Meta may use sweeping new commercial TOS to avoid millions in AI licensing fees
Meta’s October 30 commercial terms would let it scrape linked business sites to train AI, with no opt-out.
Meta’s commercial terms, effective October 30, 2026, would require business accounts to authorize automated crawling of linked websites and use of that content to train and improve Meta products, with no opt-out. Legal experts told Nieman Lab the clause could support arguments that Meta may train AI on publisher sites, potentially avoiding licensing fees worth millions. Meta says the update consolidates existing crawling language, that it still honors robots.txt, and that sites can block crawlers. Ars Technica found new wording, including “test credentials,” that was absent from the prior commercial, catalog, and ad-creative AI terms.
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