News/Media Alliance Statement on Changes to Meta Commercial Terms of Use

Arlington, VA - Yesterday, new reporting by Nieman Lab revealed that Meta's updated commercial terms of use will allow the company to scrape content from any website associated with a business account on its platforms. This would give Meta the ability to scrape news sites and use their content to train the company's AI products.

There is currently no option for business accounts to opt out of these terms. Their only option is to cease use of Meta's products.

In response to these new terms of use, Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of the News/Media Alliance , issued the following statement:

"Meta's new commercial terms of use are outrageous and probably illegal. The company's decision to withhold access to its audience unless businesses allow Meta to scrape content from their websites is an appalling, bad-faith policy, and a clear abuse of the company's market power. It cannot be allowed to be implemented on October 30.

The text is so far reaching that any business with intellectual property online and a Meta business account could have their copyrighted material taken from them. We should be asking:

- If Taylor Swift has a Meta business account, does that mean that Meta will have access to scrape copyrighted media hosted on her website?

- If Shutterstock has a Meta business account, does that mean Meta will have the right to scrape images from the company's website?

News publishers aren't the only ones at risk - every publicly-hosted word, song, and image is up for grabs if Meta gets away with this."