Google's VIP list, newsrooms on autopilot, and the opt-out objection

Lightbulbs over clicks, Current Affairs draws the line, ChatGPT reads the small print, and Canada vs Anthropic - all in this week's Content Aware.

by Emina Zulic

Published: 15:11, 22 October 2026

Corbidge comments on...Meta's terms of surrender
Meta's new terms and conditions, which are coming into force on October 30th, give it the right to scrape and use the content of anyone with a business account on its platforms, including the content that was never posted to Meta at all. The fact that it dropped the word "train" doesn't mean much, according to our resident small-print reader Rob, who argues that it's a land grab of breathtaking shamelessness and asks whether it's time for publishers to delete their business accounts. Considering the fact that Facebook brings only a sliver of their visitors and conversions anyways, walking away might cost less than staying.
Read

Publishing & Media

Newsrooms built on AI
Around 30 different AI-native newsrooms which are built around AI agents from the ground up are already up and running, from a Montreal paper with one journalist who checks every draft to an Italian site where there are no human reviews before things get published. According to their founders, the machines should carry the mechanical load so that the journalists can focus on everything that AI isn't capable of doing, and the founders that were interviewed all admit their systems have made mistakes. 
Read

Google's licensing club
More than 400 publications worldwide - including CNN, the Financial Times, Axios, and a number of US local papers - are now getting paid to license their content for Google's News AI pilot, which is used to power AI-generated story previews as well as custom audio briefings in Google News. It's not a part of the AI Contribution Pilot, which pays publishers for the amount they contribute to an AI answer, and as usual, Google covers the exact terms in a veil of shadows. With Meta trying to snatch content through its terms and conditions, this comes as a reminder that licensing is possible when the tech giant decides it wants to. 
Read

Diversify or miss out
From membership and events to sponsored podcasts, niche magazines, and free downloads that trade value for email addresses, news publishers are finding different ways to make money besides ads and subscriptions. The common thread? Don't look for a single fix, as building a mix of different revenue streams rather than betting it all on a single one seems to be the way to go. Editor & Publisher shares more info. 
Read

An open letter to Australia
Sixty-three international media organisations, led by the News/Media Alliance, have written to senior Australian politicians urging them to reject the proposed copyright changes that would allow AI companies to train on creators' work unless they opt out. The letter also warns that this decision could bring other problems to Australia, including a possible breach of international treaties, such as the Berne Convention. After years of leading the fight to hold Big Tech accountable, Australia is being reminded that its decision won't just stay within its own borders. Did they all read last week's Content Aware?!
Read

No AI on the byline
Current Affairs has written their an anti-AI stance into a newly ratified union contract with the Chicago News Guild, banning generative AI from writing articles or creating artwork for the publication while the staff gets to use it behind the scenes if they need to. According to its editor, its readers shouldn't be subjected to AI materials that resemble genuine thought, and that the human byline on the page should be responsible for the content. Since the ban is going into a labour agreement, it's much harder for future management to overturn it, and the magazine also hopes that others might follow this model. 
Read

Measuring the "aha" moment
Svenska Dagbladet has built its journalism around giving their readers an "aha" moment, and measures it by asking whether they found something new, understood something in a better way, and want to find out more. The digital subscriptions rose around 60% in two years, with culture coverage - which is more of a lens on people's life choices and less of an art review - becoming one of the strongest subscription drivers. In a market that is full of creators and AI content, an easy way to stand out might just be having a metric that no one else measures.
Read

Stand out from the slop
While AI now able to produce competent, well-structured and keyword-optimised content in minutes, much of what it produces looks the same. In order to stand out, you need to provide what AI can't: a real quote from an expert, your own data, or an actual customer story. Human-written doesn't automatically mean human experience either, so the writer doesn't have to be an expert on the topic he's writing about, but he does need to know where to find one. 
Read

Links are back in fashion
Google has updated its AI Mode and AI Overviews, and added clearer inline links, more context about sources, and more visible related articles and news carousels, all with the idea to send more people to the website that provided the answer. While this can be seen as an admission that AI search still needs the content that it summarises, whether this whole update actually brings clicks back is another question. Publishers will be watching their referral numbers regardless. 
Read

From inside Glide

Access, untangled
Not everyone who gets access to your content is paying for it, whether that's a free monthly allowance, a sponsor-backed pass, or an event passes. Glide Nexa handles this by keeping what someone has signed up for separate from what they can access, so teams can offer free or sponsored access without creating a new plan every time, and target offers at exactly the right people.
Read

Your newsletter list, on your terms
Glide Nexa turns each newsletter into a group of known subscribers, each with their own profile, so the list belongs to the organisation rather than living inside the email platform. The email platform still deals with the delivery, but the subscriber data sits alongside everything else Nexa knows about a person, from their subscriptions to their interactions, making it easy to target offers, run polls for specific newsletters, and switch email providers without losing your audience. 
Read

Big Tech

The bundle under the microscope 
The UK's competition watchdog wants to give Microsoft "strategic market status" in business software, which means it can step in over how Windows, Office, Teams, and the rest are bundled and licensed. According to the CMA, Microsoft's integrated stack and bundle discounts make it harder for customers to switch to rivals, and it's also taking a look into whether other AI providers get a chance to compete with Copilot. Microsoft insists that its products are open and interoperable, however what the UK decides on this matter might have a ripple effect in the US and EU, as their regulators are watching closely. 
Read

Maple leaf, legal brief
Canada's biggest news organisations - which include The Globe and Mail, Torstar, and The Canadian Press - have sued Anthropic, alleging that it managed to get past their paywalls and trained Claude on their copyrighted journalism without having a licence to do so. The claims still have yet to be tested in court, and Anthropic hasn't released a statement on it yet, but this follows a similar suit (which is still ongoing) from 2024, where the same group went after OpenAI, and it comes just months after Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with authors over pirated books. 
Read

AI & Copyright

Always allow, always regret
After a Toronto content creator allowed Meta's new AI, Muse, to handle his Facebook Marketplace listing, he found out a stranger was in front of his house waiting for a deal Muse agreed to after it shared his home address, and even messaged the buyer. According to Meta, the "always allow" permissions are to blame, but it's a real example of the risk that comes with handing an agent the keys to your account. After the recent security scare around Muse's launch, this is coming as another sign that convenience and caution don't always come together. 
Read

The weakest link
It turned out that eight security certificates from Indian certificate authority eMudhra had such weak private keys that anyone could have used them to create trusted credentials for any website on the internet. Most browsers have already blocked them, and we have no sign that they have been used maliciously, but there is still a long tail of Linux machines, IoT devices, and other forgotten systems that need to be patched. Time to check your servers and any tools that bundle their own certificates.
Read

The disclaimer era
ChatGPT seems to be adding disclaimers to some of its answers, warning users about vendors that rank themselves, publishers which are affiliated with brands that they recommend, paid placements, and affiliate-heavy recommendations. An analysis of around 700 answers about B2B software found 82 of these disclaimers in a single week. While this is probably just a temporary fix, publishers who rely on affiliate content, being flagged as potentially biased in an answer is not really a good look. Lily Ray knows more. 
Read