What the terms say
Meta's revised Commercial Terms take effect on 30 October 2026, and they cover more than advertising spend. The updated language authorises Meta to deploy web scrapers, bots and crawlers against websites tied to any business account that uses its platforms.
The Register first reported the wording on 16 October. In that version, AI training was named among the permitted uses. Meta later removed the explicit reference and said the terms apply to its advertising and business products.
The change matters because a business account is not an exotic thing. A page, a shop catalogue, a lead form or an ad account is enough to bring a company's site inside the terms.
Publishers push back
News organisations were the loudest objectors. Their argument is straightforward: if a platform can scrape the journalism it links to, it can gather training material without paying a licensing fee, undercutting the deals publishers have signed with other AI developers.
For publishers the timing is awkward. Licensing talks with model developers are still running, and a platform that scrapes by default weakens their position at the table.
Trade bodies have asked whether the provision conflicts with copyright law in the markets where Meta operates, and whether site owners can object in practice. Meta has not said whether content collected under the new terms will be used to train models.
No opt-out for business accounts
There is no opt-out route for business accounts that stay on the platforms. Companies that want to keep crawlers away must either leave, or lean on technical measures such as robots.txt files and blocking rules, which are voluntary conventions rather than enforceable rights.
Legal analysts expect the first test to come from a publisher that can show measurable traffic or licensing losses rather than from a regulator. Until then, the practical advice circulating among in-house lawyers is to audit which websites are linked to company accounts, and to decide before the deadline which ones should stay connected.