Meta's New Terms Let It Scrape Any Site Tied to a Business Account
Business accounts will consent to Meta scraping their websites Starting Oct. 30
Starting October 30, Meta's updated commercial terms authorize web scrapers to crawl any website associated with a business account—including virtually every news publisher. Legal experts say the language could let Meta train AI on that content and even bypass paywalls via "test credentials." Business accounts cannot opt out; the only alternative is to stop using Meta's products.
This is a remarkable provision to bury in terms of service, given that this would give Meta access to material that would likely cost many millions of dollars in a licensing market.