Photo: Unsplash/Alexander Shatov
“This finding is in line with the latest privacy policy of the social media platform.”
Twitter, now known as X, has faced controversy this week following reports that it will begin collecting biometric data, as well as job and education information, from its users. A recently released privacy policy reveals that X intends to use this data, along with other personal information, to train its AI models, as highlighted by Stackdiary.
The privacy policy clearly states that the company plans to utilize the information it collects, as well as publicly available data, to assist in training its machine learning algorithms.
While X’s CEO, Musk, has confirmed the change, he assures users that only publicly available information will be collected, and that private messages or other confidential data will not be accessed. Unfortunately, with X no longer having a press department, obtaining more precise details regarding the type of data collected and its intended uses is challenging.
Although X does not openly express any AI aspirations, its owner Elon Musk does. He recently launched a company called xAI, which aims to “understand the true nature of the universe.” Therefore, it is possible that users’ biometric data and related information could contribute to this ambitious endeavor, as suggested by Stackdiary.
An alternative possibility for the use of this data is X’s recent ambition to compete with LinkedIn. Musk has criticized the employment platform and expressed his desire to create a superior alternative through X. Consequently, the collection of job and education histories from X’s user base may be attributed to this objective.
Finally, there is a third potential scenario. Given X’s relatively modest advertising revenue, selling user data could be a lucrative source of income for the company. However, there is currently no evidence to support this theory, aside from it being a common practice among social media platforms. In the past, Twitter primarily used collected user data for its own benefit rather than sharing it with third parties.