Meta drops ‘train’ from website-crawling terms after backlash
Meta rewrote new terms late Friday that would have let it crawl websites of businesses using its ads and tools and use that content to train its AI, removing the word “train” after complaints from business customers and the media. Meta told the Mercury News that “we’ve heard you and want to clarify,” saying the crawling terms only ever applied to its ads and business products, that this is now spelled out, and that it is not changing how its crawlers work. The News/Media Alliance said the fix only limits what Meta can use content for — training was removed from listed uses but not expressly banned — and noted the terms do not say Meta will respect robots.txt.
Rules for AI crawling and content licensing are being renegotiated as agents spread across the web, and Meta’s wording change shows the dispute between publishers and platforms is unresolved.