Meta removes commercial-terms language critics said permitted scraping news sites for AI training

What happened

After criticism from legal experts, Meta removed the commercial-terms passage that appeared to authorize it to scrape publishers' websites and use their content to train AI products, CashIn News reported on October 17, 2026, citing reporting by The Verge and TechCrunch the same day.

The change

The removed passage had said Meta could use any content from a business's domains, web pages or URLs to "provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of" its products and services (the word "AI" did not appear in it). The Verge reported the passage no longer appears on Meta's commercial terms page. A Meta spokesperson said the consolidated crawling language applied only to ads and business products, not AI training, and that "it does not change how Meta uses web crawlers."

Status

This is a new development in the matter reported by Nieman Lab on October 16 (Meta's updated commercial terms and the legal experts' reading). The removal addresses the specific wording critics flagged, but does not settle the wider question of how Meta or other AI companies source publisher content for AI training.