Meta drops terms language critics said allowed news site scraping

Meta removed language from its commercial terms on October 17, 2026 that experts said could have let the company scrape content from websites, including news outlets, to train its AI systems. The change came after a wave of criticism over the wording.

The deleted passage stated that Meta could use any content from certain domains, web pages or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train and maintain the integrity of products, services and features offered under its Commercial Terms. That text no longer appears on the terms page.

Concerns over robots.txt

Critics including Nieman Lab and James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell, read the clause as an attempt to secure free use of scraped site content for Meta's AI products. They also argued it could override the blocking instructions publishers set in their robots.txt files.

Meta initially rejected that interpretation. Andy Stone, the company's vice president of communications, and spokesperson Daniel Roberts said nothing had changed in how Meta uses web crawlers and called claims otherwise false.

Meta says terms covered ads products only

In a follow-up statement, Roberts said the consolidated crawling terms applied only to Meta's ads and business products, and that the terms now state this explicitly. He said content owners can still use robots.txt to express their preferences. "This is not about scraping news sites," Roberts said, adding that the updates grant Meta no new rights overriding those preferences.

The episode reflects ongoing friction between AI developers and publishers over access to web content for model training. It also shows how closely media organisations and legal experts now scrutinise even small changes to tech companies' terms of service.