Meta has revised its upcoming terms of service for business accounts after backlash, removing the word 'train' from its AI permissions. However, legal experts warn the new terms still authorize broad web scraping for advertising and business products, potentially overriding robots.txt restrictions. The updated terms apply to all Meta platforms including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. Publishers express concern over undefined 'business product' language that may include AI development. The changes go into effect October 30 with no opt-out option for business account holders.
Legal analyst Matt Topic of Loevy & Loevy states the revised terms remain problematic as 'develop' could encompass AI training. Meta claims robots.txt preferences are still respected despite lacking explicit language in the new terms. The company maintains news sites retain crawler disablement capabilities through standard robots.txt flags. Nearly all news organizations operate Meta business accounts managing multiple platform presences.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing