Meta Updates Business Terms to Allow Website Scraping

Meta Platforms, Inc. updated its commercial and self-serve advertising terms of use, effective October 30, granting the company authority to use automated software to scrape content from websites associated with Meta business accounts. The changes apply to businesses, brands, and celebrities using the Meta Business Suite to manage platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

Legal and media experts warn that the broad language allows the company to collect copyrighted material and high-quality journalistic content to train its artificial intelligence products without compensation, potentially bypassing traditional licensing deals. Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, characterized the move as an overreaching land grab that threatens the news business.

Meta denies changing its web-crawling practices, asserting the update merely consolidates terms to simplify rules for businesses. Company representatives stated the update ensures accurate product information for on-platform recommendations rather than targeting news sites. Meta also noted that content owners can continue using robots.txt flags to manage how automated systems interact with their websites.