Meta Terms Permit Website Crawling and Use of Collected Content

Meta’s revised Commercial Terms, scheduled to take effect Oct. 30, 2026, permit automated tools to crawl websites associated with businesses’ products or services and use collected material to develop and train Meta products. The wording leaves open whether publisher pages tied to those businesses fall within the covered sites.

The terms cover domains, pages and URLs associated with a business’s products or services, as well as content made available through Meta products. Automated software may collect material and return periodically to check for updates. The clause allows Meta to use collected content to provide, develop, improve, research, train and maintain its products and services.

The contract does not expressly limit the permission to product pages or recommendations. It does not define “associated with” or explain what the reference to “test credentials” could access. The crawling paragraph also does not mention AI or explain how its permission interacts with robots.txt.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the change is intended to retrieve accurate product information from third-party websites for advertising and content recommendations. He called it “not about scraping news sites.”

Businesses that continue commercial use after notice accept the updated terms. The updated terms provide no separate opt-out from the crawling provision.

Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy & Loevy, said publisher material “would likely cost many millions of dollars in a licensing market.” That describes potential market value, not a specific licensing fee or confirmed saving for Meta.

The terms raise questions about publishers’ content and commercial AI systems. The revised terms are scheduled to take effect Oct. 30.