Meta removes wording that could allow it to scrape news websites' content
Meta removes language that may have allowed it to scrape news sites
Meta updated its business terms, removing wording that experts had interpreted as allowing it to scrape content from news websites and elsewhere for training AI. Previously, Neiman Lab and Cornell University digital and information law professor James Grimmelmann and others argued that the original wording could let Meta use content scraped from websites to train AI products for free, and override blocking instructions in websites' robots.txt; Meta's vice president of communications Andy Stone and spokesperson Daniel Roberts countered at the time that its use of web crawlers had not changed. In today's terms update and a new statement, Meta completely removed the disputed wording. Roberts explained that these scraping terms applied only to advertising and commercial products, did not change how Meta uses crawlers, and content owners could still express preferences through robots.txt.