Legal experts are sounding the alarm that Meta will soon update its terms of business to require trading accounts to allow Meta to train AI on their linked website content, not just their social media posts.
The TOS update, which will go into effect on October 30, will not allow companies to opt out, but will instead suggest that they stop using Meta services if they do not agree to allow metabots to freely crawl their linked content.
As Nieman Lab reported on Thursday, this will affect all business accounts, but is particularly impactful for news publishers who could perhaps charge Meta millions in licensing fees to continuously access their articles for AI training. News organizations are currently fighting a battle with OpenAI over whether such unlicensed training is fair use, and Meta’s terms apparently risk granting it broad permissions, no matter which way the court leans.
“While journalism is not the only industry that will be affected by this update, virtually every news organization has at least one Meta business account, including Nieman Lab,” the lab said.
Specifically, the updated terms say:
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) and create test credentials to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve or crawl the domains, web pages or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services, or that are available through your or your users’ use of Meta Company products and services, and to periodically extract updates to such domains, web pages or URLs. Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train and maintain the integrity of Meta Company’s products, services and features provided under these Terms of Business and any applicable supplemental terms.
In particular, there is no mention of AI, but it is inferred from a single use of the word “train” and from references to automated scraping and crawling.
