On October 17, 2026 (Beijing Time), it was reported that Meta has removed a controversial clause from its recent commercial use terms. The clause previously stated that Meta could utilize any content within domains, websites, or URLs associated with business accounts for the purposes of providing, developing, improving, researching, training, and maintaining its products and services. Legal experts had argued this language might grant Meta the right to scrape content from affiliated publishers’ websites for training AI models.

A Meta spokesperson previously stated that the update does not signify a change in Meta’s web scraping practices. Meta later clarified that the revised scraping terms now apply exclusively to advertising and commercial products, and the adjustment has been explicitly stated in the terms—this change will not alter how Meta employs web crawlers.