Meta: no more news site scraping for AI training?

Meta quietly updated its commercial terms, removing a phrase that seemed to give it carte blanche to scrape content from any site, including news outlets. The goal? Likely training its artificial intelligences, but the move didn't go unnoticed.

The controversial phrase, now gone from the commercial terms page, stated that Meta "may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve." A rather flexible way to say "we'll take what we need." Meta, following backlash, removed the commercial terms clause that allowed scraping external sites for AI training.

Imagine writing an article, spending time and resources, then a tech giant comes along and uses it without asking, just to make its chatbot "smarter." Not ideal, right? That's why publishers and news sites spoke up, forcing Meta to reconsider its stance.

Indiscriminate content scraping, especially journalistic content, raises huge questions about copyright, intellectual property, and basic ethics. If AIs learn from what they read, who pays for the production of that knowledge?

For publishers, it means seeing their work "plundered" without compensation or recognition, undermining their business model. In an era where journalism struggles, it's an added blow. Meta's decision is a small sign that pressure works.

And for you, the user? Well, if platforms use your data or the content you read to train AIs, you might end up with increasingly "recycled" and less original information. Do you really want a future like that?