Edit: I just logged in to opt out, they presented me with the switch directly. It was two clicks.
It’s the reverse. This was opt-in and is now opt-out. Opt means choose so when “the default is opt-in” it means the option is “no” by default and you have the option to make it “yes”.
Feels like the complaint is precisely that people don’t want them to make this change.
> this is exactly how I'd want them to do it.
Sees naive to believe it will always be done like this, especially for new users.
they gave me a popup to agree to the ToS change, but I can ignore it for a month and still use the product. In the popup, they clearly explained the opt-out switch, which is available in the popup itself as well as in the settings.
Personally, I don't mind training, as long as I have a say on the matter - and they have a switch for this. Opt-out is not exactly cool, but I've got the popup in my face, almost a month before the changes, and that's respectful enough for me.
This said, I've just canceled my subscription because this new 5-year mandatory data retention is a deal breaker for me. I don't mind 30 or 60 days or even 90 days - I can understand the need to briefly persist the data. But for anything long-term (and 5 years is effectively permanent) I want to be respected with having a choice, and I'm provided none except for "don't use".
A shame, but fortunately they're not a monopoly.
That popup was confusing as hell then, because I've read and understood it as two separate points: I've got it that they're making training opt-out, and that they're changing data retention to 5 years, independent of each other. I got upset over this, and haven't really researched into the nuances - and turns out I've got it all wrong.
Appreciate your comment, it's really helpful!
I hope they change the language to make it clear 5 years only applies to the chats they're allowed to train models on.
(Weirdly, I can't find the word "years" anywhere on their Privacy Policy, and the only instance on the Consumer Terms of Service pages is about being of legal age over 18 years old.)
You can also have a checkbox that says "I consent to having my data used for training", which would look like "opting in", and it could be true by default.
Or you can have a checkbox that says "Leave my data out of your training set", which would look like "opting out", and which could be unchecked default.
Technically, they're both "opt-out", but I've seen enough examples (intentionally confusing and arguably "dark patterns") that I personally don't really consider "it's opt-in" to be a complete statement anymore.
Edit: I'll add that, in the comment I was replying to, it very much looked like you had to go to a settings page in order to opt-out, which I think is entirely reasonably described as having been opted-in by default. Here's what they had written:
> All you have to do is flip a single switch in the options to turn it off
And I actually think "opted-in by default" is valid and calls out cases where it looks like you consent, but that decision was made for you. Although in this case I think I've seen other comments that describe the UX differently, but my comment was more of a general comment than about this particular flow.