The interesting wrinkle is that this is effectively a consent laundering scheme. Individual users can’t meaningfully opt out of AI training across the ecosystem, and now business accounts ‘consent’ on behalf of every visitor whose data passes through their sites. The website operator agrees to terms covering content they don’t solely own — comments, bylines, photos of third parties.
Legally the news organizations are in a bind that’s worth watching: block Meta’s crawler and lose distribution, or allow it and hand over training data to a company building the models that flatten their traffic. The Nieman Lab angle makes sense — for publishers this is choosing between two slow bleeds.
I heard they’re releasing a new brand logo too:
Stop using meta products
Businesses can’t exactly ignore or control where the customer are.
True, but customers also go to where businesses are. People are feeling pressured to use these services by businesses that only have a presence there.
Hey, everybody! This guy just solved the network effect problem! Wow! Never thought I’d live to see it!
Easier said than done when all your friends and family use WhatsApp and Instagram
I sent everyone a message, roughly “hey I’m moving away from Meta products. From now on you can contact me through SMS or Signal.” All the important ones followed me to Signal, not all, but enough. The rest are using SMS or calling, some have stopped contacting completely. Which is sad, sure. But I look at it as they don’t think I’m important enough for them to spend 30 seconds installing Signal or using a SMS that is already available for them. So I assume they don’t like me very much, which is fine. I don’t think about them too much either.
The updated terms explicitly state that Meta can use the content it collects from associated websites to “train” Meta products. Elsewhere in its terms of service, the company defines “AI at Meta” as one of those products.
I would have assumed they were already doing that.
Reminds me of why I quit WhatsApp, they started requiring uploading your entire phone address book and I wasn’t willing to allow that.
