Meta removes terms language that raised scraping concerns
The company says the crawling terms only applied to its ads and business products.
Policy#03
2
Outlets covering the same Meta terms change
Image: The Verge
2Outlets covering the same Meta terms change
The short version
- Meta removed language from its commercial terms that suggested it could use content from sites, including news sites, to train its AI.
- Experts said the provision could let Meta scrape publisher sites with a business account and override robots.txt blocking instructions.
- Meta had earlier said there was no change to how it uses web crawlers, and that any suggestion to the contrary was false.
- Meta now says content owners can still use robots.txt to signal their preferences.
Why it matters
The episode shows how AI training rights over web content are being contested. Developers who build crawlers or publish content should check how robots.txt signals are respected. The terms still matter for how companies describe their crawling.
“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.”