Canadian news groups seek clarity from Meta over updated terms of service

OTTAWA · Canadian news organizations are pressing Meta for clarity on recent changes to its terms of service. The revisions, initially reported by Nieman Lab, raised concerns they could permit the scraping of websites linked to business accounts for artificial intelligence training. Meta has since updated the language but publisher anxiety remains high. Associations in Europe and Britain are calling for government and regulatory intervention.

News Media Canada said in a statement that "like publisher associations everywhere, we're very concerned and are seeking clarity." The situation is compounded by Meta's decision to block news content in Canada after the Online News Act passed in 2023. This move creates uncertainty about how the new terms might impact Canadian outlets. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters said its members have expressed worries and that Meta must be transparent about the terms' effects. Association president Kevin Desjardins pointed to an "obvious contradiction" in Meta blocking news while "arguing that news provides insufficient value to its platforms." He said the company "now appears to be seeking broad permissions to access and use content from publishers' websites for its own commercial purposes."

Desjardins added that "Canadian broadcasters should not be put in a position where their journalism is unavailable to Canadians on Meta's platforms, while Meta potentially reserves broad rights to exploit it." A Meta spokesperson responded that the consolidated crawling terms only applied to ads and business products and that clarification has been added. The spokesperson said the update "does not change how Meta uses web crawlers" and noted content owners can use robots.txt files to signal preferences. The spokesperson emphasized "this is not about scraping news sites, and these updates don't give us new rights that supersede those preferences." Many Canadian publishers already use robots.txt to block AI company bots. Several news outlets, including The Canadian Press, have filed lawsuits against OpenAI and Anthropic alleging unauthorized use of copyrighted material for AI training.

With files from The Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail and CityNews