Tumblr and WordPress Join Reddit in the Sellout Club

Tumblr and WordPress.com, under their parent company Automattic, have initiated plans to monetise user data by selling it to AI firms Midjourney and OpenAI. 

The documents, exposed by 404 Media, indicate that a vast collection of user-generated content from Tumblr has been prepared for these AI companies. This collection inadvertently included sensitive data such as private posts, content from suspended or deleted blogs, and explicit material, raising questions about the oversight and management of user data.

In response to potential backlash and privacy concerns, Automattic has announced forthcoming options for users to opt-out of data sharing, aiming to empower users with greater control over their content. This initiative will block AI crawlers from accessing content of those who opt-out, with Automattic promising to enforce these preferences with their AI partners rigorously.

However, Automattic clarified that it will only share public content that’s hosted on WordPress.com and Tumblr from sites that haven’t opted out. This does not include content from sites hosted elsewhere even if they're using Automattic plugins like Jetpack and WooCommerce.

The revelation has prompted a broader discussion on the ethical use of user data in training AI, with Automattic ensuring regular updates to AI partners about user opt-out decisions and advocating for the exclusion of past content from future AI training. The downside to this is that if users opt out of it, their blog posts won’t appear in the WordPress Reader, so no real people can read it either. 

Last week, Reddit signed a $60 million per year deal with Google to make its content available for training AI models. While social media sites sell data, their users are not happy about their information being used to train these models. “A.I. Is quickly turning into the biggest user data theft in history” wrote a user on X. 

[Update] March 1, 2024 9.30 | The article has been updated to include Automattic's policy changes on their plugins for scraping content.