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● LIVE Updated 1h ago · 14 sources tracked

Meta to Literally Every Business User: Nice Website You Got There

Meta is updating its commercial terms of service to allow the company and its agents to scrape websites of any business using its services for AI model training. These changes, effective October 30, expand crawling rights beyond existing advertiser agreements to include any business user. Legal experts and publishers warn that these sweeping terms may allow Meta to avoid millions in AI licensing fees by training its products, including Muse, on news sites and business content for free. The News/Media Alliance has called the terms outrageous and probably illegal.

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  • ✓ Meta's new commercial terms allow it to scrape websites of businesses using Meta services to train its AI models.
  • ✓ The new terms take effect on October 30.
  • ✓ The updated terms expand crawling rights beyond those previously granted by advertisers.
  • ✓ Meta may use the scraped content to train products such as Muse.
🛡️ Source Corroboration: 14 independent reporting domains (90% confidence) ⏱ Read time: ~2 min

What changed

Meta updated its commercial terms of service to grant itself rights to scrape content from business customers for AI training.

Live updates

  1. Meta Updates Commercial Terms to Scrape Business Websites for AI Training

    Meta is updating its commercial terms of service to allow the company and its agents to scrape websites of any business using its services for AI model training. These changes, effective October 30, expand crawling rights beyond existing advertiser agreements to include any business user. Legal experts and publishers warn that these sweeping terms may allow Meta to avoid millions in AI licensing fees by training its products, including Muse, on news sites and business content for free. The News/Media Alliance has called the terms outrageous and probably illegal.

    Why it matters

    AI companies typically pay licensing fees to publishers for high-quality training data. By embedding scraping rights into general commercial terms, Meta shifts the cost of data acquisition to its business users. This creates a conflict between platform utility and intellectual property rights.

    What is confirmed

    • Meta's new commercial terms allow it to scrape websites of businesses using Meta services to train its AI models.
    • The new terms take effect on October 30.
    • The updated terms expand crawling rights beyond those previously granted by advertisers.
    • Meta may use the scraped content to train products such as Muse.

    Still unconfirmed

    • Meta is using these terms specifically to avoid millions in AI licensing fees.

    What to watch next

    • Legal challenges from the News/Media Alliance or other publishers regarding copyright and consent.
    • Further tweaks to the terms of service following backlash from publishers and business account holders.
    • Evidence of Meta bypassing robots.txt files to execute the scraping.
    Sources used for this update (15)
    1. gizmodo.com — Gizmodo | The Future Is Here
    2. www.theverge.com — Here’s Nintendo’s overview trailer for the Ocarina of Time remake.
    3. Ars Technica — Meta may use sweeping new commercial TOS to avoid millions in AI licensing fees
    4. Nieman Lab — Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say
    5. Gizmodo — Meta to Literally Every Business User: Nice Website You Got There
    6. The Register — Meta grants itself right to scrape content from business customers for model training
    7. The Verge — Meta’s new terms may allow it to train AI on news sites for free
    8. News/Media Alliance — News/Media Alliance Statement on Changes to Meta Commercial Terms of Use
    9. arstechnica.com — Meta may use sweeping new commercial TOS to avoid millions in ...
    10. securityaffairs.com — Meta wants to scrape your website to train its AI, and you can’t say no
    11. www.newsmediaalliance.org — News/Media Alliance Statement on Changes to Meta Commercial Terms of Use | News/Media Alliance
    12. www.searchenginejournal.com — Meta’s New Terms Expand Crawling Rights Beyond Advertisers - Search Engine Journal
    confidence 90%
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