Meta Rewrites Scraping Terms After AI-Training Backlash
Meta has removed an explicit AI-training reference from proposed business terms, but its revised rules still allow broad automated website crawling.
What you need to know
- Meta removed the word “train” from its proposed Commercial Terms after criticism.
- The revised terms still permit automated crawling of websites linked to commercial Meta use.
- Businesses that disagree are told to stop using Meta products commercially; no separate opt-out is confirmed.
Meta removes AI-training wording
Meta has rewritten proposed Commercial Terms for businesses after criticism over language that appeared to authorise website scraping for AI training. The revised terms, reported on 17 October, remove the word “train” and narrow the stated use of collected material to Meta’s advertising and business products.
The terms are scheduled to take effect on 30 October 2026 and apply to commercial users of Meta services, including businesses managing Pages, using Meta Business Suite, running adverts, listing products or sending marketing messages.
Broad crawling permission remains
According to Nieman Journalism Lab, the revised clause still permits Meta and companies acting for it to use scrapers, bots, spiders, crawlers and user agents to access, index, cache, analyse and collect material from domains, webpages and URLs associated with a business’s products or services. It also permits periodic retrieval of updates and refers to creating “test credentials”.
Meta changed the wording after its original proposed terms explicitly said collected content could be used to “provide, develop, improve, research, train” and maintain Meta products and services. Legal experts told Nieman Lab that this could have given Meta an argument that businesses had permitted scraping of associated sites, including news publishers’ websites, for AI training.
No confirmed partial opt-out
Meta said the revision was intended to clarify that the consolidated crawling provisions apply to advertising and business products, and a spokesperson told TechCrunch that it “does not change how Meta uses web crawlers”. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone also said the change was “not about scraping news sites”.
Meta says content owners can control crawler access through robots.txt. However, Nieman Lab reports that the revised contract does not explicitly say Meta will respect those instructions, leaving uncertainty over how the terms would interact with crawler restrictions, copyright, paywalls and other contractual limits.
The reported terms do not provide a separate partial opt-out. Businesses that disagree are told to stop using Meta products for business or commercial purposes.
A wider commercial rule than before
Search Engine Journal reports that Meta’s general Commercial Terms from March 2024 did not contain this broad crawling clause. Meta had narrower crawling permissions in agreements for advertisers, generative-AI advertising tools and sellers, but moving comparable wording into the general Commercial Terms could extend it to a much wider range of commercial users.
Why it matters
UK businesses, publishers and retailers using Meta’s commercial tools may be granting wider access to websites connected with their accounts than under Meta’s older general terms. Meta says site owners can use robots.txt to control crawler access, but the revised contract does not explicitly promise to honour those settings. That leaves a potentially important unanswered question for organisations protective of their web content.
Sources and evidence (13)
- niemanlab.org (other)
- niemanlab.org (other)
- techcrunch.com (other)
- searchenginejournal.com (other)
- epceurope.eu (other)
- niemanlab.org (other)
- niemanlab.org (other)
- arstechnica.com (other)
- techcrunch.com (other)
- searchenginejournal.com (other)
- epceurope.eu (other)
- facebook.com (other)
- developers.facebook.com (other)