Meta Dropped the Word “Train” From Its Commercial Terms After a Scraping Backlash
Meta has dropped the word “train” from the streamlined commercial terms of service that take effect on October 30, hoping to quell criticism. The change follows a backlash last week, after legal experts warned that the sweeping new terms seemed to give Meta permission to endlessly scrape websites linked on business pages.
Talking to Nieman Lab, those experts suggested Meta could possibly use the policy to avoid millions in licensing fees from news organizations, by requiring all business users to share a wealth of AI training data simply for running a business page. A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the company did not alert users to the changed language following the backlash.
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The silence is the telling part: by the company’s own account, nobody was told the wording had changed, which potentially only adds to confusion ahead of the rollout. Anyone who read the earlier version had no prompt to look again.
Deleting a verb doesn’t settle the objection, which went to the sweep of the terms: experts warned they seemed to grant permission to endlessly scrape sites linked on business pages. And the statement the company gave Ars acknowledged Nieman Lab’s initial report but not its follow-up reiterating those concerns.