"Meta trains artificial intelligence on the data of Balkan citizens without warning", 6 October 2024

By changing Meta's privacy policy, they can become training material for artificial intelligence developed by this American company.

Everything happened without notice or explanation, and millions of users in the Western Balkans were not even informed about Meta's new "Privacy Policy", which was published on June 26.

In a document analyzed by Radio Free Europe (REL), the Meta company highlights the launch of a new service – which is the ability to create text, sound, images and video through artificial intelligence. Meta collects published content that users share through the company's platforms, so the new service it offers through the development of artificial intelligence will be based on this practice.

Users from the Western Balkans were not informed of the innovation, while citizens of the European Union, when entering the platforms, received a warning that the policy was changing and then had the option to withdraw data from the planned artificial intelligence training.

When everything is put into context with local laws in the region, Meta was obliged to offer the same option to users in Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.

Legal solutions exist in the Balkan countries and are mostly harmonized with European ones, when it comes to the processing of personal data, REL's analysis shows.

However, the institutions responsible for protecting personal data in these countries do not have many instruments to react, their representatives told Radio Free Europe.

As one of the biggest problems, they state that Meta has not even appointed representatives in the Balkan countries, with whom the institutions would cooperate.

At the same time, Meta did not respond to Radio Free Europe's questions about the privacy policy changes and their effects on users from Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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As stated in the document, it concerns the published content that users leave on platforms such as profile data, name, username, profile picture, then comments on social networks, as well as video and audio content that is shared publicly. .

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Meta also collects data about content that pays attention to the user, that is, it collects data about how different content is reacted to, the time of use and the frequency of interactions on certain networks controlled by Meta.

The list doesn't stop there. It also mentions "messages you send and receive, including their content, in accordance with applicable laws," as well as data about the devices from which you access Facebook or Instagram.

The right to object to the use of data from Meta's AI training and to request its withdrawal is available to citizens of the European Union and those of the United Kingdom.

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Mikolasch is a lawyer for the Austrian-based organization NOYB (Non Of Your Business), which has been one of the most active in filing lawsuits to stop Meta's plans at the European Union level.

He adds that, unlike other companies developing artificial intelligence (AI), there's a lot of information that Meta can use that other platforms can't glean from the Internet, making this case more problematic than when it comes to developing other AI models.

However, he points out that cases of misuse of personal data through the AI ​​model have not yet been documented.

Commenting on the Privacy Policy, Mikolasch points out that two things are key – that the company has not sought users' consent for their data to be used to train AI, but also that the AI ​​model it develops is not described in detail.

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While organizations and experts in the EU fought for Meta to treat EU citizens more carefully, the region was left in a kind of darkness.

Radio Free Europe was unable to locate users of Meta's platforms from the Western Balkans who had been notified of the privacy policy change. Meta did not respond to REL's questions about how it informed users from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo about the data collection.

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