Meta postpones business terms challenged over website scraping

Meta has postponed updated commercial terms for Facebook, Instagram and other business-account products after publishers and open-web advocates objected that the rules could permit broad collection of material from linked websites. The terms had originally been due to take effect Oct. 30, but Meta said on Oct. 29 that existing terms would remain in force for the time being as it considered feedback.

The proposed language would have authorised automated software, including crawlers, bots and web scrapers, to index, cache, analyse, collect and retrieve material from domains, pages and URLs associated with a business account. It would have applied across business clients without payment for extracted material, according to ABC News.

Business accounts allow companies and public figures to manage Facebook pages, Instagram profiles, Messenger accounts and WhatsApp channels, as well as advertising and marketing activity. The terms said collected website content could be used to provide, develop, improve, research, train and maintain Meta products and services.

Nieman Lab reported in October that three legal experts considered the wording capable of allowing news-site material to be scraped for AI training. The draft also permitted Meta to create test credentials for associated websites; Cornell Law School's James Grimmelmann said that could technically enable registration walls to be bypassed by signing up as a false user.

Meta removed the word “train” after Nieman Lab's report. It maintained that the update concerned advertising and business products, rather than a change in how it used web crawlers. Meta spokesman Andy Stone said its purpose was to obtain accurate product information from third-party sites for advertising and content recommendations, “not about scraping news sites.” Content owners could still control crawler access through robots.txt, the company said.

The retreat followed a temporary injunction granted by the Oslo District Court on Oct. 28 at the request of 180 Norwegian media companies, supported by the Norwegian Media Businesses' Association. As covered in our report last week, the court barred the terms from taking effect before their legality had been reviewed. It also ordered Meta to pay 1 million Norwegian kroner, about £81,000, in costs, according to NRK.

The association's member newspapers account for about 97% of Norwegian newspaper circulation. It said the postponement and Meta's assurances did not go far enough, maintaining that the draft could allow articles, pictures and video, including paywalled material, to be collected unless publishers deleted their accounts.

In the United Kingdom, the Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation on Oct. 30 after a complaint from the Movement for an Open Web. The regulator said obliging publishers and other content businesses to accept the proposed conditions could amount to an unlawful imposition of unfair trading conditions.

The European Commission said it had discussed the terms with Meta and welcomed their postponed entry into force. It noted that EU law requires gatekeeper companies such as Meta to offer fair terms to businesses using their social platforms, while the Association of American Publishers called for the proposal to be abandoned.

Press Gazette reported that Meta had moved implementation from Oct. 30 to Nov. 20 and said the date could slip further if consultation continued beyond then. Meta said it would not make policy changes without a full consultation with industry groups and leaders.