The Guardrails
The Take — Meta's scraping clause fell to daylight, not law
Meta withdrew its own scraping clause on Saturday, two days after a reader tip and three lawyers put it in public view, and I think the manner of its death is more important than its text. Nobody's rights were enforced. No court ruled, no regulator acted, no robots.txt file blocked anything. The clause died of embarrassment, which tells you the enforcement mechanism actually operating on AI-era terms of service is scrutiny — and scrutiny has a half-life. We reported the clause on Thursday, in…