Meta removes AI-training wording from its web-crawling terms before the Oct. 30 effective date

Meta's pending Commercial Terms let it crawl websites tied to business accounts on its platforms. The first wording, published October 16, listed training Meta Company Products among permitted uses. The News/Media Alliance president called it outrageous and probably illegal, and a Meta spokesperson replied that crawler behavior was unchanged and that owners can signal preferences through robots.txt. Overnight, Meta rewrote the clause to cover only advertising and business products and dropped the explicit training language. The terms still take effect October 30, and businesses accept them by continuing to use Meta's commercial products. The Alliance says training was removed from the list of uses but not expressly prohibited, and that the revision does not promise to honor robots.txt, according to a statement relayed by The Next Web. For anyone running a site tied to a Meta business account, including AI startups buying ads or using Meta commerce tools, this is a contract change that applies by default. Review the final text before October 30 and decide whether crawler blocks and legal terms need updating.