# News/Media Alliance demands Meta withdraw AI scraping terms

Published: 2026-10-22T20:04:16.440Z · Source: News/Media Alliance (https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/letter-to-meta-demanding-withdrawal-of-new-terms-of-use/)
Source date: 2026-10-22
Flags: single-source — confirmation pending

News/Media Alliance, the US publishers' trade group, sent Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg a letter on Oct. 22 demanding the company fully withdraw its revised Commercial Terms of Use before they take effect Oct. 30, per the group's own release. Meta had already narrowed the clause on Oct. 17 — dropping the word "train" after warnings from Nieman Lab and legal experts — but NMA says the edited terms still let Meta pull content from any site tied to a business account without clear limits. The group calls the terms "an exercise of market power" and says Meta already owes publishers roughly $2 billion a year for their content.

Why it matters: A publisher trade group says Meta's Oct. 17 narrowing of its scraping clause was cosmetic, keeping pressure on a terms-of-use change that governs how AI tools can draw on news content ahead of its Oct. 30 effective date.

## What this answers

**Is Meta allowed to scrape news sites to train its AI?**

Meta's revised Commercial Terms of Use, effective Oct. 30, 2026, let it use content from any site tied to a business account for its products; after an Oct. 17 edit dropped the word "train," News/Media Alliance says the right to harvest that content remains in the text and is demanding Meta withdraw the terms entirely.

**What is the News/Media Alliance asking Meta to do?**

On Oct. 22, 2026, it sent Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg a letter demanding Meta fully withdraw its revised Commercial Terms of Use before they take effect Oct. 30, saying Meta's earlier narrowing of the clause didn't fix the underlying problem.


Canonical: https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-10-22-news-media-alliance-demands-meta-withdraw-ai-scraping-terms/
From Anything Engine Optimization (AEO Wire) — https://anythingengineoptimization.com/ · Standards: https://anythingengineoptimization.com/standards/
