Meta has quietly deleted language from its commercial terms page that legal experts said would have allowed the company to scrape content from any linked domain, including news sites, to train its AI models.
The removed clause explicitly stated Meta could use content from 'domains, web pages, or URLs' to 'provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain' its products. Cornell professor of digital and information law James Grimmelmann and Nieman Lab both flagged the language as a significant rights grab before Meta pulled it.
The full story is worth reading for the specific legal interpretation of what the original clause permitted and what the updated terms still allow. The rollback followed public backlash, but the underlying question of what Meta can do with linked publisher content remains unresolved.
[READ ORIGINAL →]