Meta’s AI Theft Screwed Millions of Authors Over. Where Do We Go From Here?

Maybe it's time for a technocultural shift.

By now, you’ve probably already heard about Meta’s unscrupulous theft of IP from 7.5 million writers worldwide. Books, research papers, even short stories, all stolen by Meta’s LibGen to train its AI model without consent or compensation. 

By now, I’m not surprised by the kind of stunts tech billionaires pull. But even for them, this is a new low. Does a billionaire really need to steal from writers, who are already struggling to get paid to write books? Most writers can’t afford to write full-time because publishing doesn’t pay us enough. And here Zuckerberg is, stealing original work from authors who devoted blood, sweat, tears and years of their lives to not just create them, but get them published. 

While a class action lawsuit against Meta is currently under way, several authors I know have already started boycotting Meta, ditching their Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp accounts for alternatives like TikTok, Bluesky, and Telegram. Some have even decided to go back to the basics—blog and newsletter. Between Musk’s stream of far right rhetoric and now this IP theft, more people seem done with these tech bros.

And you know what? I’m on board with this technocultural shift. 

The evolution of social media—a millennial’s POV

Social media used to just be a place for us to post snapshots of our lives, but now it's become a marketing tool and a platform to grow and monetise. 

While the aspiring entrepreneur side of me sees the value of social platforms in growing a brand, the writer side of me just wants to go back to simpler times where we found and built our community in the comments section of our blog and each other’s blogs. (I actually made several writer friends through commenting on author blogs! For instance, I met my friend Meredith Crosbie online because we both kept seeing each other in the comments section of Chuck Wendig's blog.) 

I loved that feeling of looking forward to a specific day of the week because that was when a favourite author of mine published a new blog, or feeling excited when I discovered a new author blog and binge-reading all their blog posts. I used to camp out at Laini Taylor’s blogs. She had two blogs and one website chock full of writing tips—I read ALL her posts and it felt like such a privilege getting an intimate look at her life, writing routine, tips, motivation, publishing updates and more!

One of Laini’s blog was (almost prophetically) called Not For Robots.

I also followed Maggie Stiefvater’s blog and a bunch of agents and editors', including Nathan Bransford, Janet Reid, Kristen Nelson, and more. These days, I’m following agents like Kate McKean on Substack because that’s where they share industry insights in detail.

The writing/blog community was very cosy back then, because it was truly a bunch of like-minded people gathering in a place where. There was no incessant pressure to grow a platform and monetise it ASAP, no dire need to increase reach and engagement, and we weren't inundated by a constant feed of updates from people we follow the moment we got on an app. We CHOSE when we wanted to get updates by intentionally visiting one specific blog at a time. That way, we were able control our consumption.

I’m not anti social media, I’m just pro intentional consumption (and creation)

Yes, social media still has its immense uses. Of course it does. It has advanced the marketing landscape and helped so many creators/creatives share their work, get more attention for their work, and get paid for their work. Some of them are even able to quit their day jobs and support themselves by selling their services, products, or content online. 

As a lead generation and/or sales funnel, it’s definitely very effective. Businesses and marketers rely on it, even pay for ad space and the like to get more customers. Social media has allowed people from all around the world to have access to brands and creators we would not have known about decades ago. It’s an extremely efficient way to get your brand in front of your audience.

But not everything has to be a business. 

Not everything is about growth and profit. Yes, creators need to pay bills and put food on the table, so it helps to be able to monetise our content. I get it, from a brand/creator point of view. 

But from a consumer point of view, I’m saying social media has entirely altered our consumption habits with its relentless feeds and onslaught of content from millions of creators around the world. It’s just … a lot. 

And a part of me thinks it might be nice to slow down a little, consume—and engage—more meaningful, and not view all of this content creation as some kind of means to an end. To take the pressure off ourselves to keep up production to stay on top of everyone’s feed, get more reach, to grow a following, to satisfy the algorithm gods. To stop measuring ourselves based on these quantitative metrics, and focus on producing sincere, thoughtful quality content instead. 

I blogged every week in the 2010s—before I got published (apart from Lambs for Dinner)—and even though I barely had any readers, I just enjoyed writing and sharing about my life, updates, and the things I loved, like a book I was reading, a new place I discovered, a conversation I had with a friend… Now, it feels like everything is an attempt to get eyeballs and engagement and there's the constant pressure to grow a platform.

What Audrey Brothers said.

And like my writer bestie Kayce Teo said in her recent Substack, “social media like a tool we have to use, even if we hate it. Even if it’s stealing from us … It really felt to me like if I were to stay, I would be choosing to stay in a toxic relationship because of some perceived potential benefits that I can get out of it.”

Anyway, back to the topic of AI theft. 

A new way of consuming and creation content in an AI-driven world?

In this day and age of tech overlords ripping off creatives who are just trying to get fairly paid for their work, the threat of one day getting replaced by machines lurks like a shadowy figure in the corner of every creative’s mind. There’s a worry that one day there might be no creatives left in the world. No more writers, artists, graphic designers, video editors, etc because we’ve all been phased out. 

Do we really want to go down this path? The path that will take us to a world where works are no longer creative and original? Already, Amazon is flooded with AI-generated books and magazines have had to pause their short story submissions because of the influx of AI-generated entries. 

I know we can't stop this AI train from hurtling forward, but what I'm suggesting is that we put proper guardrails (i.e. laws and regulations) that protect creators from getting screwed over. Original work being stolen to train AI has been going on for years, and Meta’s LibGen might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

And maybe this is the catalyst we need to make the shift back to more intentional creation and consumption. 

Maybe this shift is just what we need to revise our consumption and creation patterns. To not post several times a day every day just to keep the algorithm happy and bump up to the top of people’s discover page. To not churn out content for the sake of it, and in turn be more mindful of how much we are consuming and engaging. To slow down in a world that only spins faster by the day. 

Maybe this itself is a form of resistance.  

So while the tech bros are having their moment now, this is not the end of creatives. Writers ditching their Meta apps is just the beginning. We still have many more stories to tell, and we will keep telling them. We will keep creating, and we’ll adapt and find new ways to share our work and build our communities, away from the ever encroaching reach of AI.

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If you’re looking for human written stories with heroines fighting the encroaching threat of their destiny to forge their own fates, you might want to check out Children of the Desert, my Asian fantasy trilogy:

My very first trilogy that I took 6 years to write.

It’s got elemental magic, angry girls, girls with daggers, rogue princes, and slow-burn romance—all set against a backdrop of an ancient Chinese-inspired empire on the brink of revolution.

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