Business Insider writer Katie Notopoulos explained it best: "People are sharing it because they're worried about AI and what it means for them. They think it's some invasive thing that's being done to them, taking away their content without their permission."

Meta has previously said that many companies use people's public internet writing to train AI, and it's giving people information on how its AI works.

Sonos has said its privacy policy was revised to clarify that its uses of customer data may meet definitions of selling or sharing information with partners under some state privacy laws. Zoom said its terms of service specify that the company doesn't use Zoom user data to train AI models.

Online teaching site Udemy said it gave ample notice to teachers about using videos to train AI and instructed them how to opt out if they wished.

What you can do about it

Opt out when you can:

For PayPal using your spending behavior to target ads: If you have a personal (not business) account in the United States, go to your profile on the website or app.

Select Data and privacy → Personalized shopping. Then flip off the on-screen switch that says, "Let us share products, offers, and rewards you might like with participating stores."

For Meta using your posts to train its AI: In the United States, there's no way to stop Meta from using your public posts to help train the company's AI.

Your conversations with the Meta AI chatbot in Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp also may be used to train the AI, the company says. There's no way to say no, but you can delete your Meta AI chat interactions. Meta says those interactions wouldn't be used in the future to train its AI. Follow these instructions.

Read more about opting out of having your data improve chatbots like ChatGPT, and why it's not entirely clear what you're opting out of.

For LinkedIn using your posts to train its AI: Log into your LinkedIn account and tap or click on your headshot and select Settings → Data privacy → Data for generative AI improvement. Turn this to "Off."

LinkedIn said its AI can assist people in their career development.

Other steps you can take to protect your personal information:

Use a privacy-conscious web browser or the Privacy Badger web add-on. Apple's Safari and the smaller web browsers Firefox, Brave and Tor Browser have measures to stop the tiny software file called cookies from keeping tabs on everywhere you roam online.

You can also download Privacy Badger from the consumer advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It has many of those same protections as the browsers.

If you live in California or some other states, Firefox, Brave and Privacy Badger can automatically send legally binding orders telling websites you visit not to share or sell information about you. Read more about that here.

Consider deleting little-used apps on your phone. If you're enticed by a hot new app, wait a couple of days to see if you lose interest. Delete apps that you don't really use. Or if you use an app infrequently, it's often a better privacy choice to use the company's website rather than its app.

Spend five minutes with our privacy settings to change right now. Our top tip in the Google privacy guide is a great place to start.

On the web, go to myaccount.google.com → Data & Privacy → Web & App Activity (under History Settings). Click the "Turn off" option so it is gray.

Consider supporting stronger privacy laws in your state. There is no broad national law in the United States about data privacy, but 19 U.S. states now have wide-reaching laws protecting your online information. They're all imperfect. Some of them were written for Big Tech's interests, not yours.

Like the freak-outs over companies' changing uses of your data, privacy experts say, the state laws show the progress in giving you back some power over your information.

Those advocates generally are excited about the new privacy law in Maryland. More privacy laws are likely to be up for debate next year in states including Vermont and Maine, Fitzgerald said.

"The best things folks can do is tell their state legislators and members of Congress to pass meaningful privacy laws," Fitzgerald said.