Sometimes (out of morbid curiosity, or the narcissistic urge to see if I‘m famous yet :p), I google my username. I use it for a lot of things, not just iNat, so it is interesting to me to see what comes up to judge my „digital footprint“.
I was quite shocked. I didn’t think Google would use iNaturalist profile data for their AI overview. And what’s more, also give quite a detailed description.
I don’t know how I feel about this, if I‘m honest. On one hand, all of this is information I have decided can be public. On the other hand, I have volunteered this information to be visible on iNat and iNat only. And I never really expected it to be searchable info on Google, much less on the AI overview (which is placed quite prominently in the search-results-list as well).
Well, anyway. I guess, this is something to be aware about when writing your bio. This should be common sense already, on the internet, but apparently AI has magnified the problem quite a bit…
(P.S.: Don’t know why it links to my pinterest account. I was never really active on there to begin with and definitely don’t have all that information there)
In turn, I asked ChatGPT about my username, and it was more in line with what I expected:
It just gave a list of things it could mean (and among them surprisingly guessed correctly that it is a pun of „eye“ and „ikosaeder“ (German for icosahedron)) with no mention of me or my username.
Well yes, i’ve seen AI stuff recently pulling from iNat for viewpoint on several different taxa, and the steps enacted by curators, for better or worse. I’m not surprised if it’s pulling in from contributions you made - and if not aware, iNat have taken in a big grant from google for AI integration, others will likely discuss what that means functionally.
Anyway, pushed me to search myself
" Roles: He is a highly active curator and identifier on platforms like iNaturalist,"
and " Community Contributions"
Taxonomic Curation: He frequently discusses the need to update outdated taxonomic sources, such as the Catalogue of Life 2012, which he has described as “absurdly out of date” for modern research.
Glad that AI is now echoing what i’ve said in past, and still agree with. That said, i fear the day AI echos what my earlier self may have said but I no longer agree with!
I noticed something similar recently when googling somebody who has their actual name in their profile; it not only listed their real life credentials but talked summarized their interests based on the iNat bio. It’s possible that a feature request could be made to iNaturalist to allow people to request their profiles have noindex, nofollow options, or other options that might request AI / bots not crawl the content. Whether this would be respected by those bots / crawlers is another thing altogether.
I also coincidentally found one of my journal posts showing up in the AI summary when I googled suggestions for germination / stratification of a particular species, which I’d talked about in a journal post. It referred to my post as “one report states that…” - which I found interesting.
I’ve realized something similar upon googling my name as well as others’ - this Google AI overview seems to just take from whatever it can “grab“ online that may relate to the name that has been searched. I’ve seen Facebook pages pop up, high schools and graduating years, tags and interests followed on social media such as Instagram, etc. Chances are your Pinterest account is connected to your name, somehow. Pretty much, if you can find the information on google sans-AI, so can the AI and it can be included in the overview.
I’m not sure why anyone should find this strange. Unless I’ve missed something, all information we post on iNaturalist, including our usernames, profiles, journal posts and observations (but not obscured location information) is visible to anyone on internet. It can therefore be used by searches, whether traditional or in the form of an AI overview.
Well, yes… actually that’s how it’s been for a very long time.
Again well, yes… in that it’s increased the possibility/probability that someone searching your name will find this information. And again… not too sure why this should be strange or shocking. To be honest, I’d be really proud if my iNaturalist profile and activities came up in a search of any kind .
That said, the possibility of including an option to opt out of search engine visibility for certain types of information could be a good idea to avoid this sort of situation arising in the future. I’m very much an opt-in sort of person, but I can see why some users might prefer to remain below the radar.
Citizen Science: She is an active contributor to iNaturalist , documenting local flora like fynbos.
And I am okay with that. AI was mostly about my blog (but with a weird pixelated TINY wtf is that ?! picture when it had hundreds of good ones to choose ;~)) (Luckily my iNat ID skills helped me work out - our Beware of the Cat sign with flaked off paint on the garden wall - from over a year ago - why Google why) And … I share my name across the world. AI offers a Canadian architect. I suspect AI is pulling from iNat because you don’t, otherwise, have a social media footprint to trawl ?
We know iNat itself is public. But I was disconcertd when I first realised that Google search will also pull Forum posts. We are not among ourselves here.
Google also ranks search results differently depending on who is searching and where. I don’t know what browser or privacy settings you are using, but it is quite likely that Google has information about you (search history, websites you visit etc.) and is prioritizing results for you based on this information.
I’m not so much astounded by the fact that the Google AI overview returns information on my iNat profile, but rather to which extent is has paraphrased my bio. There’s a difference between “eyekosaeder is the name of an account active on the iNaturalist platform” and “eyekosaeder is the name of an account on iNat belonging to a biology student by the name of Hannes who… etc. etc.”
Publicly visible on the internet doesn’t automatically mean searchable in google search results as far as I know. Again, I’m not concerned about what the AI spat out about me, since I haven’t volunteered any information I’m particularly concerned about.
But my Instagram account (which runs under the same name) doesn’t get any mention, despite being public. Nor do any other accounts I might still have somewhere under that name (apart from Pinterest). I think I remember Reddit even allowing each user to toggle their information being searchable on Google or not. So it is definitely possible to stop google from accessing that information.
All that being said, iNat may contain very sensitive location information. Currently, with a bit of work, you should be able to deduce my full name, what I’m doing, and with reasonable certainty my address from what I or others have posted just from my username. Maybe even a photo (although I’d be surprised). (I’m well aware of this and have actively decided against obscuring my data at this point, since that would currently be more trouble than the alternative). So I’m not sure it is that great, in general, for all of that info being accessible this easily.
For what it’s worth, in terms of privacy, I still think it should only be possible to see people’s profiles and personal observation pages when logged into an iNat account, which would automatically prevent this too. And yes, I am aware that this is not a huge barrier for stalkers or whoever wants the information for whatever purpose, but I think it would still be better for the barrier to exists.
Sad but true — everything written on the internet stays on the internet. Everyone chooses their own level of personal information sharing, but it’s important to understand that with the current development of social networks, messengers, and data leaks, using the same account name across all platforms isn’t a very good idea, IMHO. There are plenty of ways to find a user’s interests, groups, and even messages in social media and private groups, and you can even infer someone’s place of residence from iNaturalist.
For my garden I use the suburb - but many iNatters use their actual … and this is my house. That I am not willing to do. I even see their full street address used.
Isn’t it just as simple as this - Google search engine indexes different pages from iNaturalist. Things such as user profiles, flags, posts etc. are not hidden from search, so the AI overview may occasionally pull up info from there.
Not sure if possible or needed, but maybe allow to hide user profiles from search engines, as a privacy setting.
According to this article, “Googlebot is becoming more assertive. It may override overly restrictive or conflicting directives that hinder its ability to evaluate relevance—especially noindex paired with internal links or sitemap entries.” So even if iNaturalist did implement noindex / nofollow options, it’s not clear it would actually deter Googlebot and other AI crawlers. Good thing Google got rid of that pesky “Do no evil” motto! It might have interfered with their irresponsible business models!
I guess the following comment is still on-topic, since this thread was allowed to stay up, and this thread is about the interplay between iNaturalist and Google.
The article goes into a lot of detail. In a nutshell, when Google started, it was a bunch of idealistic computer nerds. They observed that giant corporations were evil, so they had a simple rule: “Don’t be evil”.
Then, they became a giant corporation, and they realized that you are forced to do evil things in that world. So now they do a lot of evil!
(I am a huge fan of ai and have more positive views about online privacy than most forum users, but I wanted to share this context, because I think it’s interesting when young, idealistic people start something, and then get confronted with the harsh realities of the world. Some people might even draw comparisons to a certain nonprofit org that shall go unnamed!)
yup, this is just normal internet stuff, since search engines began in the 90s. public sites get indexed. that’s what search engines are. this is all just how the internet works for decades. It’s just that also, there’s a stupid AI summary of the search results too. Just a different presentation of the same indexed public data that has been out there since forever.
I am quite aware of how much public information I make available about myself online. So its not surprising to me how much can be found. For people who dont understand the risks of putting information online (Kids/teens) or for people who for various reasons may need to protect information, as a rule of thumb you should consider that anything you put online can become public, even if you believe its only available to friends of your profile (Such as facebook). I am lucky enough to be in a position where I am generally okay with having certain public info out there. About every 6 months or so I ask chatgpt who I am, to see where its at judging me. It says about what I expect, and what anyone who searches me can find.
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