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Tell HN: OpenAI keeps re-enabling the 'allow training' setting

179•jacquesm•1h ago•60 comments

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Open in hackernews

Tell HN: OpenAI keeps re-enabling the 'allow training' setting

179•jacquesm•1h ago
I've reset this more than once and the last time I made a careful note of when I did it and to my surprise I found it re-enabled when I checked just now. Make sure you check this thing to see if it hasn't been re-enabled if you believe it to be off right now.

Comments

amelius•59m ago
If you document it properly then this basically destroys any legal claim they can make about that checkbox.
vb-8448•28m ago
Out of curiosity, how one is supposed to "document it properly"?
andsoitis•56m ago
> Make sure you check this thing to see if it hasn't been re-enabled if you believe it to be off right now.

Or simply switch to a competitor. Assuming this is not just a bug, why would one stand for such disrespectful and sneaky behavior?

FWIW, I have not seen this happen for me.

cute_boi•55m ago
And don't switch to Misanthropic lol. They are even worst...
dgellow•30m ago
Has Anthropic been found re-enabling that checkbox? I cannot find anything on that topic
andsoitis•18m ago
> Misanthropic lol.

This approach of misnaming a company to try make a point is childish and, frankly, perplexing to me.

> They are even worst

Learn to write proper English.

nullc•10m ago
It's a fitting name.
_zoltan_•44m ago
what competitor?

the x20 Max plan for Claude gives you way lover limits.

andsoitis•40m ago
> lover limits.

lovers should never be limited!

jmmcd•29m ago
Can't believe people are advocating free love in 2026
cheeze•32m ago
Bedrock is an option. Multiple platforms with solid data sovereignty.

If you don't want them slurping your data, you're gonna have to pay more.

Same as it ever was.

dgellow•31m ago
Well, it’s a tradeoff. What do you prefer? To go with the service provider known to be shady but gives you lots of free stuff or the one that might be less shady and gives you less free stuff?
CuriouslyC•29m ago
Anthropic is shady too my guy. Claude Code will frequently re-ask you to turn on data sharing even after you've said no, it's dark patterned like a task approval, and once you turn it on it's harder to turn off than OAI makes it.
jerf•54m ago
My cynicism fails me on this matter... do I cynically believe that these companies keep deliberately and routinely re- or un-checking these checkboxes because of the obvious benefits of "whoopsie guess you allowed these after all"? Or do I cynically believe that they are just so completely incompetent and inept at the simple act of maintaining settings that there may be a number of these that are not entirely intentional? As evidenced by the number of other bugs and configuration failures and random settings changes on update I see in other places? Sure, these sorts of settings sure seem to get spontaneously flipped more often than the other ones but they aren't the only settings I've seen get nuked on updates.

Now, obviously, considered as a whole, I think we're looking at "both". But when I wonder about specific cases like this one, that doesn't help.

pacificat0r•52m ago
Oh no… OpenAI, the company who encourages and instructs Apple employees on how to get them data on apple products when they accept an offer?
philipov•52m ago
"Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"
27183•32m ago
Yeah this could just be some vibeslop doing normal computer stuff. AI agents are famously incompetent at reasoning about database transactions. This seems like the sort of failure you get when you try to do distributed systems without knowing how--brings us back to the early mongodb days. Or it could be deliberate. Or, as you say, both.

Either way, is this a company you want to trust with intimate secrets? "Oh, but they passed SOC2!" Lol.

yearolinuxdsktp
antonok•51m ago
I've noticed that toggle sets a local storage entry, but the value of it doesn't appear to matter at all for new tab loads. I hoped it's "just" a UI bug, but some agent-driven reverse engineering of the page should reveal the answer, as well as how intentional it was.
sunaurus•51m ago
Based on their behavior over the past few years, why would you assume that checkbox even does anything at all?
ALLTaken•38m ago
Levent Alpöge 'additionally' proved OpenAI steals your findings & IP and plays dirty!

Ironically he proved two major findings in Navier Strokes and that unethical American companies violate laws, steal your breakthrough findings & IP and then threaten you if you dare to challenge them.

This is making the status-quo so bad for any of us working on serious capacity. My client's don't trust ChatGPT/Claude anymore and prefer on-premises and OSS models or even custom trained models.

dgellow•33m ago
The vast majority of OpenAI users don’t follow the industry drama and have no idea how terrible the company is. They’ve been really good at getting good press coverage, with journalists who will repeat the company narrative. Even when critical it is very often framed within the narrative they established
spongebobstoes•27m ago
what makes the company so terrible?
altmanaltman•30m ago
While that is true, you also have no reason to assume OP is being truthful or correct here given that they have shown 0 proof of what they're saying. Yes, you can then pile on "OF COURSE ITS OPENAI LOL YOU THINK THEY CARE ABOUT PRIVACY LOL" but where have we established OP's premise is even correct? Can anyone else also report this? So is it just OpenAI specifically messing with OP?
frangonf•50m ago
There's also this setting here which I have set to 'Do not train on my content' even though I trust it the same as the 'allow training' one...

https://privacy.openai.com/policies/en/?modal=take-control

jtolly710•29m ago
Thx for the link, hadn't seen this one, submitted also
arpinum•44m ago
Turn on "Advanced Account Security", that prevents model training from being turned on.
esafak•35m ago
Where does it say that? https://chatgpt.com/#settings/Security merely says

Adds the highest level of account security by requiring stronger sign-in methods and applying stricter protections to help prevent unauthorized access.

That is not about model training.

cbg0•43m ago
I've disabled the checkbox many months ago and it's still disabled today. EU citizen, not sure if that's relevant.
stingraycharles•42m ago
Fairly certain OP lives in The Netherlands.
spongebobstoes•25m ago
same, I'm a paying user in the US
layer8•22m ago
Same here, I just happened to check yesterday and hadn’t checked for at least half a year.
burntalmonds•21m ago
Same here. US.
b800h•10m ago
Same here, UK.
noname120•3m ago
Same here on Pro 20x, Switzerland
gpugreg
ActionHank•43m ago
Lol, "Outrageous that the company that chose to ignore copyright holder claims, chose to ignore my checkbox of intent despite the implied pinky promise".
achrono•13m ago
Ignoring the checkbox is an utterly offensive move, but repeatedly manipulating it contrary to stated consumer intent is a whole other level. I didn't know we were supposed to take 'frontier' literally in every sense of the word.

I have now witnessed this myself after not believing this at first. Of course, screenshots etc. will hardly prove anything. This needs a proper third-party audit!

xboxnolifes•2m ago
Oh they aren't a frontier on this. Undoing user configuration is well tested in Windows land.
franzcoughka•40m ago
i mean, the entire company is built upon stealing protected artefacts... i'd be skeptical of any radio box that says "hey if you press this we promise we won't steal your data"
yipinwong•40m ago
Does OpenAI use optimistic UI updates? After you disabled the checkbox, it might have had failed in the backend (and not updated the UI).

Verify with devtools to see if that's the case.

---

for me, Youtube "auto-play" irks the me same way, and turning it off did not actually succeed in the backend, thus kept on left as on

codeduck•37m ago
if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...
throwatdem12311•35m ago
It won’t be an option soon enough. I doubt they even honour it now anyway.
enraged_camel•30m ago
Can confirm. I turned off mine last week when I started using it again for Astra. Checked this morning and voila, it was on.

I went ahead and uninstalled the app. Won't be renewing.

jasonjmcghee•28m ago
I've done the formal opt-out process - like "Make a privacy request" where you fill out a form.

Not sure if that's region specific or something though.

olalonde•26m ago
Weird, I'm the opposite. I don't recall ever setting mine and I just checked and it was set to "disallow training".
riffic•12m ago
Is this Settings > Data Controls > "Improve the model for everyone" or is there a "disallow training" somewhere else?

presumably its default behavior will vary depending on your user subscription or if your account belongs to an organization (Business, Enterprise, Edu?).

8cvor6j844qw_d6•7m ago
> I don't recall ever setting mine and I just checked and it was set to "disallow training".

I wonder if the default setting changed for newer accounts.

kd913•16m ago
Odd how much data people are trusting with a company on a monetary cliff edge.

Sure send them all your financial, personal data, they won't ever sell it on to the highest bidder for a new profit stream.

Using it as a therapist, financial advisor, health expert and blackboard has always been a terrible idea.

snihalani•14m ago
reminder to consider using an open weights model
the_duke•12m ago
I disabled it once, it has always stayed disabled.

So it may or may not happen regularly, but I would not over-index on a sample size of one.

czk•6m ago
had my account since the gpt 3.5 days, disabled it once and its still disabled. though, now that i have advanced account security enabled, the setting is disabled entirely
terminalbraid•12m ago
I quit OpenAI anything early when when their "do not train on my data" option was broken for several weeks. They are my one and only chargeback when I tried to quit and oops somehow I still got billed.

They are a deeply unethical company by any measure of observation.

gcr•5m ago
Is this the “Improve model for everyone” setting under “Data Controls” or is that a different checkbox?
troyvit
•
25m ago
They did say "less shady" but at this point Anthropic and OpenAI are approaching parity.
dgellow•24m ago
I hedged my comment by using the conditional tense + “less shady”, because I couldn’t find such issue reported. If you have a link I would be interested to read it. I’m just not aware of shady behavior from Anthropic with regards to training on user data
andsoitis•17m ago
> Anthropic

OpenAI and Anthropic are but two players. There are others too. You have choice.

cma•9m ago
I've been asked over 15 times by Claude code to turn it back on (with the prompt defaulted on so if you accidentally hit enter your data is sucked in if you don't catch it).

I do think it ended up being after a power outage though and it was some kind of config corruption.

•
31m ago
“Autoplay” and YouTube case in point:

- Autoplay transitioned to a per-device setting… suddenly default-on on every new device you log in to.

- Watching a video with computer-to-TV account connection? Automatic “TV queue,” a concept absent from the TV app, with incomprehensible behavior for how it’s used, so now videos are auto-played anyway.

- Watching a video from a playlist? Autoplay cannot be turned off.

Is it simply bad/absent product management and product design? Or is it actively user-hostile decisions meant to prop up view numbers and continue to have the users hooked on YouTube?

dakolli•7m ago
says "altmanaltman"
stavros•4m ago
If it didn't do anything, they wouldn't keep re-enabling it.
•
2m ago
"Improve the model for everyone" was "On", although I disabled a similar-sounding checkbox in the past (Germany).