I was trying to send a requested publication to a fellow researcher, and hit upon this dialog on the right. This is an original screenshot. “You also ask ResearchGate to extract from each file…” etc., read for yourself.
A typical case of corporate BS. You just want to send a file, and they are processing it… Opting out, as mentioned at the end, does not stop this at all, it just prevents the results to be publicly displayed in your account.
As ResearchGate states, it wants to become “the Facebook of science”… Well, ‘nuff said!