Meta has adjusted its business terms effective Oct. 30, removing specific language that suggested the company could freely train its artificial intelligence models on content from news websites.
The original terms for business accounts stated Meta "may use any content" from associated websites to "develop, research" and "train" its products — language that prompted fierce criticism from publishers. Legal analysts had noted this wording could let Meta argue its commercial terms supersede blocking instructions like robots.txt files that web scrapers and search engines typically observe.
Meta removed the explicit phrase saying it would "train" its products with scraped content following industry backlash. But experts say the revised language still permits the practice.
James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School, said the adjustments "do nothing to restrict the 'associated with your products or services' language that would let Meta scrape entire sites."
Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy & Loevy, said the revised terms still allow Meta to use scraped content to "develop any 'business product.'" He added that "'develop' is broad enough to include 'train'," suggesting the practical effect remains unchanged.
Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the company's position is that the new terms are not designed to scrape news content without permission. "Content owners can use robots.txt to signal their preferences," Roberts said. "This is not about scraping news sites, and these updates don't give us new rights that supersede those preferences."
