Meta removes contested scraping clause from pending Commercial Terms

Meta removed a sentence that allowed the use of crawled website content to train its AI products from its pending Commercial Terms. The company posted the updated Commercial Terms on its legal website by October 17, 2026, after criticism began on October 16, 2026. Meta scheduled the revised terms to take effect on October 30, 2026, as stated in its announcements.

Under the revised Commercial Terms, business users allow Meta to use automated software such as web scrapers, bots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents to access online content. This software may access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl domains linked to users’ products or services and periodically pull updates for those domains. The scraping activity aims to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products, and also to maintain the integrity and security of Meta Company Products.

The removed sentence had stated that Meta may use crawled content to provide, develop, improve, research, and train its Company Products, and that such use would maintain the integrity of Meta’s services and features under the Commercial Terms. By deleting that sentence, Meta narrowed the permitted use of crawled content.

The updated Self-Serve Ad Terms preview, effective October 30, 2026, contains the same revised crawling clause limited to advertising and business products and to maintaining integrity and security. Meta announced the update in a Business Help Center post, which said the revised Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms will take effect October 30, 2026. The post also said the update incorporates Product Catalog Terms into Commercial Terms and Ad Creative Generative AI Terms into Self-Serve Ad Terms, reducing overlap and improving clarity.

The Ad Creative Generative AI Terms have been in effect since May 6, 2024, and allowed Meta to crawl advertiser-provided URLs for use in connection with ads. Meta is incorporating these terms into the Self-Serve Ad Terms on October 30, 2026, as part of the broader update to Meta’s commercial policies. Meta’s Business Help Center post highlighted that the update reduces overlap and improves clarity.

Public criticism of the original terms emerged on October 16, 2026, with publishers and legal experts voicing concerns online. The News/Media Alliance stated the wording would let Meta scrape news sites for AI training. Danielle Coffey, president of the News/Media Alliance, called the terms outrageous and probably illegal, described them as a clear abuse of market power, and said they could not be allowed to take effect October 30, 2026.

The rollback followed sharp backlash from publishers and legal observers, who noted Meta’s existing paid AI licensing deals with outlets such as CNN and Fox News. Legal experts suggested the original wording could enable scraping news sites for AI training, estimating the potential value of such free data at many millions in licensing fees. They argued this would provide a free alternative to Meta’s paid AI licensing agreements, undermining the market for licensed training data.

For publishers, the revision is a meaningful but narrow win: Meta removed the AI training language, the revision limits scraping to advertising and business products, and the policy acknowledges robots.txt preferences. For Meta, the episode carries reputational cost because it relies on news outlets as platform users and, in some cases, as paid licensing partners for AI training data. Meta’s clarification arrived before the October 30, 2026 effective date, indicating a preference to fix wording rather than engage in a prolonged public fight with publishers.

Nieman Lab reported that the revised terms still permit broad scraping of websites associated with business accounts. Legal experts said this scraping could potentially override robots.txt preferences. A Meta spokesperson said Meta made the revision because Meta was uncertain whether robots.txt preferences were respected, noted that news sites can disable crawlers via robots.txt flags, but added that Meta has not included specific language about respecting robots.txt preferences in the revised terms.

The spokesperson also noted there is no option for business accounts to opt out of the new terms before they take effect on October 30, 2026, leaving all business users subject to the updated policy. Matt Topic observed that the revised terms still allow Meta to use scraped content to develop any ‘business product.’ He said the term ‘business product’ is undefined and likely covers AI business products, and that ‘develop’ is broad enough to include ‘train’ under the policy.

Meta lists examples of its business products as ads, Meta Business Tools, and Meta Business Suite, showing the range of services covered by the scraping permission. Virtually every news organization has at least one Meta business account, enabling management of Facebook Pages, Threads, Instagram profiles, and WhatsApp channels from one place. Under Meta’s current terms, Meta allows scraping of websites tied to business accounts only when accounts use its generative AI features to run advertisements, and Meta limits the scraped content to ‘optimize your ads.’

Adding the crawling language to the general Commercial Terms expands Meta’s scraping permissions beyond the narrow scope of its current advertising-focused terms. Allowing scraped content for all ‘advertising and business products’ further expands those permissions, creating a broader license for data use. James Grimmelmann said the update does not address his concerns, describing the ‘develop…advertising and business products’ language as still broad enough to drive a truck through and noting it does not restrict the ‘associated with your products or services’ language that would allow scraping entire sites.

Benjamin Sobel explained that robots.txt indicates website preferences but compliance is voluntary, likening it to a homeowner sign that does not give an enforceable right to stop people looking. At least three journalism organizations have publicly raised concerns about the forthcoming terms following Nieman Lab’s reporting. Before the update on Friday, the European Publishers Council announced it would petition EU telecom regulators and the European Commission to scrutinize the terms for copyright, contractual fairness, and abuse of market power, while the UK News Media Association issued a statement on Friday calling for government intervention, with CEO Theo Bamber describing the attempt as a ‘shameless landgrab’ and urging ministers to prevent Meta from setting a dreadful precedent.