Meta narrows AI-scraping clause in its business terms

Meta edited its commercial terms, which take effect Oct 30, after Nieman Lab and legal experts warned the original wording could let Meta scrape news sites for AI training, per The Verge. The clause had let Meta “use any content from” domains, web pages or URLs “associated with” a business or ad account to “provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of” its products — binding any business with a Meta Page or ad account. The revised terms drop the word “train” and tie permitted uses specifically to “advertising and business products,” plus security and integrity maintenance. Meta VP of Communications Andy Stone and spokesperson Daniel Roberts say this isn’t a change in crawler behavior: the right to crawl and cache content from domains tied to a business account remains in the text, only its stated purpose narrowed, and Roberts says robots.txt still governs access.