Meta removes disputed wording on website content from its terms — The Verge

Meta has removed from its commercial terms page wording that, according to some experts, could have allowed the company to use content from websites, including news sites, to train artificial intelligence products. The Verge reported the update.

What wording was removed

The removed clause stated that Meta could use any content from domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of the company’s products, services, and features.

Nieman Lab and Cornell University professor of digital and information law James Grimmelmann interpreted this as an attempt to give Meta the right to use content collected from websites free of charge to train AI products. In their view, the wording could also have overridden instructions to block crawlers in the robots.txt file.

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Meta’s position

Meta Vice President of Communications Andy Stone and company representative Daniel Roberts previously stated that the way web crawlers are used had not changed. After the terms were updated, Roberts explained that the unified crawling rules applied only to the company’s advertising and business products, and that this clarification has now been added directly to the text of the terms.

According to Roberts, the edits do not change how Meta’s web crawlers operate. He also noted that content owners can still use robots.txt to specify their preferences, and the updated terms do not give the company new rights that would override those preferences.