“Does Meta think we don’t know how to read?” Bamber wrote. He argued that removing the word “train” from the terms of service did not reassure publishers, since “develop” posed the same threat.
“You’re saying you can use all the content you mine to develop ‘any enterprise product’. I mean, come on,” he wrote.
Nieman Lab noted that there was bipartisan concern in the United States. Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) sent letters asking Mark Zuckerberg to withdraw the terms.
On October 28, Meta’s vice president of communications Andy Stone posted on X that Meta would do just that, at least for now.
“We’ve heard feedback from publishers about our proposed ads and updated terms of business,” Stone said. “We care deeply about our partners and do not plan to make policy changes without full consultation with industry groups and leaders. We are committed to getting this right and, as we expect, this consultation could extend beyond November 20, in which case we would delay implementation of the updated terms.”
Meta has insisted that it would never use its terms of service to bypass the robots.txt file. In an update to business page owners, the company offered a “reminder” that “our crawling practices remain unchanged and content owners can continue to indicate their crawling preferences using robots.txt.”
But the company still faced criticism after promising to withdraw the terms and consult with publishers to get the policy right.
As regulatory and judicial scrutiny intensified, Nieman Lab noted that Meta took steps to try to calm publishers’ concerns, but “has not included any specific language about honoring robots.txt preferences in its revised terms of service.”
