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Meta removes language that raised scraping and AI training concerns
Meta recently updated its commercial terms of use, declaring that the company can âÂÂuse any content from [a business accountâÂÂs] domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity ofâ Meta products and services.
According to legal experts interviewed by Nieman Lab, this looked like a âÂÂremarkable provisionâ that could give Meta permission to scrape the website of any publisher with a Meta business account and use the content to train the companyâÂÂs AI models. (While Meta defeated a high-profile lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement last year, other cases against AI companies, including Meta, continue.)
However, a Meta spokesperson insisted that the updated terms did not reflect a change in the way Meta crawls the web. And now, The Verge reports that the provision has been removed.
âÂÂWeâÂÂve heard you and want to clarify: the crawling terms we consolidated only applied to our ads and business products, and weâÂÂve clarified that in the terms themselves,â the company said in a statement. âÂÂIt does not change how Meta uses web crawlers.âÂÂ