Meta can use web scrapers to crawl and collect content from websites “associated with” business accounts on its platforms, according to its new commercial terms of use.
The update, set to go into effect on October 30, will include news publishers with business accounts.
For news publishers, this clearly represents permission to Meta to train AI on any content from their sites and possibly to deploy some of that content, even in competition with the publishers themselves,” said James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School.
The update also states that Meta can create “test credentials” in order to scrape websites associated with business accounts. Grimmelmann said this would technically allow Meta to “sign up as a fake user” to bypass registration walls on a publisher’s site to access content.