Meta's October 30 Business Terms Let It Crawl Linked Websites, and the AI Training Line Is Disputed

Meta's updated Commercial Terms, due to take effect on October 30, include a clause that authorises the company to crawl websites tied to a business's Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp account and to use what it collects for its products, originally including training. Legal experts told Nieman Lab the wording is broad, while Meta says it changes nothing about how it crawls (The Register, PPC Land).

What the clause says

As quoted by Nieman Lab, the terms say a business authorises Meta "or any entity acting on our behalf" to use automated software such as scrapers, bots and crawlers, and to create test credentials, to access and collect content from domains associated with the business's products or services, including recurring crawls. Meta may use that content to "provide, develop, improve, research, train" and maintain its products and services.

The terms apply to business accounts that manage pages and groups, run ads, send marketing messages or use the business dashboard. There is no opt-out: the notice tells businesses that disagree to stop using Meta products for business purposes.

Has Meta dropped "train"?

Date	Report
October 16	Nieman Lab reports the clause, including the word "train"
October 17	The Verge reports Meta removed the training line
October 18	PPC Land finds the training language still in Meta's published preview
October 19	Technology.org reports Meta rewrote the clause, dropped "train" and said crawling applies only to ads and business products; publishers remain unsatisfied

Reports conflict, so publishers should read the final terms on Meta's site before October 30 (Technology.org).

What experts and publishers say

Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney, called it "a remarkable provision to bury in [the] terms of service," noting it would give Meta access to material that would cost millions in a licensing market. James Grimmelmann of Cornell Law said the original clause clearly represents permission for Meta to train AI on publishers' content, and that the "test credentials" language could let Meta sign up as a user to get past registration walls. Experts also said Meta could argue the contract overrides robots.txt, which the terms do not mention.

Virtually every news organisation has at least one Meta business account. One small publisher, Stephen Beale of The Steampunk Explorer, said he was seriously considering shutting his accounts before October 30.

Meta's response

A Meta spokesperson told Nieman Lab the crawling language was previously spread across other terms and the update "consolidates them," that the new terms will not change how Meta crawls publishers, and that content owners can still use robots.txt. Meta's Andy Stone called the reports false and said the aim is to pull accurate information about products for sale on third-party sites. Meta declined to say whether test credentials would get past paywalls.

What site owners can do

Meta documents separate crawlers, so robots.txt rules can target them individually: meta-externalads for ads and product information, and meta-externalagent for AI training. Blocking meta-externalagent while allowing meta-externalads is the usual approach for publishers who want to keep ad and shopping features but opt out of training (Digital Applied). Whether the contract would override those rules is the open legal question. This applies equally to Indian publishers and businesses that run Meta business accounts.

What to watch next

The final wording on October 30, any regulator response, and a clear answer on whether test credentials can be used behind paywalls.

Related on Gadgets365

• Meta revenue jumps 26% to $64.6 billion, but a legal charge cuts profit
• Meta releases Muse Wonder and prices its API at $4 per million input tokens
• Meta releases Muse Spark Open, an 816-billion-parameter open-weight model