Meta has removed commercial-terms language that critics interpreted as permission to use content from linked websites to train AI, according to an October 17 report by The Verge. Meta says the wording change clarifies existing arrangements and does not change its crawler behaviour.
What changed in the reported terms
The Verge identifies a paragraph that no longer appears on the commercial terms page. It described using content from domains, pages or URLs to provide, develop, research and train Meta products and services.
The article reports that legal scholars and publishing observers read the language as a possible claim over website content. That interpretation prompted concern about how the terms interacted with publishers’ blocking preferences. It is an interpretation described in the reporting, rather than a settled conclusion about every publisher’s contract.
Meta’s explanation
In a statement to The Verge, spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the consolidated crawling terms applied to ads and business products. Meta also said the update did not alter its use of web crawlers.
Roberts said content owners could continue using robots.txt to signal preferences and that the update did not grant new rights overriding those preferences. These are the company’s statements about the change. They are different evidence from an independent audit of crawler activity or a court’s assessment of the terms.
What publishers can usefully check
Franklin’s interpretation is that the dispute highlights two separate records worth keeping: the language a service publishes and the access a website actually observes. A revision to a paragraph does not, by itself, establish which pages were previously fetched or how any collected material was used.
For a publisher reviewing the issue, a practical record would include the dated terms, the relevant crawler preferences and the specific access behaviour under discussion. That keeps a concrete operational question from turning into a broader claim that the reporting cannot resolve.
Read The Verge’s original story for the removed wording and Meta’s full response.