Meta updates terms on October 30

Meta will update its commercial terms of service on October 30, requiring business accounts to allow Meta to train AI on linked website content. Businesses cannot opt out.

News publishers face millions in lost fees

News organizations could charge Meta millions in licensing fees to access their articles for AI training. Meta's terms could grant those permissions without payment, regardless of fair use court decisions.

The new language on scraping

The updated terms authorize Meta to use automated software to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl domains and web pages associated with business accounts and use content to train Meta products.

“You authorize us (or any entity acting on our behalf) to use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents)”

Meta denies plans to ignore robots.txt

Meta's spokesperson told Nieman Lab the company has no plans to use the terms to ignore robots.txt instructions that block scraping on news sites. News organizations can still opt out of scraping.

But courts could change the equation

If courts affirm that AI training on non-news articles is fair use, news organizations worry Meta's stance might change and the terms could legally override robots.txt instructions to grab content.

Legal experts see scraping risk

Three legal experts told Nieman Lab the terms could be used to argue Meta can scrape content from news sites and train AI products on it.

“train AI on any content from their sites and possibly deploy some of that content, even in competition with the publishers themselves”

Meta's cash-for-links program adds pressure

Meta recently began charging users to post links on its platforms. Combined with the new terms, this could let Meta charge publishers for sharing links, then use permission to scrape those links for AI training.

The licensing value at stake

Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy and Loevy, told Nieman Lab the provision would give Meta access to material that would likely cost many millions of dollars in a licensing market.

“this is a remarkable provision to bury in [the] terms of service, given that this would give Meta access to material that would likely cost many millions of dollars in a licensing market”

Test credentials are new language

The updated terms mention test credentials for the first time in Meta's commercial policies. Legal experts warned this language could allow Meta to bypass paywalls and automate scraping of news sites.

Meta calls it streamlining, experts see tying

Meta claimed it was consolidating scattered language about crawling. Legal experts told Nieman Lab the update resembles antitrust tying, forcing businesses to accept broad scraping permissions as a condition of using Meta services.

Publishers consider abandoning Meta

Nieman Lab is talking to news publishers about whether the update might trigger a widespread pullback from Meta platforms.Stephen Beale, founder of The Steampunk Explorer, said the move felt arrogant and made him consider quitting.

“such an arrogant, in-your-face move on Meta's part. It just makes me angry, and I don't want them to get away with it”