Meta's new business terms could allow it to crawl publishers' sites, lawyers say
Sorted AI17 OctMeta's updated commercial terms, which take effect on 30 October, let it crawl websites associated with business accounts on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger and use that content to train its products. Three legal experts who reviewed the terms for Nieman Lab said the wording could be used to argue Meta may scrape news sites for AI training, even where robots.txt blocks it. Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts told The Verge there is no change to how Meta uses web crawlers and that robots.txt still works, and communications chief Andy Stone said the update is about product information for ads, not news sites. There is no opt out short of stopping business use of Meta's products.
Why it matters: If your company runs a Facebook page or Instagram business account and publishes content on its own site, read the new terms before 30 October and check how your site handles Meta's crawlers.
Nieman Lab ↗AI-assisted, reviewed by Sorted AI
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