Meta removes the sentence that could have tied crawled business sites to AI training
On October 17, 2026 Meta deleted the sentence in its Commercial Terms, due to take effect October 30, that let it use content from sites linked to business accounts to train its products. The permission to crawl those sites remains for ads and business tools.
Backlash came first, then the training sentence went
On October 15, 2026 Nieman Lab reported that Meta's new Commercial Terms let Meta, or anyone acting for it, use automated software to crawl the domains, pages and URLs tied to the products and services of anyone with a business account on Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp. The text listed web scrapers, bots and spiders, and allowed Meta to create test credentials. The first version also said Meta could use that content to provide, develop, improve, research and train its products.
Three legal experts who reviewed the terms for Nieman Lab said the wording could be used to argue that Meta may scrape news sites and use the material in AI products. After the backlash, The Verge reported on October 17 that the sentence had been removed from the commercial terms page. TechCrunch carried the update the same day and credited The Verge.
The crawling permission stays, the purposes list changed
Meta's preview page, which also has a Turkish version, shows an effective date of October 30, 2026. The crawling clause on it still lets Meta, or someone working on its behalf, use automated software to reach domains, pages and URLs linked to a business's products and services, create test credentials and pull periodic updates. Its list of purposes is now limited to providing, developing, improving, researching and maintaining ads and business products, and on protecting the integrity and security of Meta products. The word for training does not appear in that text.
Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts told The Verge the consolidated crawling terms only applied to ads and business products, and that Meta clarified this in the terms. He added: "It does not change how Meta uses web crawlers." He also said site owners can state their preferences through robots.txt, and that the update is not about scraping news sites. Cornell's James Grimmelmann had told Nieman Lab the test-credentials wording would technically let Meta "sign up as a fake user" to get past registration walls.
Passive acceptance, and the only exit is to stop using the tools
Social Media Today wrote on October 18 that the revised provisions still let Meta gather data from business websites to feed its ad targeting. PPC Land reports that the new terms replace a version dated March 6, 2024, that acceptance happens passively by continuing to use the products, and that the terms do not mention robots.txt. Per Nieman Lab, business accounts had no way to opt out before October 30: anyone who disagrees is asked to stop using the products for business purposes altogether.
Even without the training sentence, the crawling permission and the test-credentials wording remain on Meta's page, and the effective date still reads October 30. For anyone with an ad account or business page, carrying on after that date counts as agreement. No source says Meta has begun crawling advertiser sites under these terms, so the open question for now is the scope of the clause.
Nieman Lab placed the terms change next to Meta One, the subscription that limits how many external links some Facebook and Instagram accounts can post without paying. We covered that subscription on September 17. A firm verdict is premature: Roberts told The Verge the updates give Meta no new rights that override robots.txt preferences, yet, as PPC Land notes, the terms text itself never names that file.
The sources have no Türkiye section, but the page has a Turkish version
The only Türkiye-specific fact in the sources is that Meta's preview page has a Turkish version, which also shows October 30, 2026 as the effective date. The sources describe no separate rule for business accounts in Türkiye, no local exception and no reaction from a local authority. The rest of this section is UNALSOFT commentary.
Our reading: the same text likely applies to business accounts run from Türkiye, but the sources do not confirm it. Take the data protection side (KVKK) to your legal adviser; this article is not legal advice.
UNALSOFT's take
We read this as a crawler-management issue for site owners. If you run a Meta ad account or business page, continuing after October 30 counts as accepting these terms. The training sentence is gone, yet the crawling permission for ads and business tools remains, so it makes sense to review your robots.txt settings and which crawlers you allow. Meta says content owners can signal their preferences through robots.txt. For help aligning your account setup and product feeds, see our ad management service.
Sources
Meta, Commercial Terms preview page · The Verge, Meta removes language that may have allowed it to scrape news sites · Nieman Lab, Meta's new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites · TechCrunch, Meta removes language that raised scraping and AI training concerns · PPC Land, Meta grants itself the right to crawl advertisers' websites for AI · Social Media Today, Meta updates terms of service amid concerns around data scraping
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