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Dropsitenews published a list of websites Facebook uses to train its AI on. Multiple Lemmy instances are on the list as noticed by user BlueAEther
Hexbear is on there too. Also Facebook is very interested in people uploading their massive dongs to lemmynsfw.
Full article here.
Link to the full leaked list download: Meta leaked list pdf
Good luck filling and winning a lawsuit against meta. They have enough money and influence that if they wanted, they could just send an email to your server hosting service and forcing them to shut you down. That, or just spend probably less than $100k to keep you in court long enough you go bankrupt. It's a losing game... at least until more non far left socialists are running the show around the world.
The cynicism surrounding the USA court system is not without cause, but the suggestion to not even bother trying has always rubbed me the wrong way. Firstly, on philosophical grounds, it's defeatism and on-par with appeasement. But secondly, average Americans can and have prevailed when up against a multinational company.
The one which often comes to mind is the case of a Philadelphia man winning a default judgement against Wells Fargo and was on the cusp of having the local sheriff auction off a branch's furniture, until they all settled the matter. The man in question wrote about his experience here: https://lawsintexas.com/this-is-how-my-qwr-foreclosed-wells-fargo/
As for how to use Meta, the average Joe need not hire a major law firm, but can choose to pursue a limited suit in small claims court. For Meta, which is headquartered in Silicon Valley in California, the Superior Court in Santa Clara County would be the venue. Drawbacks include: having to get to Silicon Valley for court dates, and a total claims limit of $12.5k.
But on the flip side, the small claims court does not allow lawyers to argue the case before the judge, meaning it's basically you and Meta's representative. That representative might still have legal training, but it won't be a situation like in the 1997 film The Rainmaker where it's one solo lawyer versus a whole team of lawyers.
There's also fewer avenues for Meta to inflate costs, such as attempting to pull the case into federal court: diversity jurisdiction isn't available unless a claim is over $75k. But they can create difficulties through the discovery process, and other pre-trial activities.
Do I think this is viable? Possibly, but it'll still take a fair amount of effort to have a lawyer work the case prior to trial, even if that lawyer can't actually do the talking in front of the judge. Easily 5 digit territory to pay your lawyer. But again, this is balanced by Meta having to deal with the nuisance of having someone on their side also put in a similar amount of effort. And when the max cap for small claims is $12.5k, Meta also has enough money to just pay up and then steer their AI scrapers away from your server, saving everyone the bother. See "nuisance value lawsuits".
After all, it's not like everyone is going to sue Meta in small claims court, right? Right?
I’m not a lawyer, but I believe that if the Lemmy instance’s ToS indicates where disputes will be resolved, and either the site owner resides there or is an LLC that is registered there, that you could sue Meta in that location.
Meta is big enough that they are most likely conducting business there (even if digitally) and you could also show that the harm suffered was suffered there.
IANAL either, but I'm vaguely familiar that this realm of USA law is known as "choice of law" provisions and the applicability of "click wrap" contracts, and it's a thorny issue in the digital age. Essentially, the problem is whether Meta can be made reasonably aware that a ToS exists for a given web server. Unlike a "NO TRESPASSING" sign posted on a gate, or a sticker on the packaging of a physical copy of Microsoft Word 97 that says "opening this package constitutes agreement to the EULA, at this URL...", it can be argued that unless the ToS is made so blitheringly obvious to a web scraper, it might not pass muster.
To be clear, this isn't a problem for normal web users, because the ToS link will very easily appear at the bottom of the page, when rendered in a standard web browser. The issue is whether scrapers -- including AI scrapers but also bot-crawlers and even plain ol Curl -- would see the notice of the ToS. There is no convention -- either de facto or in law -- about where or what format a ToS has to be. And it would be problematic to say that all scrapers need to thoroughly search a website for a "legal.txt", because such a file might be somewhere non-obvious and because it exacerbates the whole "scrap servers until they collapse" issue.
So already, getting a ToS to bind Meta -- or any other high-volume scraper -- is an upward battle. Hence why I suggested a remedy rooted in common law, premised on the idea that actively causing expenses for the server owner is actionable, even without a ToS.
That said, I do want to point out one other detail about choice-of-law: normally if a contract specifies the venue for disputes, that will be honored. Example: the courts of Santa Clara County in California. But supposing the instance owner lives in Montreal and specifies the venue as the Court of Quebec, and if the issue with binding Meta to the ToS was solved, then there's the challenge of actually targeting Meta. As a USA domiciled corporation, they're not automatically within the jurisdiction that the Quebec courts can reach. If there's a Canadian subsidiary, that might be a valid target. But if not, the Quebec courts wouldn't be able to compel Meta's lawyers to even show up, let alone rule in favor of the instance owner. And then there's the whole aspect of getting an American court to ratify a judgement issued by an overseas court. It's doable, but it's so much harder than specifying a venue within the USA.
But again, that's problematic if the instance isn't located within the USA, because then the owner must travel to the USA for their court dates. And I can't really recommend that anyone travel to the USA except for only the most critical or dire of situations.