Safety & policy

Meta's new terms may open news sites to AI training

Meta's updated commercial terms, effective 30 October, appear to let it crawl websites linked to business accounts and use that content to train its AI products, according to Nieman Lab. Legal experts quoted by Nieman Lab say the terms could be used to argue they override robots.txt blocking instructions, a reading Meta disputes. A Meta spokesperson says there is no change to how it uses web crawlers, and that site owners can still use robots.txt. Businesses that refuse the terms may lose access to Meta's products for commercial purposes.

Why it matters: If you run a business page on Facebook or Instagram, check whether your website could be crawled under these terms. Review your robots.txt settings before 30 October.

Source: The Verge · Also reported by Ars Technica