# Meta removes language that raised scraping and AI training concerns — retained record

> Retained news record from news:digg-verification:techcrunch.com.

Canonical: https://highsignal.app/data/records/8112f5fb1996f341

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source: [news](https://highsignal.app/data/news) (news:digg-verification:techcrunch.com)  published 2026-10-18 03:03 ingested 2026-10-18 03:03

[Meta Platforms Inc.](https://highsignal.app/entities/META)[original source ↗](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/17/meta-removes-language-that-raised-scraping-and-ai-training-concerns/)

## retained text



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Meta recently updated its commercial terms of use, declaring that the company can “use any content from [a business account’s] domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of” Meta products and services.
According to legal experts interviewed by Nieman Lab, this looked like a “remarkable provision” that could give Meta permission to scrape the website of any publisher with a Meta business account and use the content to train the company’s AI models. (While Meta defeated a high-profile lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement last year, other cases against AI companies, including Meta, continue.)
However, a Meta spokesperson insisted that the updated terms did not reflect a change in the way Meta crawls the web. And now, The Verge reports that the provision has been removed.
“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,” the company said in a statement. “It does not change how Meta uses web crawlers.”
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document fetched 2026-10-19 00:32 · canonical https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/17/meta-removes-language-that-raised-scraping-and-ai-training-concerns