Earlier this month, Meta updated its commercial terms of use for business accounts to allow it to “use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of” Meta’s products.
Many artists and small business owners that rely on Instagram and Facebook are livid at Meta granting itself permission to use their content, including from websites simply connected to their Meta accounts, to train AI. But for users in the United Kingdom and European Union, for now, there’s a way to object.
Meta
buried this change
in its
Commercial Terms
, and
Nieman Lab first reported
on the change. The update was originally set to go into effect on October 30, but following backlash, Meta changed the effective date to November 20. Adding to the confusion, Meta then removed the word “train” from a list of allowed use cases,
Nieman Lab reported
, and limited those uses to “advertising and business products,” where previously it said that data would be used for all Meta products. Those terms still allow Meta plenty of leeway for scraping users’ data to develop its products, however.
EU users’ personal data rights are governed by the General Data Protection Regulation and the AI Act.
GDPR
, which became enforceable in 2018, requires explicit consent to use personal data. This includes the right to object to one’s data being used. The AI Act, which went into effect in 2024, dictates how AI companies can use personal data, and how people can opt in or out,
stating
that they can withdraw consent at any time. The UK has its own
version of the GDPR
. The European Commission
states
: “The GDPR rules only apply to personal data about individuals; they do not govern data about companies or any other legal entities. However, information in relation to companies may constitute personal data where it allows the identification of a natural person.”
Several users based in the UK and EU have explained how to object on Instag
… [more]
