To Ban, or Not to Ban, this Is the D(AI)lemma: An Analysis of Ecosystem Landscapes

The relationship between innovation diffusion and privacy is often controversial. On March 31th 2023, the Italian Data Protection Authority (GPDP) determined the temporary suspension of ChatGPT in Italy on account of illicit data collection and processing practices. This study uses the Twitter debate as a proxy to examine how the Italian landscape responded to the suspension of ChatGPT, and its perception on the innovation-privacy trade-off. Our findings reveal that the intervention of the GPDP sparked an active and socially engaged reaction. Both popular and less popular users played significant roles in the flow of information, with popular users being more central in terms of connections and less popular users demonstrating stronger brokering capabilities. The suspension of ChatGPT had an impact on the sentiment and content of the debate, with the majority of users expressing negative opinions in their contributions. However, contributions mentioning VPN and alternatives to ChatGPT generally showed a more positive sentiment compared to those emphasizing privacy. This suggests that users’ negative sentiment was mainly connected with the inaccessibility of ChatGPT rather than to privacy concerns. Consequently, the Italian landscape viewed the GPDP intervention more as a restriction rather than a protective measure, prioritizing innovation diffusion over privacy considerations.