- Meta revised the terms of service for business accounts and added language saying that content from domains, web pages, and URLs connected to business accounts may be used to provide, improve, and research Meta products, including AI training.
- Legal experts interviewed by Nieman Lab said the language could be read as permission for Meta to scrape news publisher websites with business accounts and use them to train AI models.
- A Meta spokesperson said the terms change did not alter Meta's web crawling practices. According to The Verge, the language was later removed.
- In a statement, Meta said the unified crawling terms apply only to advertising and business products, and that it clarified this in the terms. This is Meta's own explanation and has not been independently verified.
O: When a small business owner who runs a blog through a Meta business account receives a notice about updated terms, one way to respond is to read the content-use clauses directly.
X: The deletion and Meta's explanation rely on the company's claims and media reports, and the actual scope of the wording before deletion has not been independently verified.