A Republican and a Democrat are pressing Meta to drop new commercial terms that critics say would let it scrape the website of anyone with a business account.
A Republican from Tennessee and a Democrat from California are asking Meta for the same thing. Sen. Marsha Blackburn wants Meta to withdraw its new commercial terms, and Sen. Adam Schiff wants the company to reverse course. Critics say the terms would let Meta crawl the website of anyone who keeps a Facebook or Instagram business account. Meta had planned to start enforcing them on Oct. 30 and has now pushed the date to Nov. 20.
What the Terms Say
The original language let Meta use content from those websites to “provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain” its products. After criticism, Meta dropped the word “train.” The revised version allows use “in order to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products.” Meta’s examples of business products are ads, Meta Business Tools and Meta Business Suite.
Why Lawyers Are Not Reassured
Attorney Matt Topic of Loevy & Loevy says he thinks “develop” is broad enough to include “train.” Cornell law professor James Grimmelmann said the change “doesn’t address my concerns” and called the wording “broad enough to drive a truck through.”
A text file called robots.txt lets a website tell crawlers which pages to skip, but University of Wisconsin law professor Benjamin Sobel said compliance is voluntary. He compared it to a sign that says “Don’t look at my house.”
What Meta Says
Meta says the crawling terms apply only to its ads and business products. In a statement, the company said, “These updates don’t give us new rights to supersede such preferences and this isn’t about scraping news sites.” It added that content owners can still use robots.txt to signal their preferences. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the Nov. 20 delay allows “more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what’s changing and what’s not.” Schiff has asked Meta to put the robots.txt assurance into the terms as a legally binding commitment.
Meta’s assurances about robots.txt have come in statements, and the revised terms do not include that language. A Meta spokesperson acknowledged that it “wasn’t clear in the initial consolidation of terms that robots.txt preferences are respected.”
Pushback From Washington and Publishers
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, said Meta is “attempting to exploit American creators and businesses.” She said the revisions “offer little assurance that creators’ intellectual property will be protected” and told Meta to withdraw the updated terms.
Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, told Zuckerberg in a letter obtained by POLITICO’s Decoded newsletter that the breadth of the updated provisions is “extraordinary.” He wrote that “virtually every news organization, independent journalist, public figure, and commercial enterprise in the United States manages a Meta Page or utilizes the Meta Business Suite to reach their readers and customers, effectively requiring each of these entities to allow Meta to scrape their IP in service of the company’s own products.” Schiff argued the revised language is too broad and still allows training of Meta’s AI products despite the removal of the word “train.” On X, he urged Meta to reverse the decision and compensate creators and publishers.
Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, called the update “outrageous and probably illegal.” Antitrust authorities in the EU and UK have also received complaints from publishers and digital advertisers who argue the terms would give Meta unlimited rights to use their content for its AI services. Meta rejects those claims.
What Comes Next
The terms are now set to take effect Nov. 20. Whether the final wording rules out AI training, or gives a site’s robots.txt file firmer legal footing, has not been settled.
*WECU News has repeatedly asked Meta, through its appeal channels, why links to its site display a scam warning on Facebook. On a WECU News test phone, the warning’s “Open link” button did not open the page. Meta has not explained.
Sources:
• Nieman Lab, “Legal experts warn Meta’s new terms still grant broad scraping permissions, despite language changes” (Oct. 17, 2026)
• POLITICO, “Decoded” newsletter, “The AI lawsuits are coming” (Oct. 26, 2026)
• Meta, Commercial Terms (revised preview)
• Sen. Adam Schiff, letter to Mark Zuckerberg (via POLITICO)
• Sen. Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff), post on X
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