Meta Business Suite's updated terms of service will allow the company to deploy web scrapers, bots, and automated agents to crawl websites "associated with" accounts on the platform, including news publishers, according to a report by Nieman Lab. The changes take effect on October 30 and apply to organizations that use Meta Business Suite's dashboard to manage their Instagram profiles, Facebook pages, Messenger, and WhatsApp channels. Meta won't offer an opt-out option, meaning publishers must either accept the web-crawling provisions or leave the platform entirely.
The new language authorizes Meta—or any entity working on its behalf—to deploy automated software including web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl domains, web pages, or URLs connected to a business account holder's products or services. The company can use any content from these sources to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of Meta Company Products, services, and features covered under the Commercial Terms. Meta will also create test credentials and periodically pull updates from the affected domains.
The move could allow Meta to sidestep licensing agreements with numerous websites and news organizations, the report notes. Tech companies require massive volumes of data to train AI models, but journalistic content represents an especially valuable dataset because it's typically been fact-checked and edited, unlike personal blogs or other material gathered from the open web. Meta defended the policy shift in a statement, calling it a "consolidation" of its commercial and self-serve ad terms with no actual change to how the company uses web crawlers. A spokesperson added that content owners can still use robots.txt flags to signal their preferences, as outlined in Meta's developer documentation.
The shift comes as AI search features have reduced traffic to news websites and cut into advertising revenue, prompting publishers—including Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company—to file copyright lawsuits against AI companies for using their material both to train models and to provide search query answers without proper attribution. Several AI labs have negotiated licensing deals with news publications to avoid legal conflict. By embedding web-crawling permissions into terms required to access Meta Business Suite, the company may be securing data rights without the expense or complexity of individual licensing arrangements. ZDNET itself uses Meta Business Suite to analyze and schedule posts across social platforms, meaning the outlet falls under the new terms. The policy presents publishers with a stark choice: grant Meta broad crawling and data-use rights, or forfeit access to a major distribution and audience-engagement channel. For news organizations already grappling with AI-driven disruption, the calculus may force uncomfortable trade-offs between reach and control over their intellectual property.