“Does Meta think we can’t read?” Meta abandons sketchy commercial terms update.
Summary
Meta has indefinitely paused a planned update to its commercial terms that would have let it use content from websites linked to Facebook business pages to develop AI and other products. The company said its current terms remain in effect while it consults stakeholders.Key Facts
- Meta originally planned to put the updated terms into effect on October 30, then delayed them until November 20.
- The proposal would have required businesses with Facebook pages to let Meta crawl linked websites, with no opt-out described in the article.
- The terms reportedly required some publishers to provide test credentials so Meta’s bots could access paywalled content.
- Courts in Brazil and Norway issued preliminary injunctions against the terms after organizations filed lawsuits.
- The United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation into whether Meta was using its market position to obtain AI training data.
- U.S. Senators Adam Schiff and Marsha Blackburn asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to withdraw the terms.
- Meta said its existing crawling practices remain unchanged and that website owners can use robots.txt files to state crawling preferences.
- Meta did not include specific language about respecting robots.txt preferences in its revised terms, according to the article.
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