Meta delays new business terms after publisher pushback over AI data scraping
Meta has pushed the start of its new business terms to November 20th. Publishers feared the terms would let the company scrape news sites to train artificial intelligence.
Meta, the US technology company behind Facebook and Instagram, has postponed the enforcement of its new business terms until November 20th. The terms had been due to take effect on October 30th. The delay follows objections from news publishers who worry the rules could let the company scrape news websites and use the material to train artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Fast Company was the first to report on the matter.
Why publishers are concerned
As publishers read them, the terms appeared to give Meta permission to freely scrape the news sites that use its platforms and to use that material for AI training. Meta later edited the terms to remove language about "training" its products, but legal experts argued the change is not enough to rule out that possibility.
On Thursday, the News/Media Alliance, an industry group representing news publishers, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding that the terms be revised. The group said they would cause "severe harm" to publishers. Digital advertisers and publishers in the European Union and the United Kingdom also urged regulators to force Meta to halt the new terms.
Meta's explanation
Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts told The Verge that the date was moved to allow more time to explain to partners and stakeholders what is changing and what is not. According to Roberts, the extra time will let the company set out how Meta uses web crawlers and make clear that content owners can still use robots.txt to signal their preferences. That file tells automated scrapers whether they may crawl a given website.
