No, they own it because you said so. You "provide them with a global, non-revocable license to do things with the content you submit" as per the agreement you accepted. You're not required to enter into this agreement, this was a totally optional thing you opted to do.

And they own the platform. And then you came to the platform (with those rules), and wrote your comment on it. So you agreed to the rules.

At least that is what the TOS usually says. You can always get around that by making your own service or the like.

Think of it like visiting a foreign country. Like it or not, their rules apply one way or another. If they can enforce them, anyway.

Yeah I get it.

I just don't understand the public outrage. Why is everyone so worried about this? I write stuff knowing it's publicly available, and I don't give a crap about HN or Reddit or whomever's claims to my writings.

As far as I'm concerned it's all public domain, so what if OpenAI trains on it? Why should that bother me? I just don't understand, it really just feels like a witch hunt, like everyone just wants to hate AI companies and they'll jump on any bandwagon that's against them no matter how nonsensical it is.

If you got replaced at the job you needed by ‘AI’, isn’t it salt in the wound that they used your comments that you wrote without it in mind (in part) to do it?

Why wouldn’t someone be mad about that?