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Training our own AI models

posthog.com

216 pointstartieret143 comments

“Opt-in by default” is an oxymoron. If it’s default then I haven’t opted into anything. It’s been enabled by default.

Very true. I was considering PostHog, but this sours them in my eyes. Very deceptive wording.

They could’ve done a lot worse, and most companies would’ve.

There's a helpful response. It could always be worse!

Okok what I meant was, too many companies would've hid this in a ToS update, and these guys actively market the change, and the worst crime we can accuse them of is using the wrong word for "enable". I agree that's not perfect, but I can totally imagine that if you use "opt-in" and "opt-out" a bit too much at work, esp as an analytics company deep in cookie law land, that "opted-in be default" sounds like a perfectly normal thing to say, ie I bet this is all not malice, just mild incompetence.

This frustrates me too, if something is "opt-in", that means by default you're not included and can choose to be included. If something is "opt-out", that means you're included and can choose not to be.

But then it gets used to describe the reverse, and we have to add words to clarify.

I once saw a post here with a correctly described opt-in telemetry before, and the top comment here was attacking them for the reverse, thinking it was including them by default, so there's little winning, it's one of those words that has just come to mean it's opposite.

Isn't it kind of like mandatory tip? If you haven't given it voluntarily, i.e .its automatically opted-in and you maybe can't even not give it. its the same.

Opt-in by default means it is either mandatory (if you can‘t disable it) or it‘s opt-out (if you can) Opt-In by default is BS to make it sound less invasive

Imagine if they said paying taxes were opt-in by default. No, it's mandatory! Sure you can technically not pay taxes but you won't have a good time.

That is slightly different though. The government says you must pay taxes, mandatory as you said.

PostHog here is saying they will train on your data but opting out is allowed. For the taxes analogy to work, PostHoh would not offer the opt-out option at all and you'd be doing something like hacking their system to filter your data out on their end.

Many restaurants have the audacity to add a 20% (or whatever percentage) "service fee" that isn't considered tip. It even says something like "we use this to pay our staff competitive wages and health insurance." You can't opt out. It's just part of the bill. Then they have the gall to ask for a tip on top of that.

I've taken to a) leaving a negative Google or yelp review for such establishments and b) never coming back. This is a practice that needs to die.

Do you leave a negative review if they add the service charge but don't ask for a tip?

I've never had the pleasure of encountering that situation.

But at what point do we call a spade a spade and say it's just them secretly inflating their prices? "everything is a penny but we charge a 1000000% service charge"

I used to wait tables once upon a time and it was standard practice to add a fixed service charge for any large party in lieu of a tip. Have you really never encountered that?

I've encountered large party service charges and that makes sense because it usually requires staff to do stuff they wouldn't normally do for smaller parties.

I'm talking about restaurants that just add service charge to everyone.

I think the lesson from the airline industry is that while consumers will get angry about surcharges, pricing transparency is what really gets punished in the marketplace. There are enough consumers who will always buy the deceptively priced item that it's suicidal to tell the truth (absent government regulation forcing the issue for all purveyors).

There are a fair number of well-meaning restaurateurs who have tried no-tip policies for ethical reasons. But the mass marketplace has not changed.

Kinda reminds me of when Burger King had a 1/3 lb burger and a 1/4 lb burger and more people bought the 1/4 lb because they thought it was more burger than the (rightfully) more expensive 1/3 lb burger.

The average consumer can't do math.

I would. If it's mandatory just include it in the advertised food prices.

You were given the option to option in, by default. Clearly it makes sense, optioned out by default only happens when someone loses money on the option in default instead.

The internet really stinks. The 1999 teenager in me somewhere is really bummed.

They are opting you in by default. Very cool.

Never miss opting in to newsletters again with NewsAI! NewsAI automatically opts you in to thousands of newsletters and marketing campaigns around the world in an instant!

But that's not the standard definition of "opt-in". See for instance MW: "to choose to do or be involved in something".

Yes, we know. It was sarcasm.

“Opt-in by default” is just Opt-out. We already have the term.

CEOs and the like speak Weasel and only use Weasel Words.

Most companies would bury this change in a deceptively boring T&Cs update, but we value transparency, so here's what you need to know in an internet-friendly numbered list:

Users on our EU cloud instance are opted out by default

So too users with agreements that prevent training (e.g. BAA, MSA, or similar)

All other users on our US cloud instance are opted in by default

We will anonymize all data before it's used for training

We will only use data that already exists in your PostHog instance

We will do all the model training ourselves, which means...

We won't sell or send your data to third-party model providers

You can opt out at any time via your org settings in PostHog (admin access required)

Training won't start until June 29, so there's plenty of time to decide

If "we will opt everyone in because otherwise we won't get enough data because we know users won't opt in" is your business model, maybe it's time for a rethink.

Defaults matter.

Opt-in vs opt-out organ donorship has a large impact.

Most people on any web app won’t stray from the defaults.

Again, this is because it's uninformed.

Consent matters.

yea except one is a "dark pattern" to exploit customers for corporate profit while the other is to benefit society.

Which we probably need to consider changing now that some truly bizarre and evil shit is being done on donor organs:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212992

Off topic but I'm curious what's evil about that article. Bizarre, sure, but evil? They took a brain (an organ) from a dead person who had previously given consent to use their organs for that purpose.

I think most people, and definitely myself, when they sign up to be an organ donor, they think of the liver, kidney, and heart. Things that will help other people.

Not the brain, the center of conscience, being kept in some sort of horror-movie half-alive state. I do not think we understand consciousness enough to rule out what those brains are experiencing.

> half-alive state

The brain can't be "half-alive" after you've died.

> I do not think we understand consciousness enough to rule out what those brains are experiencing.

The parent edited their comment, wasn’t there when I replied. But if you believe your organs don’t die when you die, then don’t donate your organs?

Um... I, 220% disagree with that statement. I did edit to fix a spelling mistake, I did not add/remove content...

I wish HN showed the edit history >:(

> if you believe your organs don’t die when you die, then don’t donate your organs?

Because "I" don't know what "I" am.

Am I a brain? Am I a soul? Am I the universe?

I have no idea. Science currently has no idea. Religion is unprovable.

I want to donate my organs. If my death can bring life to others, it would be a truly amazing deed I could do.

On the other hand, if I am just a brain, I do not want to be locked into some sort of drugged, half-conscious state where I can't scream.

That's fair. Personally I wouldn't mind, but when you put it that way it makes sense people would be wary. Kind of reminds me of the series Pantheon, which is amazing but also kinda disturbing for similar reasons.

I sincerely hope this never comes to pass, but you or your loved ones may someday find themselves in the position of wishing more people were opted in for organ donation.

The same cannot be said for some random corporation training AI models off your data to make a buck or two.

I think it might be better to get rid of the organ *donation* system entirely.

Organ transplant surgery costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, yet donors get zilch, which is completely unfair when everyone else in the value chain gets paid.

If instead it was "allow my organs to be sold for my estate" I think the supply of organs would greatly increase, which would be win/win.

there are a number of problems with people selling their organs for profit, it's a perverse incentive — the people in the chain who otherwise get paid don't get paid for the organs, they get paid for the labor of doing their jobs

Organ donation saves lives at no cost to you (because at this point you're dead).

It's unclear if my private data being used for training has a cost to me, but I'm giving posthog money already. They shouldn't double dip.

It's frustrating as we literally just moved to it. Back to Mixpanel?

I'd recommend at least doing a short spike to see if you can build your own in some way. We did that for the purpose of experimentation and now we've built our own metrics platform that we completely own.

this is the business model of all companies training AI, if they had to get permission we wouldn't have frontier LLMs at all

So it's OK to do stuff without permission as long as we get something that makes a lot of people a lot of money?

*"that makes a select few rich people a lot more money?"

It's not OK, but it's a fact.

has it not always been this way?

Two things can be true. A shitty thing can prevail for a long time and still be shitty.

I think it's prevailed for all of human history in this case, so while shitty it appears to be a feature

Agreed but "it's always been shitty" isn't a reason to do nothing about it.

For much of human history slavery was fine too, but thankfully that's been dealt with in many nations. I know some folks argue that capitalism is just the next iteration of slavery but that's different.

not sure why you think stating facts implies nothing should be done about it

slavery is still fine in the US as long as you're incarcerated, and the US still does business with countries that regularly use the old fashioned kind — hell, some people still want to bring chattel slavery back here and still proudly display the confederate flag

these are just very slow things to change... in the timespan of centuries if you're lucky, but in the case of wealth bringing privilege we haven't cracked the issue for thousands of years

> if they had to get permission we wouldn't have frontier LLMs at all

Don't threaten me with a good time.

That would be a good thing TBH.

> All other users on our US cloud instance are opted in by default

This is slimy.

It's slimy because your government allows it, this doesn't have to be the case.

1. Lobby your representatives to improve your data protection laws, even if you think it's pointless to do so

2. Stop attacking EU data protection laws, even if they inconvenience you

As can be seen from this announcement, data protection laws do make a difference.

yes, of course!

Not really, it's slimy because it should be obvious that it's the morally wrong thing to do. There's no tangible benefit to the users, only risk.

The fact that they only opt-out EU users, because regulation forces them, tells you all you need to know about the moral compass of PostHog.

This shouldn't even require regulation, but apparently expecting companies to act morally is a bloody pipe dream. Profit over morals and concerns for your costumers, apparently.

I don't want to support a company that's going to do everything they can possibly legally get away with, I want to support companies that do the right thing where they can.

What concrete difference is being made here? If a site is hosted in the US but accessible by EU citizens AND using a PostHog US server isn't the data still being used for training?

Legitimate question, I am not trying to prove a point.

Cant wait to see posthog crash and burn, i have hated their service for years now.

why?

Bizarre take.

Calm down, GA4/Amplitude/Mixpanel.

There is no such thing as opt in by default - and burning that amount of customer goodwill because you want something instead of say, giving a discount to people who are willing to do it is a choice for people who have a lot more market share and their customers would have more trouble leaving.

> Most companies would bury this change in a deceptively boring T&Cs update, but we value transparency, so here's what you need to know in an internet-friendly numbered list:

This feels like a really bad defense. It’s great you provide transparency but I don’t want my analytics system writing my code. There are already so many other first movers that are better that I would rather connect to your analytics.

Hey man, respectfully, opt-in by default is not opt-in. That's opt-out, and it's scummy.

I feel like you either know that already, or should, but either way I won't be using your product anymore. Just pulled it out of the projects I'm personally in charge of and in the future I'm going to recommend against using it both internally and for clients.

Legitimately disappointed.

> All other users on our US cloud instance are opted in by default

Cool, cool. Glad to see that you are the arbiter of what your users have "opted" to do, and their input isn't required.

While we're at it, I'm going to "volunteer" your time to rebuild my patio this weekend. You don't need to worry about volunteering, I've done it for you.

If you send a postcard by Friday 5:00 PM, you can opt out of helping me with my patio. This is a one time offer; if you don’t, you have to help me every weekend for forever.

> We will anonymize all data before it's used for training

Anonymize by what definition? GDPR? Do note that this very high bar.

> All other users on our US cloud instance are opted in by default

Including end users in the EU? You should remember that you are obtained the personal data directly from data subject meaning Article 13 obligations apply. Article 13 omissions cannot be cured retroactively. Can you show all of your customers have provided sufficient Article 13 notice to cover this processing?

And do note that you are almost definitely within the scope of 3(2)(b).

> We will do all the model training ourselves

That's actually an interesting note. So you all will be managing the training runs on hardware you own or rent and manage?

There is definitely some confusion on the EU part. I am a European citizen, but some of my activity data on some of the sites I host is logged in US Posthog, which means Posthog is subject to the GDPR, even if the data is US hosted!

I think it would be better if there was an EU browser that provided a warning if accessing sites outside of the EU. If an origin site is in the EU then it could be subject to EU regulations.

as a user i dont like it, and am disappointed. it will take a bit of time to transition our systems off of posthog, but we will need to.

if you are looking at your metrics, I want to be clear that this transition will not happen overnight, but it _will_ happen for this reason, so just be aware that your short-term metrics won't tell the full story

> Users on our EU cloud instance are opted out by default

> All other users on our US cloud instance are opted in by default

Perfectly demonstrating that we need regulation to protect the general public, most companies will not do the right thing but the thing that benefits them first and foremost.

PostHog was a system we set up once, generally don't think about, and review from time to time, providing some occasional value. It was mostly harmless to leave around.

But it's apparently yet one more thing we have to be actively suspicious of as it defaults towards an intolerable state. So it's easier to just rip it out of the system and move on.

PostHog was wonderful as an analytics solution, with its developer-first approach, good tools, and nice pricing.

At this point, I lost count of how many times in the last two decades I fell for it, although I'm more used to it now. Companies that grow into success and change. With the AI frenzy, PostHog also started going all-in, and not only that, but they seem to be exploring no-coding tools and whatnot. Supabase is another one that was cool, but now it is in the AI abyss.

Indeed, at this point, I'm the constant. Maybe I'm the problem here, and perhaps I should learn to accept the new AI overlords, give up and go full AI.

> Supabase is another one that was cool, but now it is in the AI abyss.

(supabase ceo) I'm curious what gives you this impression? it's true that a lot of platforms build on top of Supabase, but our focus is still just building the best Postgres platform we can (OrioleDB, Multigres, etc)

admittedly we've also had to shift a lot of our tooling to things like Claude/Codex, but that's more reflective of how people are building now

What a great reminder to build my own analytics and self host. PostHog just lost a customer. They could easily send a email to each customer asking if we want this. The assumption means they have no product intuition about their own customers, let alone the customers of their customers. Bye.

Not trying to be snarky but why not just opt out instead of vibe coding your own analytics platform? I'm uncomfortable with people using my data to train AI, but those concerns revolve around where my data goes, and whether I'm notified/aware. Posthog is giving me good answers to those questions here.

It has to do with the priorities of the company and its leadership. Either they lack the basic awareness to know that training on your business customers data will likely leak their sensitive information to their competitors, or they just intend to sell that data. We are not paying to have our data stolen.

Very fair point!

Thanks for posting. I had been in the fence for the past few months of switching. The new AI products combined with the weird UIs had been irking me for a while. This is the final nail in the coffin. Opt-in is a terrible business model imo.

Agreed. While I don't entirely care enough to rip it out of any existing products, I certainly won't be adding it to any new ones.

I remember people cheering about their "OS" web redesign, which was the most confusing and unnecessary UX complication when I needed to go track down a session replay to debug something (They've since added navigation to the top right.)

“Opt-in by default” = opt-out?

Guess its "Opted-in" by default

Then it’s not opted. It’s just in.

"Possible to somewhat disable", I call it "PTSD".

Opt means to make a choice or select an alternative. They are either incompetent or lying on purpose.

It's probably very obvious by now, but there's something to be said about companies with the "SF Quirky" vibes:

- The OS Redesign

- "Sexy Legal Documents"

- Emails with "<relevant hedgehog meme goes here>" as the subject line

- Having a merch shop with action figures of your CEO

It works both ways. When you're looking for adoption and making very pro-user moves, I guess it can be a benefit. However, when you're now looking to grow revenue and making very anti-user moves, it's insult to injury.

I'm the last person to say that tech "shouldn't be fun" or something overly-broad like that, but if your messaging doesn't match the decisions of leadership, you're gonna have a bad time.

It started well, though. It was an analytics tool with a developer-oriented mind; it was refreshing compared to the competition. But all good things do seem to come to an end, especially when it is a company. They went full weirdos in the last 2 years. AI just made everything worse.

Back to scanning open source projects, I guess.

> Why this is opt out, not opt in

> Put simply, because otherwise we will not have enough data to train a model that's actually useful.

Hmm, when asked to opt-in to giving their data away for yet another AI non-service, people don't want to. That's strange! The only way to get their data is to assume you can take it and force them to tell you to stop. Wonder what that could mean? Oh well, it's a mystery no one will be able to solve.

Every day I'm more glad about EU legislation, that's all I have to say for now

Yeah, the legislation is morally defensible on its own terms. But when you look at the full system, something funny happens: EU legislation is blocking data extraction and platform lock-in tactics that Big Tech already used to become monopolies.

And since the big platforms don't have to unwind their advantages or pay back for the methods that are now restricted and considered illegal, they can peacefully extract rents from their entrenched positions for even longer, while everyone else is prevented from using the same ladder they climbed.

...until you learn the rates of economic development between Europe and the US since 2008.

Every last single cent of that "economic development" is in the hands of billionaires, at least people in Europe have rights and their government isn't a couple of monopolies in a trenchcoat.

That is a doubly naive pair of statements.

How many Yankees can get treatment for say cancer without going bankrupt?

https://www.britannica.com/science/confirmation-bias

Yes the amount of fiscal growth in America is very impressive. Yet quality of life is higher in Europe. I wonder why that is?

This should be a lesson in bad communication. Not being clear about whats being trained on is a huge mistake. And this announcement really puts into focus the drawbacks to PostHog’s cringe forward brand ethos

Perhaps if they hopped on a quick call for five minutes with some customers, they'd realize quite how little appetite there is for putting up with being opted into things automatically in the US but not in the EU.

As an aside, this also means the EU rules are working.

+1 this made me glad we opted for the EU region

Why won't companies explain what anonymisation means for them?

Posthog has unfettered logged in access to some sensitive stuff. What steps are they actually taking to scrub sensitive data from my replay before being used to train a model?

this is what triggered my post. The announcement pretends that it's not bug deal because of "anonymization" but that's easier said than done. You can send custom events and logs that contain confidential information even if it doesn't contain personal identifiers

> Why this is opt out, not opt in

> Put simply, because otherwise we will not have enough data to train a model that's actually useful.

AKA we won't be able to make as much money if we required you to give us permission to use your data.

They say, "our goal here is to improve PostHog as a product for our customers, not to expose or sell models trained on your data" but then don't actually list that as a limitation in the bulleted points.

AFAICT this now gives them default permission to train an LLM on your code (as Posthog telemetry data is inextricably tied to your code) use it, and even sell it if they wanted to (as it's not your data anymore, it's their model). Yikes.

This is the fastest way possible to ensure I will never do business with you, or stop doing business with you if I already am.

PostHog better transition to an AI company soon because they are one of the SAAS's which are absolutely cooked by vibe coding. What it does is extremely amenable to LLMs and it's also non-critical for a business, making it an excellent candidate for replacement by in-house solutions. And if it means never having to use their website again that's even better.

I wonder if they regret opensource, considering people will be using LLMs to replace them which have surely trained off of their code.

Gross.

They’ll use your product and your data to later sell a product back to you.

Even if there were no AI, that's not any different than any SaaS where your data gets stored. Picking at random, Optimizely certainly has a ton of interaction data available and they build new features and products that leverage your data (without which the features would be impossible). Could be reporting tools, funnel analysis, etc.

Today I was thinking, if I start a company in the LLM tooling space, I would put in the company mission in the incorporation documents that client data will not be used to train.

The temptation and the value is too great, and the opt-in opt-out consent thing ends up being a fuckery where the company tries to trick the user into allowing them to take a look into the data, presumably because they are selling the product at a loss and need an alternative revenue model.

Just make it impossible from the get-go, the fine print would be that the data can be shared off-band explicitly, in an email, or if explicitly copy pasted in a support chatbox, but there would be no mechanism for us to read the data from the databases much less from the client.

I don't mean it would be an air-tight mechanism like Signal or ProtonMail, if a court order would ask us to produce client info, we would still reserve the right to produce the data, but exceptionally, and definitely not for training models.

More companies need to make, for lack of a better term, "oaths" of what they won't do as a company. My pitch on it is to tie it to financial penalties the company agrees to pay, somewhere in the "enough to incentivize a significant portion of our user base to sue us" territory, such that it would be financial suicide to violate them.

Contracts ad incorporations are designed for this, the issue is that the incumbent legal strategy is to use template documents, and to reduce potential disputes to 1$ in private arbitration, essentially legal's job is to make legal go away.

Another term I would incorporate is a Seppuku term, if we get hacked, I resign, the company goes bankrupt. Anything else is the wrong attitude to computer security for companies that want to scale to Global reach.

Not to be cynical but do you think this would matter at all? Are you saying that companies would hold themselves to their missions or even something that's legally binding?

> "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one."

> OpenAI being founded as a nonprofit and becoming for profit.

> Didn't Anthropic literally say they wouldn't train on your data or keep it for longer than 30 days unless legally required, and then decided to opt people in to having their conversations used for training?

if it's in the charter/articles of incorporation/ articles of organization, it's binding. If I break the mission and a.

> OpenAI being founded as a nonprofit and becoming for profit.

I think this is a common misconception, or a disregard for nuances. The NFP was not and cannot be converted to a Corp, that's kind of the idea of an NFP. However there exist satellite companies.

Sam Altman does not own shares of Open AI because there are no shares.

OpenAI has a for profit company (capped, Public benefit corporation), which Sama I don't think has shares in. It's an instrument for investments.

But every transaction needs to be fair and in kind, there can be no gifts at any point in a way that would magically negate the purpose of an NFP, Sama cannot cede the IP of ChatGPT to himself or one of his companies, that's not what's going on.

Again, saying it, putting in terms of contracts (that can be retracted with notice), and putting it in the charter are all different.

You can’t “opt-in” to something that is the default. The choice is made for you — and when the choice is made for you? You haven’t opted in or out?

I would have guessed that was just a bad title here but no, article states it as "opted in by default".

I fixed the title, sorry for the typo!

not your fault, the article uses that language!

Time to scan for the current opensource copmmunity projects to migrate. Any recommendations are most welcome.

How much are they paying the users?

They are probably adding more trinkets to their shop, so you can buy them.

I’ve been evaluating PostHog for our company.

I’ve now made our decision. We won’t be using them.

If they are going to position yourself as the non-slimy no-BS guys, they can’t pull this nonsense.

All of them do if you don't do something about it(e.g. migrate to self hosted solutions), trusting a ToS in 2026 is as naive as it gets.

Mostly unrelated but the name of this company makes me think it's a Dick-Pics-as-a-Service provider.

netdix.com

This is totally intentional and they play it up for all it's worth on their bus ads in SF. Personally I find it just pathetic, but what can you do.

We were considering Posthog and now they’re on our shitlist.

Good job guys.

I initially used Posthog as an alternative to Google Analytics with more privacy. Now they want to use the data for a business purpose. Working hard towards enshitification?

> I initially used Posthog as an alternative to Google Analytics with more privacy.

This does not make any sense.

> Now they want to use the data for a business purpose.

They raised VC money and they want a return so this was predictable.

It makes perfect sense actually

Friendly reminder that you don't have to enable PostHog replays at all. I have a site lightly instrumented server-side with the slim bundle, and I'm still gonna double check my account settings but I'm pretty sure it's not even capable of doing the replay telemetry.

I feel that the US should step up their legislation game and make sure these companies can't retroactively make rules to steal their users data. I know it's trendy to hate the EU but their legislation actually protects the users, and not the companies interests.

Posthog still cannot fix bugs that exist there for years and still cannot fix their identification process for merging users, but who cares right? Lets slop some AI on top of a non-working project. Good thing

posthog have lost the plot

"Training won't start until June 29, so there's plenty of time to decide"

...except, we have made the decision for all the US customers already. Nice.

The enshittification has begun. Time to move on!

another would be excellent product company destroyed or being destroyed slowly due to VCs and the ever chase for 'growth'

LOL. You stay classy PostHog.

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