By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - US Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, on Friday raised concerns about Facebook parent Meta Platforms' plan to update its commercial terms, saying it could harm businesses and creators.
Blackburn, who is chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, said the updated terms "indicate Meta is attempting to exploit American creators and businesses by granting itself sweeping authority to scrape content from
any website associated with Facebook and Instagram business accounts."
Earlier on Friday, Meta said it would delay the implementation of updated commercial terms from October 30 until November 20, so it can address concerns from publishers and digital advertisers.
EU and UK antitrust authorities have received complaints about the new commercial terms, which publishers and digital advertisers said would give Meta unlimited rights to use their content for its AI services. Meta has rejected the claims.
Blackburn said that Meta previously revised its terms to remove an explicit reference to AI training but said the changes did not go far enough. She added that the revised language authorizes extensive scraping of external websites and permits Meta to “develop” its business products with collected content.
"Without clear restrictions on how that information may be used, including whether it may be incorporated into AI systems, Meta’s revisions offer little assurance that creators’ intellectual property will be protected," Blackburn said. She added: "This is particularly troubling for American news publishers, creators, and small businesses that rely on Meta’s platforms to reach their audiences and customers."
Asked for comment on Blackburn's letter, Meta on Friday noted it had delayed the change and said the revised terms apply only to its ads and business products and that it is not changing how it uses web crawlers.
"These updates don't give us new rights to supersede such preferences and this isn’t about scraping news sites," the company said, noting that "content owners will still be able to use robots.txt to signal preferences."
Publishers worldwide are ramping up fights with AI companies using their content without permission to train large language models, underscoring the clash between copyright owners and those citing fair-use arguments.
"Meta must withdraw the updated Commercial Terms and come to the table to protect the content of creators and publishers across the country," Blackburn said. "American creators and small businesses are not a free source of content for Meta to exploit."
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Matthew Lewis)
