Meta removes wording that would have let it use businesses' web content to “train” its products, before its new Commercial Terms take effect on 30 October

Meta has rewritten a clause in its new Commercial Terms, which take effect on 30 October 2026, after criticism that it would let the company use businesses' web content to train AI. A version of the preview captured on 16 October included a sentence saying “Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train,” and maintain the integrity of Meta's products, Unite.AI reported. TechCrunch reported on 17 October that Meta has dropped the provision, citing The Verge's report that it had been removed.

The preview now on Meta's site authorises Meta “to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs”. The word “train” no longer appears in the clause. Unite.AI reported that the Self-Serve Ad Terms preview, also effective 30 October, carries the same revised clause.

Meta told TechCrunch that “the crawling terms we consolidated only applied to our ads and business products” and that “It does not change how Meta uses web crawlers.” Unite.AI reported that Meta's Andy Stone said in a public post that the update was not about scraping news sites, and pointed site owners to robots.txt.

The change follows criticism from publishers' groups, the News/Media Alliance among them, of AI companies collecting web content for training. For businesses that advertise with Meta, the practical point is that the terms they accept on 30 October no longer name training as a use of their sites' content.

• Confirmed Meta's Commercial Terms preview takes effect on 30 October 2026, and its crawling clause no longer contains the word “train”. Meta, Commercial Terms preview
• Reported A 16 October capture of the preview included wording letting Meta use content from businesses' domains to “train” its products, Unite.AI reported. Unite.AI
• Claimed Meta told TechCrunch the consolidated crawling terms only applied to its ads and business products and do not change how it uses web crawlers. TechCrunch