Technology company Meta has reversed a controversial change to the way Instagram and Facebook operate.

Meta (which also owns Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads) has faced continued criticism after introducing new terms for users with business accounts on its platforms.

Initially, the terms allowed Instagram and Facebook to scrape content from users’ websites and use it to train their artificial intelligence (AI) models.

News of the terms emerged in mid-October, sparking a global backlash, with politicians in the US and UK opposing the rules.

Critics argued that the terms did not respect the rights of publishers and other business owners by forcing them to give up control over their websites in order to continue using Meta’s platforms.

In the weeks that followed, Meta attempted to mitigate this criticism and public outrage through various public statements and changes to its terms.

For example, the company removed the word “train” from the new terms to alleviate users’ concerns that their writing and other content would be used to train artificial intelligence systems.