Meta’s AI could still scrape news sites, legal experts say

Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say

Starting October 30, business accounts will consent to Meta scraping their websites if they continue using Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp.

Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say

Starting October 30, business accounts will consent to Meta scraping their websites if they continue using Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp.

European Commission should be extremely concerned about Meta’s dilemma for European Publishers: Hand Over Journalism for AI Scraping or Lose Access to Key Platforms

The European Publishers Council (EPC) is highly concerned about an update to Meta’s new commercial terms that will allow the tech giant to scrape content from news sites and use that content to train the company’s AI products. The update comes into effect on 30th October and will impact any company with a Meta account. EPC Executive Director Angela Mills Wade said: “Meta appears to be using its commercial terms to claim sweeping permission to scrape publishers’ websites and use their journalism

Meta seeks to scrape news content for AI training without permission | Angela Mills Wade posted on the topic | LinkedIn

Meta’s message to publishers: let us scrape your journalism for AI, or stop using our platforms. In the very week that News Media Coalition launched their Primary Source Journalism Framework we get another extraordinary example of how dominant digital platforms are attempting to turn their market power into permission to appropriate the content of others. For free. As reported by Nieman Journalism Lab, Meta’s new commercial terms, effective 30 October, purport to authorise the company to scrape websites associated with business accounts, including news publishers, and use that content to train its products. No negotiated licence. No meaningful choice. Just acceptance by continued use of Meta’s services. And the implications go further. The terms even contemplate creating test credentials to access websites, raising serious questions about publishers’ ability to control access to their own content. Meta argues that publishers can still use robots.txt to restrict crawling but this is no safeguard to protect primary source journalism as such sweeping ‘contractual’ permissions could undermine publishers rights reservations. This is becoming a familiar pattern. Google effectively ties visibility in Search to the use of publishers’ content in its AI services. Now Meta appears to be seeking similarly expansive rights through its commercial terms. This is not consent freely given. It is an attempt to leverage platform dependency to extract valuable intellectual property without negotiation or remuneration. European copyright law gives publishers rights over their content, including the right to reserve it from text and data mining. Those rights must not be circumvented through take-it-or-leave-it contractual conditions imposed by powerful gatekeepers. The European Commission and competition authorities should scrutinise these terms urgently, including their implications for copyright, contractual fairness and abuse of market power. Publishers must retain the right to decide whether, how and on what terms their journalism is used by AI companies. Opt-in, not opt-out. Licensing, not appropriation. Henna Virkkunen Teresa Ribera #Copyright #AI #PrimarySourceJournalism #MediaPluralism #Competition #Publishers #BadBots | 23 comments on LinkedIn

Legal experts warn Meta’s new terms still grant broad scraping permissions, despite language changes

Allowing scraped content to be used for all "advertising and business products" is a substantial expansion of Meta's permissions.

Meta may use sweeping new commercial TOS to avoid millions in AI licensing fees

Meta “streamlined” its commercial TOS. Legal experts warn it’s an AI power grab.

MediaDailyNews: Meta Forges AI Content Deal With Newsmax

Meta will gain access to Newsmax's archived and current library of digital news content, with the ability to train its AI-powered search and discovery tools while supporting user searches on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Meta AI.

NMA Condemns Arrogant Meta’s ‘Shameless Landgrab Attempt’ To Plunder News Publisher Websites - News Media Association

Responding to a Nieman Lab report that Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites if publishers continue to use Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp, News Media Association Chief Executive Theo Bamber said: “This shameless landgrab attempt from Meta to scrape anything and everything from news publisher and business websites to train their […]

Scoop: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

This comes just two weeks after Meta and YouTube were found negligent in a landmark case about social media addiction.

News/Media Alliance Statement on Changes to Meta Commercial Terms of Use | News/Media Alliance

"Meta's new commercial terms of use are outrageous and probably illegal."

Meta drops the word "train" from its commercial TOS after AI backlash

Meta changes AI scraping policy but won’t add language respecting robots.txt.

Meta Secretly Trained Its AI on a Notorious Piracy Database, Newly Unredacted Court Docs Reveal

One of the most important AI copyright legal battles just took a major turn.

Meta Doesn’t Want to Be a Social Media Company Anymore

Despite an $18 billion settlement to end a nationwide child endangerment lawsuit, the firm clearly no longer sees social media as its main product—or its future.

It’s the End of the Web as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

AI is disrupting web search and publishing, perhaps for the better…