Meta is updating its terms of service again to remove language that suggested it could scrape content from websites, including news outlets, to train its artificial intelligence models. The reversal follows significant backlash regarding how the tech giant handles third-party data.
The Controversial Clause
Specifically, Meta has excised language from its commercial terms page stating that the company "may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of, the Meta Company Products."
The language was flagged by experts, including Neiman Lab and James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell. They interpreted the clause as an attempt by Meta to secure the right to use scraped content for AI training for free, potentially superseding blocking instructions found in a site’s robots.txt file.
Meta’s Clarification and Reversal
In response to the criticism, Meta spokespeople Andy Stone and Daniel Roberts pushed back against the interpretations. Roberts stated that the consolidated crawling terms were intended only for Meta’s ads and business products, and the company has now clarified this within the terms themselves.
"We’ve heard you and want to clarify: the crawling terms we consolidated only applied to our ads and business products," Roberts said in a statement. He emphasized that the update does not change how Meta uses web crawlers and that content owners can still use robots.txt to signal their preferences. According to Meta, these updates do not grant the company new rights that override those technical preferences.
