So Meta Stole Our Stories

On a typical tropical day in Guam beneath a shelter

I woke up this morning and saw my Facebook feed full of outrage about how The Atlantic created a new searchable database that allows authors to see if their books were used by Meta to train their AI. Here's how it worked. 

Authors and publishers uploaded their e-books to places like Amazon. Piracy sites (sometimes called mirror sites) stole these books and articles by either scanning the books and creating PDF versions or by stripping their codes and "recreating" the books which they could then sell to customers who were attracted by the low-cost or free books.

Meta, apparently, used these pirated versions of a magnitude of books and articles to train their AI. 7.5 MILLION books! 

Piracy of this sort is not new. Some of these book outfits (often overseas) are huge. When one gets taken down, another springs up to take its place. It's a massive problem. 

Or is it?

In a way, yes. Of course it is illegal as all get out, and authors feel cheated because someone stole their work, is selling it for cheap, and keeping the profit for themselves. That sucks. On the other hand--and please don't hate me for saying this--the people who are using pirate sites to get cheaper books were probably NOT going to purchase our books for the full price on Amazon or anywhere else. 

In other words, the piracy sites aren't stealing money that would have definitely gone into our pockets. but they ARE making money with our content, content they haven't spent countless hours creating, crafting, honing, sweating over. And that makes me mad. It's cheating. Kind of like big corporations cheat on their taxes while the rest of us have to pay ours. Both big corps and piracy sites are gaming the system and profiting while the rest of us stand helplessly by, do our work, accept with gratitude when we are paid, and pay what's demanded of us. 

The Author's Guild wrote an article about this and shared the searchable database link. You can find it at this LINK. 

Of course I jumped on to search my name, and sure enough, my second Olivia Lively title was listed. Honestly? I would have been more upset if I hadn't been included! 

However, piracy in low-wage countries preying on us is one thing. Having one of our own companies, in this case Meta, steal from us is a major betrayal! Our American economic and judicial and infrastructure system has allowed Meta to become the multi-billion dollar company it is. And this is how it repays our creatives? Our writers? With a total lack of respect for the people who,along with other artists, create the cultural wealth of our society. 

All this pounds into my brain, once again, that the time for ditching social media was yesterday. It's time for us to stop relying on Meta and other platforms for free promotion in exchange for our attention and our souls. I'm trying to figure out how to do this. I've been spending less time on Facebook, but I'm reluctant to give up my account because in some ways the author page, at least, works as kind of a Yellow Pages entry. 

On the other hand, how can we justify our continued support  of a broligarch who, according to a new book that just came out from whistleblower Sarah Whynn-Williams--Careless People: A cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism--actually agreed/offered to collude with the Chinese Communist Government to spy on and report on people? Not to mention disinformation campaigns. And some sexual harassment stuff if what I heard on a podcast is to be believed. 

Of course, Meta went to court to try to block the author from promoting her book, which of course led to... SO MANY MORE SALES. Haha. Here is a link to an article. LINK

So that's two strikes against Meta in one week. Is it time to ditch it once and for all? 

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Shelley's most recent Pink Dandelions newsletter went out today. In it find an essay on designating and designing your own Creative Sanctuaries--both physical and mental/psychological--in these weird, chaotic, and noisy times. See The Creative Sanctuary.