Meta wants to scrape your website to train its AI, and you can’t say no
Meta wants to scrape your website to train its AI, and you can’t say no
October 19, 2026 
At the end of the month, Meta plans to change its commercial terms in a way that matters to every company advertising or selling through its platforms. The new language takes effect on October 30, 2026. It lets Meta collect content from websites associated with business customers and use it to train AI models or otherwise improve its products, according to The Register.
Meta defines “business customer” broadly. It includes anyone who uses ads or marketing messages, sells or lists products, develops apps, uses a product catalog, manages a Page, runs a Group for business purposes, or uses tools such as Ads Manager or Meta Business Suite. At least one million businesses already use Meta’s AI agents in WhatsApp and Messenger. Nieman Lab also points out that almost every news publisher has at least one Meta business account.
The contract clearly explains which tools Meta can use. By accepting the terms, you allow Meta, or anyone working on its behalf, to use automated tools such as web scrapers, bots, spiders and crawlers to access and index your websites, pages and URLs. These tools can also revisit your sites regularly to collect updates.
“You authorise us (or any entity acting on our behalf) to use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers and user agents) and create test credentials to access, index, cache, analyse, collect, retrieve or crawl the domains, web pages or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services, or that are made available through your or users’ use of Meta Company Products and services, and to periodically pull updates from such domains, web pages or URLs.” states Meta’s commercial terms. “Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train and maintain the integrity of, the Meta Company Products, services and features provided under these Commercial Terms and any other applicable supplemental terms.”
Then comes the use clause. The company may use any content from those domains to provide, develop, improve, research, train and maintain the integrity of its products, services and features. The contract lists scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers and user agents, which is a lot of ways to say visitor you didn’t invite.
The News/Media Alliance says there’s no way out. Business accounts have no option to opt out of the terms, and the only alternative is to stop using Meta’s products.
““Meta’s new commercial terms of use are outrageous and probably illegal. The company’s decision to withhold access to its audience unless businesses allow Meta to scrape content from their websites is an appalling, bad-faith policy, and a clear abuse of the company’s market power. It cannot be allowed to be implemented on October 30.” states Media Alliance. “The text is so far reaching that any business with intellectual property online and a Meta business account could have their copyrighted material taken from them.”
Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of the News/Media Alliance also pushed the point beyond news sites. Her questions were whether Taylor Swift’s Meta business account would give Meta access to copyrighted media on her website, and whether Shutterstock’s would let Meta scrape its images. The Alliance’s argument is that any business with intellectual property online and a Meta account could be affected, not just publishers.
There is also a problem with robots.txt. News reports say the social network giant plans to let businesses control how its crawlers access their websites through robots.txt files, but the contract makes no such promise. The law does not always require companies to follow these instructions, so businesses must rely on Meta to respect their preferences.
The company didn’t respond to The Register’s request for comment.
If you run a Meta business account, someone should read the terms before October 30 and check what your own robots.txt actually says.
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