U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn raised serious concerns on Friday regarding Meta Platforms’ plans to update its commercial terms, warning that the changes could negatively impact creators and businesses across the country. Blackburn, who serves as chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, stated that the revised terms indicate an effort to exploit American enterprises by granting the company sweeping authority to scrape content from websites linked to Facebook and Instagram business accounts.
The warning from the Tennessee Republican follows Meta’s announcement earlier on Friday that it would postpone the implementation of its updated commercial terms from October 30 to November 20. The tech company stated that the delay is intended to provide time to address concerns raised by publishers and digital advertisers.
The proposed terms have already attracted scrutiny beyond U.S. borders, with antitrust authorities in the European Union and the United Kingdom receiving complaints. Publishers and digital advertisers have argued that the new conditions would grant Meta unlimited rights to utilize their content for artificial intelligence services, though Meta has consistently rejected these claims.
Blackburn pointed out that while Meta previously adjusted its terms to eliminate an explicit reference to artificial intelligence training, the modifications are insufficient. According to the senator, the revised language still permits extensive scraping of external websites and authorizes Meta to develop its business products utilizing the collected material. She emphasized that without clear restrictions governing how information is used and whether it can be incorporated into AI systems, the revisions fail to protect intellectual property.
This lack of clear restriction is particularly concerning for American news publishers, independent creators, and small businesses that depend on Meta’s platforms to connect with audiences and customers, Blackburn noted. In response to her letter, Meta reiterated that the updated terms apply strictly to its advertising and business products, maintaining that its use of web crawlers remains unchanged and that the policy is not designed to scrape news sites.
Meta also emphasized that content owners retain the ability to signal their preferences using robots.txt files, asserting that the updates do not grant the company new rights to override those preferences. The dispute occurs amid a broader global conflict between media publishers and artificial intelligence developers over the unauthorized use of copyrighted content to train large language models.
Demanding a halt to the rollout, Blackburn called on Meta to completely withdraw the updated commercial terms and engage directly with creators and publishers to safeguard their material, stressing that American small businesses and creators should not be treated as a free source of content. The delayed implementation date of November 20 remains the next critical milestone as publishers and lawmakers continue to press the company for stronger protections.
