Meta removes the controversial terms of service from the site

Last week, DN reported that Meta is rolling back the introduction of the new and heavily criticized user agreements indefinitely, after first pushing them forward from October 30 to November 20. The background is that media organizations worldwide have gone to the roof over the conditions that they believe mean that the tech giant can freely "scrape" information from, for example, newspaper sites to train its own AI.

In Sweden, organizations such as Tidningsutgivarna (TU) have turned to the Swedish Competition Authority for help. In Norway and Brazil, Meta has been stopped by courts, and in the United States, senators from both parties have written to Mark Zuckerberg demanding that the conditions be withdrawn.

Now Meta has backtracked, again, and thus completely removed the terms of use from the site.

Instead, they have published an update in their Business help center, which Nieman Lab was the first to report, where they wrote that the updates are paused.

"We continue to consult with affected parties and will provide additional information when we have more to share. Until then, our current terms and conditions apply," writes Meta.

Thomas Mattsson, vice chairman of Utgivarna, tells DN that Meta has not yet taken any initiatives for dialogue with the Swedish newspaper organisations. At the same time, he views the development positively.

- Meta must now confirm that the criticized conditions will not be proposed again, he says.

This probably means that Swedish media do not need to close their accounts on Facebook and Instagram before November 20, Thomas Mattsson continues.

- The war is not won, but a big and important battle has been won. Meta is no longer threatening to impose the terms on November 20. But Meta's intention remains, they wanted to be able to take all content including archives without compensation and Meta's need for that data in its ambition to develop new AI services in competition with Google, Perplexity, Open AI and others remains, he says.

DN is looking for Meta.