Meta tweaked its new terms of service after backlash against scraping, DHS banned DeepSeek in federal civilian agencies, and we a mystery hidden in Super Mario 64 may have been solved

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Meta tweaked its new terms of service after a backlash against scraping. Homeland Security banned DeepSeek and federal civilian agencies. And we may finally know what's written on that mysterious plaque in Super Mario 64

It's Tuesday, October 20th, and here's a quick look at some of the news happening in the sphere of tech this morning from Engadget.

Meta tweaked its terms of service for business accounts after a swift backlash against an update scheduled to take effect later this month. The company removed a reference to AI training from its commercial terms, but there are still some questions about its ability to scrape the websites, including those of publishers that have business accounts on the platform. The social media company initially shared a planned update to its commercial terms last week. As flagged by Nieman Lab, the new language stated that Meta would have the right to use web scrapers and other automated tools to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve or crawl the domains, web pages or URLs, and any content available through them associated with business accounts on the platform. Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train and maintain the integrity of the Meta company products, services and features.

That language, which was going to take effect October 30th, raised alarm among publishers and other businesses. The concern, as Nieman Lab explained, was that these terms would seem to give Meta the right to scrape the content of any website that also has a business account on Facebook or Instagram, a group that includes the vast majority of digital publishers. Then, Meta quietly updated its commercial terms again. It removed the word train and added that scraping would be used in order to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products. In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the company had clarified the language to reflect that the new terms apply only to our ads and business products. He said the changes were not about scraping news sites and that the company was not changing how it uses web crawlers. But Stone's statement does not address the fact that the new terms are still a substantial expansion of Meta's scraping permissions, as Nieman Lab reports in its latest piece on the changes. A number of legal experts told the publication that Meta is permitted to scrape news websites with seemingly few restrictions under the revised terms. Though Stone claims the changes do not give Meta new rights to supersede content owners' robots.txt preferences, robots.txt is not legally binding, and AI companies regularly evade robots.txt instructions.

The Department of Homeland Security has issued a sweeping restriction to remove DeepSeek use across all federal civilian agencies and their IT systems. In a notice published with the Federal Register, DHS characterized the risks of DeepSeek use as potentially resulting in the transfer of sensitive data of US government employees and vendors to the Chinese government. Following the order, civilian agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency or Federal Communications Commission would have to exclude any DeepSeek products from being used while also removing any existing related products. DHS said in the notice that DeepSeek's models could contain malware or other security vulnerabilities. The notice also disallows DeepSeek from participating in any Federal Government contracts. DHS's order comes on the heels of DeepSeek releasing its latest model, V41 Flash 1017, which the company called Smarter, Faster, More Efficient. However, it's not the first time that the Chinese AI company has run into friction with the US. Government, especially at a time when its cheaper AI models start to rival the likes of ChatGPT or Gemini. Last year, two members of Congress proposed a bill that would ban DeepSeek's AI chatbot from government devices.