Ethan Carter
A significant update to Meta’s terms of service permits Meta “or any entity acting on our behalf” to scrape the websites of any business utilizing a Meta service for commercial activities.
Meta is already known for its extensive web scraping practices, so these revised terms appear to be a strategy to strengthen the company’s legal position as it focuses on web-browsing agents such as its Muse AI. The expansive terms could enable Meta to index business websites for Muse to explore or enhance its advertising operations, while simultaneously training Muse on the structure of real-world commercial enterprises, as Meta promotes Muse as a versatile business assistant.
As reported by Ars Technica, this change may allow Meta to avoid paying millions in content-licensing fees. Nieman Lab added that the new terms could restrict news organizations’ access to Meta’s audience on platforms like Facebook unless they permit Meta to scrape their websites and utilize the content.
The update is set to take effect on October 30 and encompasses any website “associated with” a commercial user’s products or services, a term that is notably broad. Meta defines commercial users as accounts that engage in advertising, marketing, selling, or listing products, developing applications, creating or using product catalogs, managing a Page or business Group, or utilizing any business product, such as the Meta Business Suite, which allows companies to manage all accounts from a single interface. This definition could grant Meta scraping rights to a vast portion of the open internet.
The newly added clause states:
You authorize 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, analyze, 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. 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.
“This is an extraordinary provision to include in [the] terms of service, as it grants Meta access to content that could potentially cost millions of dollars in a licensing market,” commented Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy & Loevy, to Nieman Lab. “It remains uncertain whether a court would uphold this, but publishers should operate under the assumption that it is enforceable.”
James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School, stated to Nieman Lab that this update “clearly signifies permission for Meta to train AI on any content from their sites and possibly to deploy some of that content, even in competition with the publishers themselves.” He noted that the broadest interpretation would permit Meta to systematically extract and archive news articles and present them to users as content in any manner the company chooses. Grimmelmann also pointed out that the “test credentials” language might enable Meta to register for websites to access gated content, which could also extend to content behind paywalls.
Meta has recently launched Meta One, a subscription service that primarily functions as a method for Meta to charge certain Facebook and Instagram users to circumvent new external link limitations. Nieman Lab remarked, “In other words, Meta has started charging users to post links to the same content that it will be allowed to crawl for free.” For the time being, some publishers have been granted an exemption from this program.
Importantly, Meta did not respond to Nieman Lab’s inquiries regarding Meta One or its approach to bypassing paywalls. As per Ars Technica, a Meta spokesperson mentioned that the “test credentials” wording had previously appeared in its Seller Agreement, yet Ars highlighted that this policy seemed specifically tailored to seller-provided URLs submitted for optimizing their listings.
Andy Stone, a Meta spokesperson, stated on X that a Techmeme summary of Nieman Lab’s report was “false,” asserting that Meta’s use of web crawlers has not changed and that content owners “can use robots.txt flags to indicate their preferences.” He added that this update is intended to “ensure we can retrieve accurate information about products for sale on third-party websites when making on-platform ad and content recommendations, not about scraping news sites.”
Search Engine Journal noted that Meta’s terms already permitted scraping advertiser websites, including for training purposes. It is the October update that “extends this to businesses that do not purchase ads,” the publication stated.
“Meta’s new commercial terms of use are outrageous and likely illegal,” declared Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of News/Media Alliance, in a statement.
“When I instruct my students on how to amend [terms of service agreements], I emphasize that users must be given a genuine option to reject the terms,” commented Eric Goldman, associate dean for research and professor of law at Santa Clara University School of Law, to The Register. “Otherwise, it’s merely Hobson’s choice or Morton’s fork.”
Goldman further noted that there are uncertainties surrounding the enforceability of this extension to existing business relationships. While Meta may intend to act in good faith, “Meta has no reservoir of good faith within the community,” he remarked. Trusting Meta is something he “simply cannot do… anymore,” Goldman concluded.
Daniel Mercer
