TechnologySaturday, October 17, 20262 min read

Meta removes language that may have allowed it to scrape news sites

By Terrence O’Brien · Via The Verge · Published by Everything Blog

In short

Meta has updated its terms of service to clarify that it cannot scrape content from news sites to train its AI, following backlash from experts and users who interpreted the language as an attempt to allow Meta to use scraped content for free. The updated terms now explicitly state that Meta’s web crawlers are only used for ads and business products, and that content owners can still use robots.txt files to indicate their preferences.

Key points

Meta’s vice president of communications, Andy Stone, and spokesperson Daniel Roberts, pus…: Meta’s vice president of communications, Andy Stone, and spokesperson Daniel Roberts, pushed back, stating that the language change does not alter how Meta uses web crawlers or supersede site-specific instructions.
The updated terms clarify that Meta’s web crawlers are only used for ads and business pro…: The updated terms clarify that Meta’s web crawlers are only used for ads and business products, and that content owners can still use robots.txt files to indicate their preferences.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

After backlash, Meta is updating its terms again to remove language that suggested it could scrape content from sites, including news sites, to train its AI. Specifically, the following language no longer appears on the commercial terms page:

Meta removes language that may have allowed it to scrape news sites

Language that experts say allowed the scraping of news sites to train its AI has been removed from Meta’s terms.

… Meta 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, services, and features provided under these Commercial Terms and any other applicable supplemental terms.

Many, including Neiman Lab and James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell, interpreted it as an attempt to give Meta the right to use content scraped from sites to train its AI products for free and supersede blocking instructions in a site’s robots.txt file.

Andy Stone, Meta’s vice president of communications, and spokesperson Daniel Roberts pushed back, saying that “There is no change to how Meta uses web crawlers; any suggestion to the contrary is false.” Today’s update to its terms and a new statement go further, removing the controversial language entirely. Roberts said in a follow-up statement to The Verge this morning:

“We’ve heard you and want to clarify: the crawling terms we consolidated only applied to our ads and business products, and we’ve clarified that in the terms themselves. It does not change how Meta uses web crawlers. As always, content owners can use robots.txt to signal their preferences. This is not about scraping news sites, and these updates don’t give us new rights that supersede those preferences.”

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