Deborah Copaken: “You only have until June 26, 2024 to say no to Meta taking your personal photos and words and using them to train their generative AI. Here are step-by-step directions for opting out…Facebook has led to all sorts of horrors, including an orange-haired, coup-instigating felon in the White House; Russian interference in our elections; and elder scams a plenty. I’m embarrassed to admit how much raw material of my life I’ve handed over to the company now called Meta, which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. Especially given that, starting on June 26th, unless you make a formal request to opt-out, Meta will be stealing and scraping your data to train AI. Apparently, they have run out of other sources to feed the beast. If you, like me, do not feel comfortable having Meta harvest your data to train their AI and make it more powerful or god knows what else they’re going to do with it, you can make a request to opt out of this theft. But of course—here’s the catch—they make it extremely hard to find the correct link to do so. Moreover, if you live in the U.S., your formal request may not even be heeded. Unlike the U.K. and the European Union, countries with stronger laws about what kinds of shenanigans online companies can do to track and abuse their users, we are not protected from having our intellectual property and online habits stolen. But while all of these issues are making their way through the U.S. court system, you might as well make your objection known to Meta before the June 26 deadline. I have spent hours in abject frustration trying to do this so that you don’t have to. First of all, don’t even try to make your request on Instagram on your phone. I filled out the whole, teeny, tiny form on my teeny, tiny screen, only to be stymied by Meta hiding the SEND button too low on the screen to hit it. The next day—I needed a break—I tried doing it via Facebook, on my laptop this time, and that’s how I finally succeeded in submitting my request. I see it as my civic duty now to help you.Herewith are the 11 steps you must take to tell Meta you do not want them to scrape your data to use it to train generative AI (the 12th is kind of a joke, but feel free to do it anyway)…”