Meta to scrape business accounts' websites from Oct 30
The gist
Meta's updated commercial terms take effect October 30 and let it crawl websites tied to business accounts.
News publishers with Meta business accounts are affected and legal experts say the terms are broad.
How it unfolded
- Oct 15, 2026Nieman Lab reports Meta's new commercial terms, effective October 30, will allow web scrapers to crawl and collect content from websites "associated with" business accounts, including news publishers.
- Oct 15, 2026Three legal experts who reviewed the terms at Nieman Lab's request say they could be used to argue Meta can scrape news sites and use the content to train its AI products.
- Oct 15, 2026AI Weekly and Techmeme report the terms take effect October 30, authorize crawling of websites "associated with" business accounts on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and offer no opt out.