Meta has removed the word “train” from the commercial terms of service that kick in on October 30, a change made after legal experts warned the policy could let the company keep scraping websites linked from business pages. Critics say the revised language still leaves the door wide open.
The backlash began last week, when experts told Nieman Lab that the tech giant’s sweeping new terms seemed to grant Meta permission to scrape those sites endlessly. The experts suggested the policy could help Meta avoid paying millions in licensing fees to news organizations. The reason: it would require business users to share a wealth of AI training data just for running a business page.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the company did not alert users to the changed language after the backlash surfaced. That omission adds to the confusion ahead of the rollout. In a statement to Ars, the spokesperson acknowledged the initial Nieman Lab report but not the follow-up that reiterated the experts’ concerns.
“We’ve heard you and want to clarify: the crawling terms we consolidated only applied to our ads and business products, and we’ve clarified that in the terms themselves,” the spokesperson said. “It does not change how Meta uses web crawlers. As always, content owners can use robots.txt to signal their preferences. This is not about scraping news sites, and these updates don’t give us new rights that supersede those preferences.”
The experts who raised the first alarms were not persuaded. They told Nieman Lab the updates do not go far enough to protect business page users from invasive scraping. Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy & Loevy, said publishers should remain concerned.
“The revised version of the new terms still allows Meta to use that scraped content to develop any ‘business product,’” Topic said. “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.’”
The original language was broader. Meta’s terms authorized the company to use “any content” from websites posted on business pages “to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity” of its products, services and features.
The updated terms delete “train” and no longer refer to “any content.” Instead, they let Meta “periodically pull updates” from business users’ websites to “provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products,” and to help maintain the integrity and security of its products. Meta says the scraping benefits users. The policy states that the research feeds into efforts to “help you create and deliver ads and other commercial content, provide users information about your products and services, and connect you with users who may be interested in your products and services.”
James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School, told Nieman Lab that it was good Meta added “more language about the permitted uses.” Still, he said the phrase “develop…advertising and business products” remains “broad enough to drive a truck through.” He agreed with Topic that the update does nothing to restrict language tied to “associated with your products or services,” which he said would allow Meta to scrape entire sites.
University of Wisconsin law professor Benjamin Sobel said a stronger fix would be for Meta to write into the policy that it will respect scraping instructions in robots.txt files. Compliance with robots.txt is voluntary, and experts suggested Meta could rely on the legally enforceable terms, which omit any mention of robots.txt, to scrape sites that try to block it through that file.
“You can still express the preference, and unless it’s a legally enforceable preference, it can still be ignored all the same,” Sobel said.
Publishers push back worldwide
The criticism reaches beyond Nieman Lab’s reporting. News groups around the world are urging regulators to block the terms before they take effect.
Theo Bamber, chief executive of the United Kingdom News Media Association, accused Meta of a “shameless land grab” that relies on the “worst kind of arrogant tech platform bullying.” He urged U.K. regulators to “stand up for British creators and the business community” by “preventing Meta from setting this dreadful precedent.”
The European Publishers Council has already asked the European Commission to intervene. Its executive director, Angela Mills Wad, said publishers must be able to decide whether and how their journalism is used and to negotiate fair payment.
“Burying such far-reaching claims in platform terms is no substitute for consent,” Mills Wad said.
In the U.S., Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, called the terms “outrageous and probably illegal.” Nieman Lab noted that the alliance is the largest news publishing trade association in the country. Coffey urged regulators to recognize that Meta’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.”
“It cannot be allowed to be implemented on October 30,” Coffey said.
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