Meta drops the word "train" from its commercial TOS after AI backlash

Hoping to quell criticism, Meta has dropped the word “train” from its “streamlined” commercial terms of service that kick in on October 30. Last week, Meta faced backlash after legal experts warned that the tech giant’s sweeping new commercial terms of service seemed to give Meta permission to endlessly scrape websites linked on business pages.

为了平息批评，Meta 从其将于 10 月 30 日生效的“精简版”商业服务条款中删除了“训练”（train）一词。上周，在法律专家警告称这家科技巨头的全新商业服务条款似乎允许 Meta 无休止地抓取商业页面链接的网站后，Meta 面临了强烈抵制。

Talking to Nieman Lab, experts suggested that Meta could possibly use the policy to avoid millions in licensing fees from news organizations by requiring all business users to share a wealth of AI training data simply for running a business page. A Meta spokesperson confirmed that Meta did not alert users to the changed language following backlash. This potentially only adds to confusion ahead of the policy rollout.

在接受尼曼实验室（Nieman Lab）采访时，专家们指出，Meta 可能利用该政策，通过要求所有商业用户仅仅为了运营商业页面就必须共享大量人工智能训练数据，从而规避向新闻机构支付数百万美元的许可费。Meta 发言人证实，在遭到抵制后，Meta 并未就条款措辞的变更提醒用户。这可能会在政策实施前增加更多困惑。

In response to backlash, Meta’s spokesperson provided a statement to Ars, acknowledging Nieman Lab’s initial report but not its follow-up report reiterating experts’ concerns: “We’ve heard you and want to clarify: the crawling terms we consolidated only applied to our ads and business products, and we’ve clarified that in the terms themselves. It does not change how Meta uses web crawlers. As always, content owners can use robots.txt to signal their preferences. This is not about scraping news sites, and these updates don’t give us new rights that supersede those preferences.”

针对抵制浪潮，Meta 发言人向 Ars 发表声明，承认了尼曼实验室的初步报道，但未回应其重申专家担忧的后续报道：“我们听到了你们的声音，并希望澄清：我们整合的抓取条款仅适用于我们的广告和商业产品，我们已在条款本身中进行了说明。这并没有改变 Meta 使用网络爬虫的方式。一如既往，内容所有者可以使用 robots.txt 来表明他们的偏好。这并非为了抓取新闻网站，这些更新也没有赋予我们凌驾于这些偏好之上的新权利。”

The same experts who sounded the initial alarms were not impressed by Meta’s updates, which they told Nieman Lab do not go far enough to protect business page users from invasive scraping. Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy & Loevy, told Nieman Lab that “publishers should remain concerned.” “The revised version of the new terms still allows Meta to use that scraped content to develop any ‘business product,’” Topic said. “That doesn’t seem to be a defined term, and presumably Meta is developing AI business products. I think ‘develop’ is broad enough to include ‘train.’”

当初发出警报的专家们对 Meta 的更新并不买账，他们告诉尼曼实验室，这些更新在保护商业页面用户免受侵入式抓取方面做得还不够。Loevy & Loevy 律师事务所的媒体与知识产权律师马特·托皮克（Matt Topic）告诉尼曼实验室，“出版商仍应保持警惕”。托皮克说：“修订后的新条款版本仍然允许 Meta 使用抓取的内容来开发任何‘商业产品’。这似乎不是一个明确的定义，据推测 Meta 正在开发人工智能商业产品。我认为‘开发’一词的范围足够广泛，足以包含‘训练’。”

What do updated terms say? Initially, Meta’s terms authorized Meta to use “any content” from websites posted on business pages “to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity” of any Meta products, services, or features. The updated terms delete the word “train” and no longer refer to “any content.” Instead, they allow Meta to “periodically pull updates” from business users’ websites in order to “provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products,” as well as to help Meta “maintain the integrity and security” of its products.

更新后的条款说了什么？最初，Meta 的条款授权 Meta 使用商业页面上发布的网站中的“任何内容”，以“提供、开发、改进、研究、训练和维护”任何 Meta 产品、服务或功能。更新后的条款删除了“训练”一词，也不再提及“任何内容”。相反，条款允许 Meta 从商业用户的网站中“定期获取更新”，以便“提供、开发、改进、研究和维护广告及商业产品”，并帮助 Meta“维护其产品的完整性和安全性”。

This scraping, Meta says, is for users’ benefit, feeding into Meta research into 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,” the policy says.

该政策称，Meta 表示这种抓取是为了用户的利益，旨在支持 Meta 的产品研究，以“帮助您创建和投放广告及其他商业内容，向用户提供有关您产品和服务的信息，并将您与可能对您的产品和服务感兴趣的用户联系起来”。

Following tweaks, it’s good that Meta added “more language about the permitted uses,” James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School, told Nieman Lab. But “[the] ‘develop…advertising and business products’ [language] is still broad enough to drive a truck through,” he said. Ultimately, Grimmelmann agreed with Topic that “this does nothing to restrict the ‘associated with your products or services’ [language] that would let Meta scrape entire sites.”

康奈尔法学院数字与信息法教授詹姆斯·格里梅尔曼（James Grimmelmann）告诉尼曼实验室，在经过调整后，Meta 增加了“更多关于允许用途的措辞”是件好事。但他表示，“‘开发……广告和商业产品’的措辞范围仍然大到可以开过一辆卡车”。最终，格里梅尔曼同意托皮克的观点，即“这根本无法限制‘与您的产品或服务相关’这一措辞，该措辞将允许 Meta 抓取整个网站。”

What would help—as University of Wisconsin law professor Benjamin Sobel told Nieman Lab—would be if Meta added specific language to the policy where the company agrees to respect scraping instructions in robots.txt files. Since complying with robots.txt is voluntary, Meta could possibly rely on the legally enforceable TOS omitting mentions of robots.txt to scrape sites that attempt to block scraping via robots.txt, experts suggested. When it comes to robots.txt, “you can still express the preference, and unless it’s a legally enforceable preference, it can still be ignored all the same,” Sobel said.

正如威斯康星大学法学教授本杰明·索贝尔（Benjamin Sobel）告诉尼曼实验室的那样，如果 Meta 在政策中增加明确条款，同意遵守 robots.txt 文件中的抓取指令，那将会有所帮助。专家指出，由于遵守 robots.txt 是自愿的，Meta 可能会利用具有法律约束力的服务条款中未提及 robots.txt 这一点，来抓取那些试图通过 robots.txt 阻止抓取的网站。索贝尔说，谈到 robots.txt，“你仍然可以表达偏好，但除非它是具有法律约束力的偏好，否则它仍然可能被忽略。”

Meta backlash is global. Criticism goes beyond Nieman Lab’s reporting, as news groups globally urge regulators to intervene and block Meta’s controversial terms from kicking in. A chief executive for the United Kingdom News Media Association, Theo Bamber, accused Meta of a “shameless land grab” relying on the “worst kind of arrogant tech platform bullying.” Bamber urged UK regulators to “stand up for British creators and the business community” by “preventing Meta from setting this dreadful precedent.”

Meta 遭到的抵制是全球性的。批评声不仅限于尼曼实验室的报道，全球新闻团体纷纷敦促监管机构进行干预，阻止 Meta 备受争议的条款生效。英国新闻媒体协会首席执行官西奥·班伯（Theo Bamber）指责 Meta 依靠“最恶劣的傲慢科技平台霸凌”进行“无耻的圈地运动”。班伯敦促英国监管机构通过“阻止 Meta 开创这一可怕的先例”来“为英国创作者和商业界挺身而出”。

Meanwhile, the European Publishers Council has already asked the European Commission to intervene. “Publishers must be able to decide whether and how their journalism is used, and negotiate fair payment,” the group’s executive director, Angela Mills Wad, said. “Burying such far-reaching claims in platform terms is no substitute for consent.”

与此同时，欧洲出版商理事会已要求欧盟委员会进行干预。该组织执行董事安吉拉·米尔斯·瓦德（Angela Mills Wad）表示：“出版商必须能够决定其新闻内容是否以及如何被使用，并协商公平的报酬。将如此深远的主张埋在平台条款中，并不能替代同意。”

Similarly, Danielle Coffey, the president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance—which Nieman Lab noted is the largest news publishing trade association in the US—protested the terms as “outrageous and probably illegal.” In the US, Coffey urged regulators to recognize that Meta’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,” Coffey said.

同样，尼曼实验室指出作为美国最大的新闻出版行业协会——新闻/媒体联盟（News/Media Alliance）的总裁兼首席执行官丹妮尔·科菲（Danielle Coffey）也抗议这些条款“令人愤慨且可能违法”。在美国，科菲敦促监管机构认识到，Meta “除非企业允许其抓取网站内容，否则就拒绝提供受众访问权限的决定，是一项令人震惊的恶意政策，也是对公司市场力量的明显滥用”。科菲表示：“绝不能允许它在 10 月 30 日实施。”