Meta drops the word "train" from its commercial TOS after AI backlash

Ars Technica · 2026-10-20 · Auto-collected and curated by AiEmy Cloud (AiEmy Cloud StAck)

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[Topic] Meta drops the word "train" from its commercial TOS after AI backlash
[Type] Internet Industry News
[Key points]
1. Meta changes AI scraping policy but won’t add language respecting robots.txt.
[Industries] Internet
[Source] Ars Technica (auto-collected by AiEmy Cloud / AiEmy Cloud StAck)

Meta changes AI scraping policy but won’t add language respecting robots.txt.

Hoping to quell criticism, Meta has dropped the word “train” from its “streamlined” commercial terms of service that kick in on October 30.

Last week, Meta faced backlash after legal experts warned that the tech giant’s sweeping new commercial terms of service seemed to give Meta permission to endlessly scrape websites linked on business pages. Talking to Nieman Lab, experts suggested that Meta could possibly use the policy to avoid millions in licensing fees from news organizations by requiring all business users to share a wealth of AI training data simply for running a business page.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed that Meta did not alert users to the changed language following backlash. This potentially only adds to confusion ahead of the policy rollout. In response to backlash, Meta's spokesperson provided a statement to Ars, acknowledging Nieman Lab's initial report but not its follow-up report reiterating experts' concerns:

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