Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you.
AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.
Here are the important details:
We already discourage AI crawlers from gathering content from Tumblr and will continue to do so, save for those with which we partner.
We want to represent all of you on Tumblr and ensure that protections are in place for how your content is used. We are committed to making sure our partners respect those decisions.
To opt out of sharing your public blogs’ content with third parties, visit each of your public blogs’ blog settings via the web interface and toggle on the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.
For instructions on how to opt out using the latest version of the app, please visit this Help Center doc.
Please note: If you’ve already chosen to discourage search crawling of your blog in your settings, we’ve automatically enabled the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.
If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.
unfortunately, a lot of the userbase won't opt out. those who don't see this post, those who have posted to tumblr but don't anymore, users on older versions of the app who forget to opt out next time they're on desktop, etc. the point of making it opt-out is to take advantage of people who wouldn't have opted in but don't/can't opt out in time. automatically opting out people who have discouraged search crawling is a gesture that helps Tumblr look more kind, but from the fact that everyone else has to manually opt out, Tumblr is definitely not looking benevolent.
I wonder, will Tumblr/Automattic be selling images from deactivated blogs? I assume deactivated blogs can't opt out.
when will they start selling this data? Is it already too late to keep them from selling every image you've posted before you opted out?
and if they're especially malicious, I wonder if they could get away with saying "this image is from a blog that's opted out, but it was reblogged by a blog that hasn't opted out, so we're selling the image that's on that non-opted-out blog."
making users need to opt out to keep their images from being taken and sold is a shitty move that makes it clear Tumblr/Automattic don't respect our privacy, and @staff are really not giving us much info here to suggest otherwise.
As a fairly large account on this platform, let me just say: I will 100% leave this site and never use it again if they don't respect the fact that I toggled "prevent third party sharing" (and let it be clear that *having* to opt out at all is ridiculous; it should be opt out by default for the reasons stated above).
I find this entire development deeply disappointing, tumblr @staff.