Meta tweaks its new terms of service after backlash against scraping

The changes have alarmed publishers and others with business accounts.

The social media company initially shared a planned update to its commercial terms last week. As flagged by Nieman Lab , the new language stated that Meta would have the right to use web scrapers and other automated tools "to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs (and any content available through them)" associated with business accounts on the platform. "Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of, the Meta Company Products, services, and features," the terms said.

That language, which was going to take effect October 30, raised alarm among publishers and other businesses. The concern, as Nieman Lab explained, was that these terms would seem to give Meta the right to scrape the content of any website that also has a business account on Facebook or Instagram, a group that includes the vast majority of digital publishers.Then Meta quietly updated its commercial terms again. It removed the word "train" and added that scraping would be used "in order to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products."

"You authorize us (or any entity acting on our behalf) to use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents) and create test credentials to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services, or that are made available through your or users' use of Meta Company Products and services, and to periodically pull updates from such domains, web pages, or URLs in order to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products (including business, commercial and related products to help you create and deliver ads and other commercial content, provide users information about your products and services, and connect you with users who may be interested in your products and services) and maintain the integrity and security of Meta Company Products."

In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the company had "clarified" the language to reflect that the new terms apply "only to our ads and business products." He said the changes "were not about scraping news sites" and that the company wasn't changing how it uses web crawlers.

The crawling terms we consolidated only applies to our ads and business products, and we've now clarified that in the terms themselves. As we said, how Meta uses web crawlers isn't changing, nor is how content owners can use robots.txt to signal preferences. These updates don't... https://t.co/dy5ClnYjTy

But Stone's statement doesn't address the fact that the new terms are still "a substantial expansion of Meta's scraping permissions," as Nieman Lab reports in its latest piece on the changes. A number of legal experts told the publication that Meta is permitted to scrape news websites with seemingly few restrictions under the revised terms.