A current partnership announcement between OpenAI and Stack Overflow has some members involved that their information is getting used with out permission and, when making an attempt to take away their posts, discover their accounts are suspended.
The partnership was introduced on Monday, with OpenAI having access to Stack Overflow’s API and suggestions from builders and StackCommerce getting hyperlinks in ChatGPT again to its supply materials and receiving help utilizing OpenAI fashions as a part of its new OverflowAI platform.
Nevertheless, this partnership has fearful some customers on Stack Overflow [1, 2, 3] as they felt it was not proper for OpenAI to revenue from their content material with out permission.
After the announcement, some customers needed to delete their solutions, together with these with essentially the most votes. Nevertheless, StackCommerce doesn’t typically permit the deletion of posts if the query has any solutions.
Supply: BleepingComputer
Epic Video games UI designer Ben stated he tried to edit his highest-rated solutions and substitute them with a message protesting the partnership with OpenAI.
“Stack Overflow does not let you delete questions that have accepted answers and many upvotes because it would remove knowledge from the community,” Ben posted on Mastodon.
“So instead, I changed my highest-rated answers to a protest message. Within an hour, the mods had changed the questions back and suspended my account for seven days.”
Nevertheless, Ben shared a picture of Stack Overflow restoring the edited posts to the unique reply after which suspending his account.
Supply: Ben
In an e-mail shared by Ben, Stack Overflow moderators clarified that it doesn’t permit customers to take away posts as a result of they damage the neighborhood as an entire.
“You have recently removed or defaced content from your posts. Please note that once you post a question or answer to this site, those posts become part of the collective efforts of others who have also contributed to that content,” Stack Alternate moderators wrote in an e-mail to customers deleting their posts.
“Posts that are potentially useful to others should not be removed except under extraordinary circumstances. Even if the post is no longer useful to the original author, that information is still beneficial to others who may run into similar problems in the future – this is the underlying philosophy of Stack Exchange.”
Supply: Ben
Article 17 of the GDPR guidelines offers customers within the EU the ‘proper to be forgotten,’ which signifies that web sites should honor requests to take away customers’ private information upon request, which may embody discussion board posts and different user-generated content material.
Nevertheless, Article 17 (3) additionally states {that a} web site has the best to not delete information if vital for “exercising the right of freedom of expression and information.”
Dutch IT lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet interprets this to imply that whereas personally identifiable info and profile information should be eliminated, so long as the submit doesn’t comprise identifiable info, it could possibly stay to stop circulate of a subject or query from being disrupted.
“However, specifically with forums you run into a problem that disrupts the discussion to some extent, or the archive is no longer complete,” reads a submit by Engelfriet.
“That is a problem, because in such situations freedom of expression is compromised. People should be able to read what has been said in the past, and privacy should not be allowed to rush through it like a 1984 bulldozer.”
It stays unclear if Stack Overflow will change its choice and permit customers to delete their solutions sooner or later, however given its partnership with OpenAI, it appears unlikely.
BleepingComputer contacted Stack Overflow with questions on this deleting posts and their partnership with OpenAI however didn’t obtain a response by the point of this publication.
