Meta has revised its commercial terms of service to authorize automated scraping of websites associated with its business customers, with the collected content usable to develop, train and improve its products, including AI models. The new language takes effect on October 30, 2026, and defines business customers broadly: advertisers, sellers, app developers, page and group managers and users of tools such as Ads Manager and Meta Business Suite.
The clause authorizes Meta or agents acting for it to use scrapers, bots and created test credentials to access, index and periodically pull updates from domains associated with a customer’s products or services. Reporting on the change notes at least a million businesses use Meta’s AI agents in WhatsApp and Messenger, and that almost every news publisher holds at least one Meta business account.
Danielle Coffey of the News/Media Alliance called the terms outrageous and probably illegal, describing them as withholding audience access unless businesses allow scraping. Legal scholars quoted in the coverage raised a separate problem: customers with prepaid, multifaceted relationships may have no realistic way to reject the change, and the terms do not expressly commit Meta to respect robots.txt directives. Meta did not respond to requests for comment in the reporting.