Meta removed "train" from its business terms after publisher backlash over scraping

Meta $META revised its commercial terms for business accounts on Oct. 16, removing the word "train" from the permitted uses of content it scrapes from associated websites, according to Nieman Lab.

The revision also narrows Meta's permitted use of the content to "advertising and business products," dropping the earlier coverage of every Meta product, according to Nieman Lab. The terms take effect Oct. 30, and business accounts have no option to opt out before then.

Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the company wanted to clarify the language. "The crawling terms we consolidated only applied to our ads and business products, and we've clarified that in the terms themselves," Roberts told The Verge. "This is not about scraping news sites, and these updates don't give us new rights that supersede those preferences."

Roberts said publishers and other site owners can register their wishes through robots.txt, a text file that instructs crawlers on the sections of a site open to them, according to The Verge. Meta has left any pledge to honor robots.txt out of the revised terms, according to Nieman Lab.

The change followed a Nieman Lab story published Oct. 15. It reported that the original terms let Meta use content from sites associated with business accounts to train its products, a category that includes "AI at Meta." Three legal experts told Nieman Lab the language could support an argument that Meta may scrape news sites for AI training. Nearly every newsroom maintains at least one business account with Meta, according to Nieman Lab.

Those experts said the revision leaves concerns in place. "The revised version of the new terms still allows Meta to use that scraped content to develop any 'business product,'" Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy & Loevy, told Nieman Lab. "I think 'develop' is broad enough to include 'train.'"

James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School, told Nieman Lab the revision "does nothing to restrict" the "associated with your products or services" language "that would let Meta scrape entire sites."

Benjamin Sobel, a University of Wisconsin law professor, told Nieman Lab that compliance with robots.txt is voluntary. Unless a preference is legally enforceable, he said, "it can still be ignored all the same."

Publisher groups have also objected, according to Nieman Lab. The European Publishers Council said it would petition E.U. regulators and the European Commission to scrutinize the terms. The U.K. News Media Association called on government officials to intervene. Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, called the terms "outrageous and probably illegal" and said they "cannot be allowed to be implemented on October 30."

Meta faces a separate legal fight over AI training. Five publishers and author Scott Turow filed a class-action lawsuit in May alleging the company pirated millions of books and journal articles to train its Llama models. Meta disputed the allegations and said it would fight the suit.