Meta’s new business terms appear to let it crawl websites associated with businesses that use its platforms, including online publishers, according to Nieman Lab. The terms say Meta can use content from those sites to develop and train its products. They take effect October 30.
The policy applies to business accounts that promote content across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. It authorizes Meta or entities acting on its behalf to use automated tools to access, collect, and periodically retrieve content from associated domains, pages, and URLs. It also permits Meta to create test credentials for that work.
Legal experts told Nieman Lab that the language could let Meta argue that its commercial terms override blocking instructions such as a website’s robots.txt file. If that argument holds, Meta could potentially train AI models on publishers’ content without a licensing agreement. The terms themselves do not settle that legal question.
“For news publishers, this clearly represents permission to Meta to train AI on any content from their sites and possibly to deploy some of that content, even in competition with the publishers themselves,” James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell, told Nieman Lab.
Meta disputes that the update changes web crawling
Meta disputes that reading. Spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the company is “consolidating” its commercial and self-serve ad terms. “There is no change to how Meta uses web crawlers; any suggestion to the contrary is false… Content owners can still use robots.txt flags to indicate their preferences, as we clearly explain in our developer documentation,” he said.
Andy Stone, Meta’s vice president of communications, also said in a post on X that the update is not aimed at news sites. “This update is designed to make sure we’re able to pull accurate information about products for sale on third-party websites when making on-platform ad and content recommendations, not about scraping news sites.”
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Meta has followed OpenAI in striking AI licensing deals with CNN, Fox News, USA Today, and People Inc. The new terms could cover a wider range of content. Last month, Meta launched a Meta One subscription that requires businesses and creators to pay to include links in posts and reels. Nieman Lab described the overlap this way: “Put another way, Meta has begun charging users to post links to the same content that it will be permitted to crawl for free.”
The terms say businesses that do not agree “may stop all access or use of our Products for business or commercial purposes.” The new terms take effect October 30.
