On October 17, 2026, Meta removed a heavily criticized clause from the commercial terms for business accounts. The clause had read as though it granted the company the right to use any content on domains and web pages linked to a business account to provide, develop, improve, research, and train its products, including artificial intelligence (AI) models. The Verge reported the removal, and Meta issued an official statement.
How the clause got into the terms
In early October, Meta updated the commercial terms of use for business accounts. The new wording said the company could use «any content on your business account's domains, web pages or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of Meta products and services».
The list of purposes was broad, but the word «train» — meaning content could be used to train AI models — drew the strongest objections. The text was interpreted as though it permitted scanning the website of any publisher using Meta's advertising or business products, and therefore holding a Meta business account, and using its content to train AI. Publishers worried that the clause could apply to any content on sites linked through a business account.
The update concerned the commercial terms for business accounts — that is, for companies and publishers using Meta's advertising and business products. The broad clause added to the terms for that audience alarmed publishers: under their reading, it could apply to the site of any publisher with a business account.
Experts called the clause «remarkable»
Legal experts who spoke to Nieman Lab called the clause a «remarkable provision». In their view, the clause could have given Meta the right to scrape the website of any publisher with a business account and use the resulting content to train the company's AI models.
«This clause could have given Meta permission to scrape the website of any publisher with a Meta business account and use the content to train the company's AI models», the legal experts told Nieman Lab (via TechCrunch).
The experts' main concern was that the clause could be interpreted broadly. They argued that such wording could weaken publishers' control over their own content.
After the experts' assessment was published by TechCrunch, a Meta spokesperson said the updated terms did not signal any change in the company's web-scraping practices.
How Meta responded to the criticism
Following the criticism, a Meta spokesperson stressed that the updated terms did not signal a change in the company's web-page scraping practices. Then, on October 17, The Verge reported that the contested clause had been removed from the terms.
The company's statement reads:
«We heard you and want to clarify: the scraping terms we included applied only to our advertising and business products, which we have now clarified in the terms themselves. This does not change how Meta uses web scrapers».
According to Meta, the scraping-related terms had applied only within the scope of its advertising and business products, and this is now stated explicitly in the terms text. The statement emphasized that the company had added the clarification to the terms themselves. With this statement, the company did two things at once: it removed the disputed clause from the terms and openly stated that the scope of the remaining scraping terms is limited — they apply only to its advertising and business products.
Timeline of events
In early October, Meta updated the commercial terms of use for business accounts and added a clause granting the company broad rights. Then legal experts who spoke to Nieman Lab called the clause «remarkable», saying it could open the door to using publishers' content for AI training.
In response to criticism, a Meta spokesperson said the terms did not signal a change in the company's web-scraping practices. Finally, on October 17, the removal of the clause was announced; in its statement, Meta said the scraping terms had applied only to its advertising and business products and that this is now clarified in the terms text (TechCrunch).
This story follows a previous report
The removal of the clause follows our earlier report on the new clause added to Meta's commercial terms. That report covered the clause's inclusion in the terms and the concerns it raised among publishers (Aishunos archive). The new story is the next chapter of that dispute: after criticism, Meta removed the clause and clarified its scope. The debate around the clause thus ended with its removal from the terms. The difference is that the previous report was about the clause's introduction and the concerns, while this one is about its removal and Meta's official comment — the final chapter of the story.
