Meta has announced that it will implement new commercial terms of use allowing the use of web scrapers to collect content from websites associated with business accounts on its platforms, effective October 30. This update will impact news publishers that utilize business accounts to manage their Facebook pages, Messenger accounts, Instagram profiles, or WhatsApp channels. According to legal experts, the new terms could enable Meta to scrape content from news sites and use that content for training its AI products.
The updated terms state that Meta can use automated software to access, index, cache, analyze, and collect content from associated websites. This includes the ability to periodically pull updates from these domains. The terms explicitly mention that the content collected may be used to develop, improve, and maintain Meta's products and services.
James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School, noted that this represents permission for Meta to train AI on content from news publishers' sites, potentially allowing Meta to deploy that content in competition with the publishers themselves. Currently, there is no option for business accounts to opt out of these new terms before the implementation date.
Meta informed users of the update through a blog post and on the Meta Business Suite, indicating that if users do not agree to the updated terms, they must cease all access or use of Meta's products for business purposes. A Meta spokesperson stated that the new terms consolidate previously scattered language about crawling and that they do not change how Meta crawls publishers in the future. However, legal experts believe the new language may allow Meta to argue that its commercial terms take precedence over other blocking instructions.
The update also allows Meta to create “test credentials” to scrape websites associated with business accounts, which Grimmelmann suggested could enable Meta to bypass registration walls on publishers' sites. Benjamin Sobel, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, compared this approach to antitrust law concepts, suggesting that access to Meta's products is tied to acceptance of the scraping permissions.
This announcement follows Meta's rollout of its paid subscription service, Meta One, which restricts the number of external links that certain accounts can post without subscribing. Some news publishers are currently exempt from this link limit. Grimmelmann and other experts have expressed concerns over the implications of these new terms for news publishers, who may feel pressured to trust Meta's intentions or cease using business accounts altogether.
Beale, a user who relies on Facebook for audience engagement, stated he is considering shutting down his accounts before the October 30 deadline, expressing frustration over Meta's approach to content scraping.