Meta’s updated Terms of Service, taking effect Oct. 30, drew criticism for language that appeared to let the company scrape businesses’ websites. After the backlash, Meta clarified that the terms apply only to its ads and business products and that it respects robots.txt preferences.
As first written, businesses that continue using Meta would authorize it to:
The clause was flagged by Stephen Beale of The Steampunk Explorer, and legal experts quoted by Nieman Lab warned it could be used to justify widespread scraping.
Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts told The Verge that the terms apply only to Meta’s ads and business products and that the company respects robots.txt preferences. Meta can still gather data from business websites for ad targeting.
Since Meta says it follows robots.txt, make your crawler rules explicit — especially the split between crawlers you allow for AI search visibility and those you block from training.
Confirm which domains are linked to your Meta business assets and make sure test or internal pages aren’t publicly exposed.
October 30.
Meta says the terms apply only to its ads and business products and that it respects robots.txt, though it can still collect data from business sites for ad targeting.
Clarify robots.txt rules for each crawler and audit which domains and test pages are connected to Meta business assets.
To apply what you just read to your own site, start with a free audit of where things are now.
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