Meta tweaks its new terms of service after backlash against scraping
The changes have alarmed publishers and others with business accounts.
Revisions to Commercial Terms
Meta has tweaked its terms of service for business accounts after a swift backlash against an update scheduled to take effect later this month. The company removed a reference to AI training from its commercial terms, but there are still questions about its ability to scrape the websites, including those of publishers, that have business accounts on the platform.
The social media company initially shared a planned update to its commercial terms last week. As flagged by Nieman Lab, the new language stated that Meta would have the right to use web scrapers and other automated tools to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs associated with business accounts on the platform.
That language raised alarm among publishers and other businesses. The concern was that these terms would give Meta the right to scrape the content of any website that also has a business account on Facebook or Instagram. Then Meta quietly updated its commercial terms again, removing the word train and adding that scraping would be used in order to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products.
Here is what that section now says in full:
Updated Language and Scope
You authorize us to use automated software and create test credentials to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs associated with your products or services, and to periodically pull updates from such domains in order to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products and maintain the integrity and security of Meta Company Products.
In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the company had clarified the language to reflect that the new terms apply only to our ads and business products. He said the changes were not about scraping news sites and that the company wasn't changing how it uses web crawlers.
The crawling terms we consolidated only applies to our ads and business products, and we've now clarified that in the terms themselves. As we said, how Meta uses web crawlers isn't changing, nor is how content owners can use robots.txt to signal preferences.
Industry Concerns Remain
But Stone's statement doesn't address the fact that the new terms are still a substantial expansion of Meta's scraping permissions, as Nieman Lab reports in its latest piece on the changes. A number of legal experts told the publication that Meta is permitted to scrape news websites with seemingly few restrictions under the revised terms.
It likely also doesn't help that Meta has had a tumultuous relationship with news publishers. The company stopped paying for news in 2022 and killed its dedicated news tab in 2024. More recently, the company has cut a handful of deals with outlets to provide news content for its AI chatbot.
Now, media groups are sounding the alarm about Meta's new terms. Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, said in a statement that the rules are outrageous and probably illegal. Theo Bamber, the top executive of the UK's News Media Association, told Press Gazette it was a shameless landgrab attempt from the company.
