Meta's new terms for business accounts will, from October 30, let it scrape publishers' sites to train SI
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
The dispute over whether terms of service can override sites' bans on data collection for SI now has a concrete date: October 30.
The terms, which take effect on October 30, allow Meta to use automated tools (scrapers, bots, crawlers) to collect and index domains and pages "associated" with business accounts on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, and to use them to develop and train SI products. Three lawyers interviewed by Nieman Lab believe Meta could argue that these terms take precedence over robots.txt prohibitions and licensing agreements; business accounts cannot opt out of the terms before October 30. Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the company is merely "consolidating" its commercial and self-serve ad terms, and that content owners still manage access through robots.txt.
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