Meta removes language from commercial terms on Oct 17 that critics said could have allowed scraping any site content to train AI
Meta removed commercial-terms language letting it use any content from business-account domains/pages/URLs to train AI; Meta said the provision applied only to ads and business products, does not change web-crawler behavior, and robots.txt preferences remain respected.
On October 17, Meta removed language from its commercial terms of use that allowed it to 'use any content from [a business account's] domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of Meta Company Products, services, and features.' Legal experts interviewed by Nieman Lab — including Cornell digital and information law professor James Grimmelmann — had warned the provision could be read as letting Meta scrape any site with a Meta business account for AI training, potentially overriding robots.txt opt-outs.
Meta communications VP Andy Stone and spokesperson Daniel Roberts initially pushed back, saying there was no change to how Meta uses web crawlers. After the language was removed, Roberts said: 'We've heard you and want to clarify: the crawling terms we consolidated only applied to our ads and business products, and we've clarified that in the terms themselves. It does not change how Meta uses web crawlers. As always, content owners can use robots.txt to signal their preferences. This is not about scraping news sites, and these updates don't give us new rights that supersede those preferences.'
Meta prevailed in a 2025 training-data copyright suit, but other AI-training copyright cases against Meta continue. The commercial terms URL that several news outlets had cited is now defunct.