Meta’s revised commercial terms permit automated collection of content from websites linked to business accounts, with uses including product development and training. Lawyers see potential consequences for news publishers. Meta disputes that reading, saying the change concerns accurate product information and leaves crawling practices unchanged. October 30 is the planned start date for the revised terms.
Meta’s commercial users face revised terms scheduled for October 30. The provisions cover sites connected with business accounts. Those accounts promote material on Meta services including Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook. The text permits automated collection, caching and periodic retrieval of content, as well as creation of test credentials. Collected material can serve development, research and training of Meta products.[1]
Lawyers interviewed by Nieman Lab, a journalism research publication, read that language as potentially reaching news websites and AI training. At Cornell, digital-law professor James Grimmelmann warned that the wording could permit use of publishers’ material in competing products. His assessment is a legal interpretation of the wording. Commercial users have no separate option to reject this particular permission; businesses disagreeing with the terms can stop commercial use of Meta products.[1]
Spokesperson Daniel Roberts said Meta was consolidating its commercial and advertising terms, without changing crawler use. He said site owners could continue expressing preferences through robots.txt, the file that communicates access preferences to automated crawlers. Communications executive Andy Stone said the aim was reliable product details from other websites to inform recommendations, rather than scraping news sites.[1]
