Meta's new terms let it crawl business websites to train AI, with no opt-out
Almost every news organisation runs a Meta business account. Keep using it after October 30, and you are deemed to have agreed.
By The desk, News · · 1 min read
Tags: meta · publishers · training data · terms of service
- The news
- Almost every news organisation runs a Meta business account.
- Why it matters
- Keep using it after October 30, and you are deemed to have agreed.
- What's confirmed
- The photograph is generated for this story.
Tied to a named source. Not marked verified. Nieman Lab: Meta's new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say
The news
Meta's updated commercial terms, which take effect October 30, authorise it to use bots to crawl content from websites associated with any business account on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp, and to use that content to develop and train Meta products, including AI, Nieman Lab reported after three legal experts reviewed the terms. A business that keeps using Meta's tools after that date is deemed to consent.
Why it matters
While Google pays 400 publishers for licensed content, Meta is taking a consent-by-default route to similar material. Publisher groups and European regulators are likely to test whether a terms-of-service clause can license training data.
The details
Media lawyer Matt Topic called it a remarkable provision to bury in the terms of service. He said it is not clear a court would enforce it, but that publishers should assume it is enforceable.
Meta says the change concerns product information and that robots.txt controls remain available, according to The Verge. The text of the clause is broader than product pages.
What we could not check
- We have not seen a court ruling on clauses like this.
- Meta's full response to the experts' reading was not available to us.
Sources
The photograph is generated for this story. It does not show the people named in it.