Meta's new terms could harm American businesses, US Senator warns
What's the story
US Senator Marsha Blackburn has raised alarms over Meta Platforms's plan to revise its commercial terms. The Tennessee Republican, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, believes these changes could negatively impact businesses and creators in America. Blackburn accused Meta of trying to exploit American creators and businesses by giving itself broad powers to scrape content from any website linked with Facebook and Instagram business accounts.
Delay announcement
Meta delays implementation of updated commercial terms
In light of these concerns, Meta has postponed the implementation of its updated commercial terms from October 30 to November 20.
The delay is intended to give the company time to address concerns raised by publishers and digital advertisers.
The new terms have already been flagged by EU and UK antitrust authorities over fears they would give Meta unlimited rights to use their content for its AI services.
Terms critique
Blackburn accuses Meta of exploiting creators and businesses
Blackburn criticized Meta for previously changing its terms to remove a direct reference to AI training, saying the changes didn't go far enough.
She claimed the updated language allows extensive scraping of external websites and enables Meta to "develop" its business products with collected content.
Blackburn said without clear restrictions on how this information could be used, including if it could be incorporated into AI systems, creators' intellectual property would not be adequately protected.
Company response
Revised terms apply only to ads and business products: Meta
Responding to Blackburn's letter, Meta emphasized that it had delayed the change and clarified that the revised terms only apply to its ads and business products.
The company also stressed that it is not changing how it uses web crawlers.
"These updates don't give us new rights to supersede such preferences and this isn't about scraping news sites," Meta said, adding, "content owners will still be able to use robots.txt to signal preferences."
Content protection
Publishers worldwide are intensifying their battles with AI companies
Blackburn has called on Meta to withdraw the updated Commercial Terms and protect the content of creators and publishers across the country.
"American creators and small businesses are not a free source of content for Meta to exploit," she said.
This comes as publishers worldwide are intensifying their battles with AI companies over unauthorized use of their content to train large language models, highlighting a major conflict between copyright owners and fair-use advocates.