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Meta has removed the word “train” from its upcoming terms of service for business accounts. The company revised its terms after Nieman Lab’s story on Thursday exposed that the new terms would permit broad scraping of websites “associated with” business accounts, and possibly allow Meta to use that scraped content to train its AI models.
In its revision, published Friday afternoon, Meta removed the word “train” from a list of allowed use cases and limited those uses to “advertising and business products,” rather than all Meta products. But the revised terms will still allow for broad scraping of websites, potentially superseding robots.txt files, according to legal experts.
The new terms are slated to go into effect on October 30. There is no option for business accounts to opt out of the new terms before then.
“I think publishers should remain concerned,” said Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy & Loevy. “The revised version of the new terms still allows Meta to use that scraped content to develop any ‘business product.’ That doesn’t seem to be a defined term, and presumably Meta is developing AI business products. I think ‘develop’ is broad enough to include ‘train.'”
Virtually every news organization has at least one Meta business account, which allows companies to manage Facebook Pages, Threads accounts, Instagram profiles, and WhatsApp channels from one place.
As of publication time, the section reads (with changes in bold):
Meta has not included any language about respecting robots.txt preferences in its revised terms of services.At least three journalism organizations have publicly raised concerns about the forthcoming terms as a result of Nieman Lab’s reporting.
Prior to the update on Friday, the European Publishers Council announced that it would formally petition the E.U.’s telecommunications regulatory authorities and its executive body, the European Commission, to “scrutinize these terms urgently, including their implications for copyright, contractual fairness and abuse of market power.”
The United Kingdom News Media Association, the trade organization representing British media, issued a statement on Friday calling for government officials to intervene.
“This shameless landgrab attempt from Meta to scrape anything and everything from news publishers and business websites to train their AI products is the worst kind of arrogant tech platform bullying,” said chief executive Theo Bamber. “We urgently need Ministers and regulators to stand up for British creators and the business community by calling out this outrageous behaviour and preventing Meta from setting this dreadful precedent.”
The News/Media Alliance — the largest news publishing trade association in the United States — denounced the terms, with president and CEO Danielle Coffey calling the update “outrageous and probably illegal.”
“The company’s decision to withhold access to its audience unless businesses allow Meta to scrape content from their websites is an appalling, bad-faith policy, and a clear abuse of the company’s market power,” Coffey said. “It cannot be allowed to be implemented on October 30.”
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