Meta kept scraping rights in October 30th business terms, experts say

Meta's revision followed fierce backlash from the publishing industry over terms that initially appeared to grant broad permission to use any content from business-associated websites. The original language, set to go into effect October 30th, stated Meta "may use any content" to "develop, research" and "train" its products, which legal experts told Nieman Lab could let Meta argue its commercial terms supersede other blocking instructions such as robots.txt.

After Meta removed the word "train," the remaining language still allows use of scraped content to develop any "business product." Matt Topic of Loevy & Loevy tells Nieman Lab that "develop" is broad enough to include "train," and that "business product" does not appear to be a defined term. James Grimmelmann of Cornell Law School adds that the terms do nothing to restrict the "associated with your products or services" language that would let Meta scrape entire sites.

Meta maintains the update is not about scraping news sites and does not give it new rights that supersede content owners' preferences. The episode highlights a gap between what publishers read as a concession and what the revised contract language may still permit, with the terms taking effect October 30th.