Opinion: Government, industry must push back against Meta’s scraping over-reach

The World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), the News/Media Alliance (which represents news and magazine publishers in the U.S.) and News Media Canada are calling on Meta to suspend a provision in the company’s new commercial terms that would allow Meta to crawl and collect content from news publishers’ websites as a condition of using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger for business.

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The new terms, which will now take effect on Nov. 20, appear to require every business that uses Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger through a business account to grant Meta extraordinary and disproportionate privileges to exploit the content of its websites for free. They authorize Meta to use automated tools and test credentials to access websites associated with any business that uses its services, and to keep collecting updates from them. Because almost every news organization maintains a Facebook page (the public account businesses and publishers use), a business profile or an advertising account on Meta’s platforms, the provision would reach publishers’ journalism worldwide, not only the content they choose to share on Meta. Publishers of every kind, from national newspapers to local titles and special interest magazines, would be affected.

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Publishers would have no way to decline this, short of abandoning their use of Meta’s business products. News publishers could be forced into providing their valuable journalism to support the development of products that may be used to compete with them for readers and advertisers, under duress and without compensation. It is wholly unreasonable for the mere use of a Meta business account to require publishers to grant unrestricted access to their websites (and even content posted by their users), for the benefit of Meta to develop its business products. Meta’s unilateral conduct, given the scale and reach of its social media platforms, is an exercise of market power and is anti-competitive. Meta’s behaviour risks undermining the robust licensing market for publishers’ content and could allow Meta to simply snatch that content for free.

Meta removed an explicit reference to AI training after the clause drew criticism. Yet the revised wording still allows the content to be used to develop Meta’s business products, which include generative AI services, and Meta’s public assurances that it will respect robots.txt are not written into the terms.

Journalism is not raw material to be harvested. Meta cannot use its terms of service to extract value from publishers. News publishers around the world are asking Meta to: suspend the crawling provision for news publishers, pending dialogue with the sector; remove the right to create test credentials and commit that paywalls and other access controls will not be circumvented; make robots.txt and other machine-readable reservations of rights binding in the terms; exclude the use of publishers’ content to develop or power AI systems unless it is licensed; and allow publishers to decline the provision without losing access to Meta’s business tools.

Publishers are ready to work with AI companies, including Meta, on clear terms and fair compensation. Through the SPUR Coalition, the industry is building exactly that framework, and we urge Meta to join that conversation rather than impose a unilateral clause.

After publishers objected, Meta deleted the word “train” from the initially released version, among the litany of uses to which publishers must consent, and now says it will use the content to “develop, improve, research and maintain advertising and business products.” The revision changes little, and the terms remain deeply vague. “Advertising and business products” are undefined, and the phrase “develop … advertising and business products” is, as one law professor put it, “still broad enough to drive a truck through.”

If Meta seeks to enforce these terms, competition authorities around the world, including Canada’s Competition Bureau, need to intervene. News publishers aren’t the only ones at risk — every publicly hosted word, song and image created in Canada — and everywhere else — is up for grabs if regulators don’t intervene.

National Post

Danielle Coffey is president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance. Paul Deegan is president and CEO of News Media Canada. Stig Ørskov is CEO of WAN-IFRA.

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