Meta has walked back language in its commercial terms of use that had drawn scrutiny from legal observers and the broader publishing community. The updated terms had initially stated that the company could "use any content from [a business account's] domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of" its products and services. Following criticism, that provision has since been removed.

Legal professionals who reviewed the revised terms told Nieman Lab that the language represented a striking expansion of Meta's stated rights - one that appeared to grant the company broad authority to scrape the websites of any publisher operating a Meta business account and potentially use that content to train its artificial intelligence systems.

Controversy Over AI Training and Web Scraping

The timing of the language raised eyebrows, particularly given the ongoing legal battles surrounding AI companies and the use of third-party content for model training. While Meta successfully defended itself in a high-profile copyright infringement case last year, multiple other lawsuits targeting the company - and other AI developers - remain active in the courts. The question of whether scraped web content can be lawfully used to train large language models continues to be contested legal territory.

Despite the alarm raised by the terms, a Meta spokesperson pushed back against the interpretation, stating that the updated language did not represent any actual change in how the company crawls the web. The company characterized the update as a consolidation of existing policies rather than an introduction of new data practices.

Meta Revises the Terms Following Backlash

After the issue gained wider attention - including coverage by The Verge, which reported on the removal of the provision - Meta issued a public statement clarifying its position. The company acknowledged the concern and indicated it had acted in response to the feedback received.

"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."

The statement suggests that whatever language appeared in the updated terms was intended to reflect existing, narrower practices tied specifically to Meta's advertising and business-facing tools - not a sweeping new policy covering all web content associated with business accounts.

The episode highlights the sensitivity surrounding how major technology platforms communicate their data practices, especially as scrutiny over AI training datasets intensifies across the industry. Even language that a company considers routine or administrative can trigger significant concern when it appears to expand the scope of data collection or usage in ways that affect publishers, content creators, and businesses that rely on these platforms.

Meta has not provided detailed information about what specific changes were made to the terms following the removal, nor has it offered a comprehensive explanation of how its web crawling practices are structured in relation to business accounts more broadly.