Meta's updated commercial terms appear to green-light scraping websites "associated" with business accounts on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, including news publishers, The Verge reports, citing Nieman Lab. Effective October 30, Meta can use crawlers to pull that content to "develop, improve, research," and "train" its products.
There is no opt-out short of quitting Meta's business tools. Nieman Lab's legal sources called it a remarkable provision given AI licensing deals that can cost millions. Meta has signed agreements with outlets including CNN and Fox News; these terms could reach a much wider set of sites.
A Meta spokesperson told Nieman Lab the update consolidates older crawling language and that robots.txt still works. Experts flagged that the terms also let Meta create "test credentials," which could bypass registration walls. Meta did not comment to The Verge.
— via The Verge