Meta's Oct 30 Terms Let It Scrape News Sites, Legal Experts Say
TL;DR
- Meta's updated commercial terms, effective October 30, authorize crawling of websites 'associated with' business accounts on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
- Three legal experts told Nieman Lab the clause could cover virtually every news organization, since nearly all run at least one Meta business account.
- Media attorney Matt Topic of Loevy & Loevy called the clause 'a remarkable provision to bury in [the] terms of service,' citing licensing costs in the millions.
Meta's updated commercial terms take effect October 30, and the fine print says the company can crawl the websites 'associated with' any business account on Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, and use what it collects to 'train' Meta products. According to Nieman Lab, three legal experts who reviewed the clause said it could sweep in virtually every newsroom, since nearly all of them run at least one Meta business account; Nieman Lab notes that it has one too.
There is no opt-out. A business account that keeps using Meta's tools after that date has consented.
'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,' said Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy & Loevy. He added: 'It's not clear whether a court would enforce this, but publishers should assume that it would be enforceable.'
Meta defines its 'Products' to include 'AI at Meta,' which is how the training language lands on news content. The reporting is silent on how Meta identifies which site counts as 'associated with' an account.
Shared on Bluesky by 6 AI experts (top 5 by trust)
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Excellent reporting by @niemanlab.org making ALL aware. Meta claims it's simply consolidating existing terms and this won't change its crawling. Then why is Meta demanding sweeping permissions in a binding contract? Why …
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Originally reported by niemanlab.org
Read the original article →Original headline: Legal Experts Say Meta's Oct 30 Commercial Terms Let It Scrape News Publishers' Sites for AI Training