European Commission Should Be Extremely Concerned About Meta’s Sneaky New AI Terms, Say Europe’s News Publishers
The European Publishers Council (EPC) is highly concerned about an update to Meta’s new commercial terms that will allow the tech giant to scrape content from news sites and use that content to train the company’s AI products. The update comes into effect on 30th October and will impact any company with a Meta account.
EPC Executive Director Angela Mills Wade said: “Meta appears to be using its commercial terms to claim sweeping permission to scrape publishers’ websites and use their journalism for AI. Maintaining a business account or having a reader share a link should never be treated as a blanket licence to exploit a publisher’s content.
“Journalism requires investment, expertise and accountability. Meta cannot simply write itself permission to take that work. Publishers must be able to decide whether and how their journalism is used, and negotiate fair payment. Burying such far-reaching claims in platform terms is no substitute for consent.”
Of particular concern is the extension to content “made available through your or users’ use” of Meta’s products and services. This wording raises the prospect that Meta could claim authorisation to scrape and use publishers’ content simply because a member of the public has shared a link. A user sharing a news article cannot confer rights they do not hold.
Angela continued: “Publishers maintain a presence on Facebook and Instagram to reach audiences and support their businesses. That activity should not be made conditional on granting sweeping rights to exploit the journalism on their own websites. Nor should participation in a platform’s distribution services be treated as informed agreement to uses of content that may compete with, or substitute for, the publisher’s own offering.
“The provisions also raise broader questions about platform power. Where publishers depend on major platforms to reach readers, their practical ability to reject expansive content-use conditions may be severely constrained. We therefore believe these changes warrant urgent scrutiny across the Commission’s competition, digital and copyright responsibilities.”
The EPC is writing formally to Executive Vice-Presidents Ribera and Virkkunen. For information on what the EPC will be asking the European Commission, please see here:
