Meta removes language that raised scraping and AI training concerns

Meta Platforms has removed a clause from its commercial terms of service that had raised concerns about its right to scrape web content for use in developing its services and training AI models. The updated terms granted the company permission to "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.

Legal experts initially interpreted this clause as granting Meta the ability to scrape content from any publisher with a Meta business account and use it for AI training. This sparked discussions around copyright and data scraping, particularly given Meta's involvement in previous legal cases concerning intellectual property in AI development.

However, a Meta spokesperson confirmed that the updated terms did not reflect a change in how Meta crawls the web. The company stated: "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 removal of the clause followed reporting by The Verge. Meta maintains that there have been no changes to its web crawling practices and that it adheres to existing policies for data collection.