Meta's Oct 30 Terms Let It Scrape News Sites, Legal Experts Say

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.