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Brief update on our ongoing efforts to allow users to specify consent (or not) for AI training: 🧵

We recently shared Bluesky’s stance on user data and AI training, which has not changed. Bluesky will not train generative AI on user data. bsky.app/profile/bsky...

Bluesky is an open and public social network, much like websites on the Internet itself. Websites can specify whether they consent to outside companies crawling their data with a robots.txt file, and we’re investigating a similar practice here.

For example, this might look like a setting that allows Bluesky users to specify whether they consent to outside developers using their content in AI training datasets Bluesky won’t be able to enforce this consent outside of our systems. It will be up to outside developers to respect these settings

That sounds fine as long as the default consent setting is “no”!

I’m a bit confused. Is it or is it not the case that anyone off BSky can use the APIs to scrape any user “site”. If yes, then the statement that BSky cannot enforce users’ preferences other than with their own developers is significant. Then opting in or out makes no difference for any outsider

there is one way, not to use it and return to closed, centralized platforms like X or Threads. trade-offs everywhere.