The Verge reports that Meta has removed language from its new commercial terms that legal experts said could let it scrape content from websites, including news sites, and use it to train its AI. The terms were then due to take effect on 30 October 2026. (Update, 28 October 2026: Meta’s Commercial Terms preview now says the updates “will go into effect on November 20, 2026.”)
According to The Verge’s report, Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the crawling rules apply only to the company’s advertising and business products, that the edit does not change how Meta’s crawlers work, and that content owners can still use robots.txt to set their preferences.
Business Pill · PRETRAINING
A Business Engineer explainer on pretraining, the stage where a model learns from large bodies of text. It explains the concept in general and says nothing about Meta or its terms.
The key insight: As we read it, the edit changes what Meta may do with content it crawls, not whether it may crawl: “train” has left the clause, and the remaining uses are tied to advertising and business products, while the permission to crawl the domains associated with business accounts stays in the text.
The terms let Meta, or any entity acting for it, use automated software and “create test credentials” to crawl the domains, web pages or URLs “associated with your products or services” for any business that uses Meta’s commercial products, such as a Facebook Page or an Instagrambusiness profile.
As Nieman Lab quoted it, the version first published for 30 October then said:
“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.”
Nieman Lab reported that virtually every news organization has at least one Meta business account, and that there was no option for business accounts to opt out ahead of 30 October.
The crawl clause in Meta’s Commercial Terms effective 30 October 2026, before and after the 17 October edit. Before: the text as quoted by Nieman Lab, which let Meta use crawled content to “provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of” Meta products. After: Meta’s commercial terms preview page as read on 17 October 2026, which ties crawling to providing and maintaining “advertising and business products”. The permission to crawl associated domains and the 30 October effective date are unchanged.
What Was Posted on X
This is false. There’s no change to how Meta uses web crawlers. As always, content owners can use robots.txt flags to indicate their preferences. This update is designed to make sure we’re able to pull accurate information about products for sale on third-party websites when making on-platform ad and content recommendations, not about scraping news sites.
Andy Stone, Meta’s vice president of communications, on 16 October, before the edit: he calls the reports false, says there is no change to how Meta uses web crawlers, and says the update is about pulling product information from third-party sites for ad and content recommendations, not about scraping news sites.
The Verge’s own post on 17 October linking its report: language that experts said allowed the scraping of news sites to train Meta’s AI has been removed from Meta’s terms.
Meta removes ToS language that suggested it could scrape websites “associated with” business accounts, saying it applied only to “ads and business products” (@terrenceobrien / The Verge)
(Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)
Techmeme’s summary on 17 October of The Verge’s report: Meta removed the terms language that suggested it could scrape websites associated with business accounts, saying it applied only to ads and business products.
What It Says Now
On Meta’s commercial terms preview page, read on 17 October, the same crawling permission now ends with a purpose. Meta may crawl and “periodically pull updates from such domains, web pages, or URLs in order to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products”, and “maintain the integrity and security of Meta Company Products.”
The page still carries an effective date of 30 October 2026.
As we read the two texts side by side, the word “train” is gone, and the uses are tied to advertising and business products. The permission to crawl associated domains with “web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents” and to create test credentials is still there.
Why Publishers Objected
Nieman Lab asked three legal experts to review the terms. “This is a remarkable provision to bury in [the] terms of service, given that this would give Meta access to material that would likely cost many millions of dollars in a licensing market,” Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy & Loevy, told Nieman Lab. He added: “It’s not clear whether a court would enforce this, but publishers should assume that it would be enforceable.”
“For news publishers, this clearly represents permission to Meta to train AI on any content from their sites and possibly to deploy some of that content, even in competition with the publishers themselves,” said James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School, according to Nieman Lab.
Crypto Briefing reports that the News/Media Alliance, an industry group representing publishers, called the initial terms “outrageous.”
What Meta Says
Before the edit, Meta Vice President of Communications Andy Stone wrote on X on 16 October: “This is false. There’s no change to how Meta uses web crawlers.” He said the update is designed to pull accurate information about products for sale on third-party websites for on-platform ad and content recommendations, “not about scraping news sites.”
Nieman Lab reported that a Meta spokesperson said crawling language had been scattered across several terms and was being consolidated in one place, and that “content owners can still manage how their content is accessed by using robots.txt.”
According to The Verge’s report, Roberts said the edits do not give Meta new rights that override those preferences.
Update, 19 October: What Meta’s Oct. 30 Terms Say Now
We read Meta’s Commercial Terms preview again on 19 October between 05:15 and 05:17 UTC, in two language editions. Both carry an effective date of 30 October 2026, and they do not say the same thing.
The US English edition has the revised clause described above. Meta may crawl associated domains and “periodically pull updates from such domains, web pages, or URLs in order to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products”. The word “train” does not appear.
The UK English edition (the same page with the en_GB locale) still ends the crawl paragraph with the original sentence: “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.”
PPC Land reported the same finding on 18 October, from a UK English capture taken at 20:44 UTC that day. It wrote that the edition it checked was, apart from the site footer, identical “word for word” to the copy it read on 16 October, and that it contained “no ads-only limitation”. PPC Land said it could not tell how both accounts could be true, and listed possibilities including a different language edition or an edit “rolling” out in stages.
The SOFX Report on 19 October described the edit as limiting use rather than collection. It quoted Sam Quigley, a spokesperson for the News/Media Alliance, telling the Bay Area News Group: “They may have taken out training from the listed uses, but with it not being expressly ruled out, it’s still potentially on the table.” Meta’s position, as quoted by The Verge and SOFX, is that the crawling terms applied only to its ads and business products and do not change how it uses web crawlers.
As we read it, which text binds a given business on 30 October may depend on the edition it is shown, and until the editions match, the “train” sentence has not left every version of Meta’s terms.
Update, 26 October: Publisher Groups Ask Meta to Withdraw the Terms
Publisher trade groups have moved together against the terms, Digiday reported on 26 October. The News/Media Alliance, which represents more than 2,000 publishers, sent Mark Zuckerberg a letter on 22 October demanding that Meta withdraw the revised terms. The letter argues that Meta’s behavior “risks undermining the robust licensing market for publishers’ content.”
“What sets Meta apart is Meta will still say take it or leave it,” Danielle Coffey, the Alliance’s president and CEO, told Digiday. Coffey asked for a public response from Zuckerberg by 26 October: “We’re going to start having to make some decisions.” Meta did not respond in time for Digiday’s publication.
Per Digiday, WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers, with more than 20,000 members in 120 countries, sent Meta its own letter the same day. The Center for Media and Digital Governance at the Open Markets Institute called on regulators in the US, UK and EU to act before 30 October, and European groups including the European Publishers Council, the Movement for an Open Web and Spain’s AMI filed complaints or joint letters with the European Commission.
Meta’s answer has been that publishers can block its crawlers through robots.txt. Coffey’s objection is that blocking would keep their content from Meta users, and she said “Facebook has not guaranteed it will respect robots.txt.” As we read it, the open question is what the groups do after the 26 October deadline; Digiday does not report a lawsuit or a formal regulatory proceeding yet.
Update, 26 October: Meta Pushes the Start Date to 20 November
Meta has moved the effective date of the terms from 30 October to 20 November, Reuters reported on 23 October. “We are extending the effective date of our updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms to 20 November,” Meta said, “to allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what’s changing and what’s not.” Meta added that content owners “will still be able to use robots.txt” to signal their preferences to web crawlers and AI bots.
The delay followed complaints to EU and UK antitrust authorities from publishers and digital advertisers, who said the terms would give Meta an “unlimited right to use their content for its AI services”; Meta rejected those claims, per Reuters. The European Commission welcomed the delay. The European Publishers Council and other groups want regulators to suspend the terms while they investigate. Its executive director, Angela Mills Wade, said use beyond the requested service “should require separate, express authorization from the relevant rightsholder.” Meta has announced a new date, not a change to the terms themselves.
The Structural Read
As we read it, the dispute was about one verb in a list. Nieman Lab’s experts read “train” in the first version as covering Meta’s AI products; Meta’s new text keeps “provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain” but points them at advertising and business products.
As we read it, the crawling itself is the part that did not move: the terms still let Meta use “web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents” and create test credentials for the domains associated with a business account, and Meta says robots.txt still governs access.
As we read it, the parties’ positions are on record: Meta says nothing changes in how its crawlers work, while Nieman Lab’s experts said the first version would have given Meta material that, in Matt Topic’s words, “would likely cost many millions of dollars in a licensing market.”
Andy Stone, Meta, on X, 16 October 2026
“This is false. There’s no change to how Meta uses web crawlers”
Three Implications
NEWS PUBLISHERS WITH META BUSINESS ACCOUNTS Nieman Lab reported that virtually every news organization has at least one Meta business account; the terms they accept on 30 October now tie crawled-content uses to advertising and business products.
SITE OWNERS MANAGING CRAWLERS Meta says content owners can still use robots.txt to set their preferences, and according to The Verge, Roberts said the terms give Meta no new rights that override them.
READERS OF THE FINAL TEXT The effective date is 30 October 2026; the preview page we read on 17 October is the text businesses are asked to accept.
The framework names the moat this clause touched: “The Corpus Moat — built by pretraining, eroding as the public web is exhausted and synthetic data closes gaps.”
As we read it, that is why the word “train” drew the objection: publishers’ sites are part of the corpus, and the first version of the terms would have listed training among the uses of crawled content. The framework was published in July 2026 and does not discuss Meta’s terms.
What Is Not Established
The Verge’s article is behind a subscription; we read its opening lines and its account through a syndicated summary. We did not contact Meta.
Neither Meta nor the reports say whether content collected under earlier terms was used to train Meta’s AI. The legal reading of the first version is the experts’, as Nieman Lab reported it, and has not been tested in court.
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Meta has taken “train” out of the list of uses for content its crawlers collect from business accounts’ websites, and tied those uses to advertising and business products, in terms that still take effect on 30 October.
Meta says nothing changes in how its crawlers work and that robots.txt still applies; the permission to crawl associated domains remains in the text.
A note on sourcing. This piece is based on Meta’s own Commercial Terms preview page (effective 30 October 2026, read on 17 October), Nieman Lab’s report quoting the first version of the clause and three legal experts, The Verge’s report of 17 October (read in part, and through a syndicated summary), Andy Stone’s post on X and Crypto Briefing’s account. The 19 October update rests on our own reading of the US English and UK English editions of Meta’s terms preview (19 October, 05:15–05:17 UTC), and on PPC Land’s and The SOFX Report’s articles, read in full; the News/Media Alliance quote is as SOFX reports it. We did not contact Meta. The references to our earlier reporting link to our own pieces.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
