Meta Says It Won't Train on Your Site. Lawyers Say the Words Still Could.
After criticism from publishers, Meta removed wording that appeared to permit training on content from websites linked to business accounts. The revised agreement still allows broad crawling, and legal experts say questions about AI use remain.
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Oct 17, 22:00 UTC ·
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Meta has removed explicit permission to train on website content from its upcoming commercial terms after publishers warned the wording could give the company sweeping access to their work. [1][4]
The revision drops training from the listed uses of collected content and narrows the stated purposes to advertising and business products, alongside maintaining the integrity and security of Meta products. The terms are scheduled to take effect on October 30, 2026. [4]
At stake is whether using Meta's business services could amount to permission for the company to collect material from a business's wider website, including news articles never posted on Facebook or Instagram. Publishers have sought paid licensing deals with AI companies, making the scope of that permission a commercial issue as well as a legal one. [2][3][4]
Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the terms concern advertising and business products, consolidate existing crawling provisions and do not change how the company uses web crawlers. Meta also said website owners can continue to signal their preferences through robots.txt, a file that tells automated visitors which parts of a site they should avoid. [1][4]
Publishers remain concerned. Sam Quigley, communications director of the US publishers' group News/Media Alliance, said AI training was "still potentially on the table." The group said the revision removed training from the list without expressly ruling it out. [5]
What Meta removed
The original wording covered automated tools such as scrapers, bots and crawlers, which visit websites and collect their contents. It allowed Meta, or others acting on its behalf, to access websites associated with a business's products or services, including sites made available through the use of Meta products. [2][3]
The clause then listed a wide range of uses for that material: providing, developing, improving, researching, training and maintaining Meta products and services. That combination alarmed publishers because it appeared to reach beyond material supplied for a particular advertisement and into content across their own sites. [2][3]
The revised wording retains broad permission to crawl but changes what Meta says it can do with the results. Developing, improving, researching and maintaining advertising and business products remain permitted purposes. Training is no longer named. [4]
Earlier terms for generative AI features in advertising were narrower. They allowed crawling of web addresses supplied in connection with ads and limited use of the collected material to those ads or other purposes specified in those terms, including ad optimization. The disputed commercial terms reach websites associated with the business more broadly. [2][4]
That makes the scope of the agreement important even after the deletion. A publisher might supply a page address to help create an advertisement. Permission to collect material from websites associated with that publisher could reach much further, according to the concerns raised by publishers and legal experts. [2][3][4]
The words that remain
Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney, said the revised terms still permit scraped content to be used to develop any "business product" and that "develop" could include training. James Grimmelmann, a Cornell law professor, said the change had not resolved his concerns about the breadth of the scraping language. [4]
Their objection concerns the remaining grant of permission. Removing a named activity does not necessarily exclude it if another permitted activity can encompass the same work. On their reading, developing an advertising or business product could still involve training an AI system. That is a legal interpretation, not an established ruling on the agreement. [4]
Meta's response is that it has clarified the intended scope: advertising and business products. Roberts said the revision does not change the company's crawler practices. The company also said the updated terms confer no new rights that override website owners' crawling preferences. [1][4]
The revised agreement does not expressly mention robots.txt, according to Nieman Lab's account of the text. Legal experts it consulted said the language could still be broad enough to permit crawling despite a site's stated preferences. Meta's public assurance and the agreement's wording therefore remain separate parts of the dispute. [4]
No court ruling described in the dispute settles whether the original clause would have been enforceable, and the legal status of AI training on copyrighted material remains unsettled. Whether Meta intends the revised development language to include AI training, will write its robots.txt assurance into the agreement, or will seek similar rights in another policy is not known. [2][3][4]
A deadline for business users
For publishers, declining the terms would carry a practical cost. Business accounts cannot opt out while continuing to use the covered products, according to Nieman Lab. That leaves organisations weighing their use of Meta's business services against permission whose scope they dispute. [3][4]
Publisher groups have sought intervention beyond negotiations with Meta. The European Publishers Council said it would petition European Union authorities to scrutinize the terms. The United Kingdom's News Media Association called for government intervention, while the US News/Media Alliance criticized the policy and continued to raise concerns after the revision. [4][5]
Those objections put pressure on Meta to explain permitted uses in the agreement itself. Publishers want to know whether their material can help build AI products. Meta says the terms concern its advertising and business services. The remaining language leaves the two positions in conflict, according to the legal experts who examined it. [4]
The next deadline is October 30, 2026, when the revised commercial terms are due to take effect for business users. [4]
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- Meta removes language that may have allowed it to scrape news sites | The Verge The Verge
- Meta may use sweeping new commercial TOS to avoid millions in AI licensing fees - Ars Technica arstechnica.com
- Meta's new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say | Nieman Journalism Lab niemanlab.org
- Legal experts warn Meta's new terms still grant broad scraping permissions, despite language changes | Nieman Journalism Lab niemanlab.org
- Meta updates new policy following widespread criticism mercurynews.com