Meta's terms change and the fight over scraping
Meta's new commercial terms will, experts say, allow scraping of news sites, and the HN reaction was sharp. One commenter called it next-level legal judo and joked that Meta is still innovating, at least in its Terms of Service. Another said it's just bundling, and one noted the title's phrasing, 'will consent', is itself interesting.
Put next to the Muse Spark Open release, the picture is a company that gives away model weights while quietly moving the rules on what data it can take. Open weights and open data access are not the same thing, and the goodwill from one doesn't cover the other.
The unresolved question is who consents. Publishers sign terms, but the people and sites whose work is scraped mostly don't get to.
So what?
If your business depends on publishing content, check how big platforms' terms treat your data, and don't assume an open-weight release means friendly data practices. If you train on scraped content, the legal ground is moving and you should budget for rules changing.