Legal experts warn Meta's new terms still grant broad scraping permissions (www.niemanlab.org)

Meta has revised its upcoming terms of service for business accounts, focusing on its scraping permissions following criticism from legal experts and media organizations. While the company removed the term "train" from its usage list in response to concerns that it would allow broad scraping of content for AI training, the revised terms still enable extensive data collection from websites associated with business accounts. Legal interpretations suggest that this change could enable Meta to leverage scraped content for a wide range of "business products," a vague category that likely encompasses AI-based offerings. The implications for the AI and media ecosystems are significant. With many news organizations holding Meta business accounts, the potential for widespread scraping may infringe on copyright and contractual rights, raising alarms about market power abuse. Experts emphasize that the vague language of the terms could lead to aggressive data scraping practices that undermine the preferences expressed through robots.txt files, which are meant to protect site content. The situation has prompted considerable pushback from journalistic bodies, urging regulatory scrutiny, as the terms are set to take effect on October 30, highlighting ongoing tensions between tech companies and content creators in the digital landscape.