Meta removes disputed language from commercial terms amid scraping debate

Meta updated its commercial terms to remove language that critics said could have allowed the company to scrape content from websites—including news sites—for AI training. The removed text had been interpreted by experts, including Neiman Lab and Cornell law professor James Grimmelmann, as an attempt to grant Meta broad rights to use scraped content without regard to site owners' blocking instructions in robots.txt.

Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts and vice president of communications Andy Stone pushed back on the interpretation, stating that 'There is no change to how Meta uses web crawlers; any suggestion to the contrary is false.' The company later issued a follow-up statement clarifying that the consolidated crawling terms applied only to ads and business products, not AI training, and that robots.txt remains the mechanism for site owners to signal their scraping preferences.

The update follows public backlash and comes as publishers increasingly restrict AI crawlers from accessing their content. The dispute underscores broader tensions between AI developers and content publishers over data access, compensation, and control over how online content is used to train AI systems.