THE CRUNCH

Meta has removed a provision from its commercial terms of use that had raised concerns the company could scrape publishers' websites to train its AI models. The language, added in a recent update, said Meta 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. Legal experts interviewed by Nieman Lab called it a "remarkable provision" that could have given Meta permission to scrape the site of any publisher with a Meta business account for AI training.

A Meta spokesperson had insisted the updated terms did not change how the company crawls the web. The company has since removed the language and issued a statement: "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."