Meta drops the word "train" from its commercial TOS after AI backlash
Meta changes AI scraping policy but won’t add language respecting robots.txt.
Meta changes AI scraping policy but won’t add language respecting robots.txt.
The short version
- Hoping to quell criticism, Meta has dropped the word “train” from its “streamlined” commercial terms of service that kick in on October 30.
- Last week, Meta faced backlash after legal experts warned that the tech giant’s sweeping new commercial terms of service seemed to give Meta permission to endlessly scrape websites linked on business pages.
- Talking to Nieman Lab, experts suggested that Meta could possibly use the policy to avoid millions in licensing fees from news organizations by requiring all business users to share a wealth of AI training data simply for running a business page.
What happened
A Meta spokesperson confirmed that Meta did not alert users to the changed language following backlash. This potentially only adds to confusion ahead of the policy rollout.
Why it matters
It does not change how Meta uses web crawlers.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.