A battle against the slop ghouls

As Meta delays its scraping terms under pressure from publishers and politicians alike, the wider war over our data and ideas shows no sign of letting up.

by Rob Corbidge

Published: 14:48, 29 October 2026

While the war rages over Intellectual Property and what that term means in this technological era, it's worth taking note of the not-so-small battle in that war triggered by Meta's attempt - outlined here last week - to have free access to everything business account holders possess, whether those things are on Meta properties or not.

In fact, things have moved so fast after Meta's mooted content annexation, that someone has already produced a guide on how to object to it. This particular battle will likely be won at the political level though, and likely mark a turning point in the war.

What of this broader conflict? It's an almost impossible task to take a position fifty years from hence in order to see what is happening now and work out how it would be described in five decades' time, but right now I think such a description would involve creators of original work living under some of Droit de seigneur, whereby Zuckerberg and his ilk are entitled to take what is not theirs, almost at the moment of its inception. The wonder will be at exactly how we came to live under such feudal conditions, tilling Meta's content fields and being grain taxed for the pleasure.

The conflict is everywhere. I watched this week as Linus of Linus Tech Tips discussed the latest territory grab by Google, by way of accessing your Gmail and Photos data in order to sell advertising. Gmail and Photos. Two areas that should be completely private, both to individuals and organisations. "Could they" Linus was asking, "remove all use of Microsoft and Google products from the LTT media business, without suffering a productivity loss?" His thinking was based on the position many of us are coming to, that as the big players look around for things to squeeze money out of, they are increasingly blurring the line between what belongs to users who use their platforms, and what belongs to them. How can you run a business if a third party simply has access to your stuff at root? I suppose it's a good way of Google making sure a rival never gains any ground.

The underlying fear we all have, and it's been borne out, is that our data isn't ours, and will be utilised without regard to its provenance. It doesn't matter to what end, be it LLM training, advert targeting or even theft of ideas, or any other purpose. It's the never ceasing advance of the slop ghouls.

In another dispatch from the conflict, I learned this week that a number of game developers have withdrawn playable demos of their games from the Steam Store. The reason for this is simple: even so much as a playable demo can be decompiled using AI tools and a rival, cloned, version of the demoed game can be published. It has actually happened with a game called Needle in a Haystack. We're not talking about complex games here, rather ones where the idea is everything, the kind of level where thousands of game publishers live. Don't read me wrong - AI tools clearly have a place in game development - yet this is about the theft of ideas. That theft has always happened. A success always breeds copycats and that's true of all areas of creation, from books to fashion, yet the speed and felicity of the copying process has never been such as it is now.

Back to Meta and their intentions. The proposed changes to the terms and conditions for Meta's business account holders were first postponed until November 20, from the October 30 original date. The latest, according to some Meta ranker called Andy Stone, is that "we expect this consultation could extend beyond November 20, in which case we’d delay implementation of the updated terms".

This is simply because they were found out by Nieman Lab's original reporting, nothing more, but they would have it that this will "allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what’s changing and what’s not". It better be the kind of explanation that can withstand atmospheric re-entry levels of heat.

Adding to those already on the offensive against Meta's intentions, we have Daily Mail CEO and Publisher Danny Groom saying: "This is the worst example yet of tech giants' desire to shamelessly exploit news publishers and seize their content with complete disregard for value or fair use. It's essential governments wake up to the impact of this new form of digital piracy and the very real threat it poses, not just to global news publishers but to the wider digital ecosystem. It is a completely unacceptable move by Meta and must be resisted and challenged at every turn."

Joining him from the other side of the Atlantic is Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California, who said in a letter directly to Mark Zuckerberg: "Forcing publishers to choose between surrendering their off-platform IP or forfeiting a primary channel of public communication is a gross abuse of Meta's power as a powerful platform with critical access to consumers." Adding that, "Meta must not nullify federal IP protections and fair market competition through the unilateral insertion of fine print into terms of service contracts." 

He's not alone, according to Nieman Lab, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee has said that the terms "indicate Meta is attempting to exploit American creators and businesses by granting itself sweeping authority to scrape content from any website associated with Facebook and Instagram business accounts." 

Meta are out of goodwill. Maybe if they'd tried to pull this stunt off in the initial phase of mass content looting when Altman and Amodei did their stuff, Zuckerberg might have got away with it. But people have wised up quickly, and Meta look like the looter that was late to the party, and have got caught wheeling a stolen refrigerator down the road.