Shareable does not consent to Meta's theft of content

Shareable condemns Meta’s proposed terms-of-service change, arguing that it could let the company use all website content belonging to organizations with Meta business accounts to develop its commercial AI products. Legal experts cited in the text say the wording could support scraping publishers’ sites for AI training. Avoiding the terms would require organizations to delete their Meta accounts, remove Meta tools from their websites, and possibly erase content already posted on Meta platforms - an impractical process that Shareable says does not amount to meaningful consent. After criticism, Meta replaced “train” with “develop” and delayed the change until November 20, but Shareable says it offered no substantive protection. The organization sees the proposal as an effort to strengthen Meta’s legal position amid copyright lawsuits over AI training.

The argument extends beyond copyright: platform companies already profit from publishers’ work by keeping audiences on social media and search services, reducing visits and revenue for the original creators. Shareable cites a 2019 estimate that Google gained $4.7 billion from publisher content in one year, and says declining web traffic has forced it to publish fewer reported stories. Although Shareable licenses most work for noncommercial reuse under Creative Commons terms, it argues that Meta’s commercial AI use violates attribution, noncommercial, and no-derivatives conditions. The organization says publishers cannot simply abandon dominant platforms, given corporate consolidation, but insists that access to content is not consent. It urges others who publish online to publicly oppose the proposed use.