Members of the EBU’s Social Media Group are to assess the implications for both individuals and institutional accounts after Meta announced changes to its privacy policy.
The changes would allow the company to use public posts from Facebook and Instagram to train its artificial intelligence models.
Unless individuals opted out by the 27 May deadline, Meta may use publicly available content shared by users in Europe as part of its data training pipeline with effect from 26 June.
This change has uncovered some potential issues that could affect public service media. One issue under discussion is whether administrators of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp business pages, such as those run by public service media, will also opt out their organisation’s entire profile when they submit a personal opt-out request.
This ambiguity has caused misgivings about how company content will be treated, whether it will also be excluded from Meta’s data collection, and what this will mean for audience engagement.
service media routinely publish original, editorially controlled content via Meta’s platforms. But if the material is used to train proprietary AI systems without consent, it raises questions around data governance, copyright, reputational risk, and the wider role of public content in commercial AI development.
The EBU and its Members are actively examining the technical and legal dimensions of of the change. It wants Meta to clarify how its opt-out mechanisms function and whether different account types, be they personal, professional, or institutional, are handled distinctly.
Future steps may include coordinated guidance for Members, collective engagement with Meta, and possible updates to social media policies. The EBU says it’s also monitoring ongoing regulatory developments and will continue to support its members in navigating this evolving issue.
