--- title: Business accounts will consent to Meta scraping their... description: Meta's updated commercial terms, effective October 30, grant the company broad rights to scrape websites associated with business accounts on Facebook,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/business-accounts-will-consent-to-meta-scraping-their-websites-starting-oct-30-kxir8q3rd twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Business accounts will consent to Meta scraping their websites Starting Oct. 30 | daily.dev og:description: Meta's updated commercial terms, effective October 30, grant the company broad rights to scrape websites associated with business accounts on Facebook,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/business-accounts-will-consent-to-meta-scraping-their-websites-starting-oct-30-kxir8q3rd og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/KXir8q3rD.png og:image:alt: Business accounts will consent to Meta scraping their websites Starting Oct. 30 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Business accounts will consent to Meta scraping their websites Starting Oct. 30 **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Meta's updated commercial terms, effective October 30, grant the company broad rights to scrape websites associated with business accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and to use that content to train AI products like Llama. Legal experts say the language could allow Meta to bypass paywalls using 'test credentials' and override robots.txt blocking instructions, though enforceability remains legally untested. Since nearly every news organization uses a Meta business account, publishers face a choice between accepting the terms or abandoning the platforms, with no opt-out currently available. The move parallels Google's AI Overviews opt-in requirements and comes alongside Meta's new 'Meta One' subscription that limits free external links, drawing criticism from publishers who feel coerced. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What do Meta's new commercial terms say about scraping business websites for AI training? Meta's updated commercial terms, effective October 30, authorize the company to use web scrapers, bots, and even fake 'test credentials' to access, index, and collect content from any domain or webpage associated with a business account on Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp. The collected content can be used to train Meta's AI products, including Llama, and there is no opt-out option besides discontinuing business use of the platforms. _Publishers weighing whether to keep business accounts active can track AI scraping policy shifts on daily.dev._ ### Can publishers block Meta's crawlers using robots.txt after the new commercial terms take effect? Meta told Nieman Lab that content owners can still manage crawler access using robots.txt, but legal experts warn the new commercial terms language could let Meta argue its contractual scraping rights override robots.txt blocking instructions. The terms also permit Meta to create 'test credentials' to bypass registration walls, raising questions about whether paywalls could also be bypassed. _Site owners relying on robots.txt to control AI crawlers can follow how enforceable these protections remain on daily.dev._ ### Are publishers suing Meta over AI training on their copyrighted content? Yes, five large book publishers filed a class-action lawsuit in May alleging Meta pirated millions of books to train its Llama large language models. This case is part of a broader wave of unresolved lawsuits between publishers and AI developers winding through federal courts, with outcomes hinging on unsettled fair use questions regarding AI training data. _Developers tracking AI copyright litigation outcomes that could reshape training data rules can follow updates on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 66 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-16). **TL;DR:** Commenters are broadly critical of Meta's new terms, debating whether businesses can legally consent to scraping and sublicensing of content they may not own, while others see this as legal cover for scraping Meta was already doing. **Sentiment:** 2% positive · 28% mixed · 70% skeptical **The case for** - A few argue scraping public websites is already legal regardless of consent, so this is a non-issue. - Some see it as no different from how Google crawlers already index the web. **The pushback** - Many question whether a business can grant Meta rights to content it doesn't own (e.g. licensed stock images or syndicated content). - Several argue clickwrap/TOS 'consent' shouldn't be enforceable as a binding contract for such broad rights. - Commenters say the real issue isn't scraping itself but Meta's claimed right to use scraped content for AI training. - Some accuse Meta of using fake 'test accounts' to bypass paywalls and logins, which they see as deceptive. - One commenter notes Meta's crawler disguises itself with a user-agent shared with legitimate link-preview bots, making it hard to block without breaking other functionality. - Some believe Meta is already doing this scraping and is simply adding legal cover after the fact. **By community** - hackernews (heated): A long, contentious thread arguing over the legal validity of consent-to-scrape terms, mixed with broader anger at Meta's business practices. **Hottest debate:** Whether a business account holder can legally grant Meta a license to scrape and use content it doesn't itself own the rights to. **Open questions** - If a publisher doesn't own the content it hosts, does their 'consent' to Meta's terms have any real legal effect on that third-party content? - Would such terms actually be enforceable in court given it's a clickwrap-style agreement? - Does blocking Meta's crawler via user-agent also break legitimate link-preview functionality, and is that overlap intentional? **Highlights** > As a business owner who has meta accounts and even advertises on meta, I have long since blocked their crawler traffic. They try to hide their scraper traffic dishonestly behind user agents that purport to be Facebook users browsing the web via their Facebook browser, the thing is, I know it’s a lie because there is absolutely no reason for 1000s of Facebook users from Ireland to want to know anything about a small local business in Canada, that only services local clients within 50km radius due to the nature of the business. So I know it’s a lie, therefore was blocked. And guess what, fuck your terms of service the blocks are staying in place. > — [VladVladikoff on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50113445) > I'm not missing anything. I just don't believe that by granting those permissions you're making the legal representation that you are licensing third party material. The request is not worded in those terms, even, just as a consent to engage in scraping and subsequent uses of the material. For those materials that you do own, the consent does amount to licensing. For materials you don't own, the consent only covers the activity of scraping; you consenting to the material being used for training simply means nothing. You have attested that you have no objection to that. That doesn't remove the copyright holder's right to have an objection. All those things they are asking for, any visitor can engage in without any permission, and everyone knows it. Imagine someone asks you: see that guy across the street? Do I have your consent to search his pockets? If you say yes, what does it mean? Precisely nothing. Suppose you are asked: do I have your consent to search the pockets of everyone in this neighborhood? If you say yes, it still means nothing with regard to the guy across the street, who has not given any constent, but you've consented to your pockets being searched. > — [kazinator on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114446) > Dead wrong on both points. Having a license to publish something on a website does not mean that the publisher has the right to grant sublicenses or transfer the license to someone else. For example, stock image licenses are normally non-sublicensable and non-transferable. > — [mopsi on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50113884) > iirc when I was dealing with reviewing traffic and AI scraping bots recently, I noticed something about Meta's: When a user links to a page, the bots that grab oembed data to generate the link preview are using the same User Agent string as the Meta AI crawlers that scrape content. For context, oembed data about your page could be seen as information you're basically happy to share, so other sites can create things like previews. That's not necessary, there are other companies that just use different UA strings for the different tasks. They appear to deliberately make it so that if you have nothing to do with Meta and block their content scrapers, you also break basic functionality for people who happen to share a link to your site in their products. > — [atomicfiredoll on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50113969) > You’re missing half the picture here. It’s not the scraping that’s the big problem, it’s what the rest of the TOS say they can do with everything they get from scraping your site. Like use it to train their AI and provide responses to people questions. That’s part is the real legally contentious part, for a multitude of reasons. I imagine they see this as a way of getting around things like Australia’s requirement they pay a fee to news outlets if they show their content. The TOS also says they can create fake accounts on your site, for scraping. Which means if you have anything on your site, that you don’t have full legal rights to distribute and use in any fashion you like, you are at significant legal risk if you continue to use anything meta after 30 October. > — [rprwhite on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114148) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111852) · 125 points · 66 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Meta rolls out new AI content enforcement systems while reducing reliance on third-party vendors](https://daily.dev/posts/meta-rolls-out-new-ai-content-enforcement-systems-while-reducing-reliance-on-third-party-vendors-cxkvdjtie) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Meta’s latest AI improves its terrible content moderation](https://daily.dev/posts/meta-s-latest-ai-improves-its-terrible-content-moderation-y6ptsdngz) · The Register · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Meta’s AI moderation is wrongly banning accounts](https://daily.dev/posts/meta-s-ai-moderation-is-wrongly-banning-accounts-vehdohx19) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#machine-learning](https://daily.dev/tags/machine-learning), [#crawling](https://daily.dev/tags/crawling) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/business-accounts-will-consent-to-meta-scraping-their-websites-starting-oct-30-kxir8q3rd) ```json 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