{ "archive_path": "archive/1792145128.357192", "base_url": "www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say", "basename": "", "bookmarked_date": "2026-10-16 10:05", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.niemanlab.org", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say/index.html" }, "domain": "www.niemanlab.org", "extension": "", "hash": "C2XAM3FBHQSS2NR3V5WP", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.niemanlab.org" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:31.916934+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792145128.357192", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:31.332493+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:32.475892+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792145128.357192", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:31.926309+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say/", "--format=text" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:37.965888+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "ArchiveError: Mercury was not able to get article text from the URL", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792145128.357192", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:36.672558+00:00", "status": "failed" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmp7kz0v6_7", "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say/" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:36.661273+00:00", "index_texts": [ "Meta can use web scrapers to crawl and collect content from websites \u201cassociated with\u201d business accounts on its platforms, according to its new commercial terms of use.\nThe update, set to go into effect on October 30, will include news publishers with business accounts. These accounts allow companies or public figures to manage Facebook pages, Messenger accounts, Instagram profiles, or WhatsApp channels from one place. While journalism isn\u2019t the only industry that will be affected by this update, virtually every news organization has at least one Meta business account, including Nieman Lab.\nThe new terms broadly cover business accounts that manage pages and groups, run advertisements, push marketing messages, and use the platform\u2019s business account dashboard. As written, the new terms could be used to argue that Meta can scrape content from news sites and use that content to train the company\u2019s AI products, according to three legal experts who reviewed the terms at Nieman Lab\u2019s request.\n\u201cThis is a remarkable provision to bury in [the] terms of service, given that this would give Meta access to material that would likely cost many millions of dollars in a licensing market,\u201d said Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy & Loevy. \u201cIt\u2019s not clear whether a court would enforce this, but publishers should assume that it would be enforceable.\u201d\nIn early October, Meta alerted users to the update in a blog post and on the Meta Business Suite. The updated terms explicitly state that Meta can use the content it collects from associated websites to \u201ctrain\u201d Meta products. Elsewhere in its terms of service, the company defines \u201cAI at Meta\u201d as one of those products. \nHere\u2019s the new language about scraping in full:\nYou authorize us (or any entity acting on our behalf) to use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents) and create test credentials to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services, or that are made available through your or users\u2019 use of Meta Company Products and services, and to periodically pull updates from such domains, web pages, or URLs. Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of, the Meta Company Products, services, and features provided under these Commercial Terms and any other applicable supplemental terms.\n\u201cFor news publishers, this clearly represents permission to Meta to train AI on any content from their sites and possibly to deploy some of that content, even in competition with the publishers themselves,\u201d said James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School. \u201cOn the broadest possible interpretation, this would be used to develop a comprehensive archive of all content that Meta would then serve as it wanted to directly or through AI.\u201d\nCurrently, there is no option for business accounts to opt out of these new terms ahead of October 30. The update reads, \u201cIf you do not agree to the updated terms, please stop all access or use of our Products for business or commercial purposes.\u201d\nIn short, \u201cpublishers either have to trust that Meta doesn\u2019t mean the full extent of what these terms say, or they have to stop [using business accounts],\u201d said Grimmelmann.\nMeta declined to answer a list of questions about these updated terms. A public affairs spokesperson at the company said in an email that language around crawling was previously scattered across different terms of use, including terms about using generative AI in ads, and this update consolidates them in one place. He also said that the new terms will not change how Meta crawls publishers in the future, and that \u201ccontent owners can still manage how their content is accessed by using robots.txt.\u201d\nOn its developer page, Meta currently has instructions for how to block its crawlers using robots.txt, a file that tells bots which parts of a website they can and cannot access.\nHowever, legal experts said the new language creates an opening for Meta to argue its commercial terms supersede other blocking instructions. The update also states that Meta can create \u201ctest credentials\u201d in order to scrape websites associated with business accounts. Grimmelmann said this would technically allow Meta to \u201csign up as a fake user\u201d to bypass registration walls on a publisher\u2019s site to access content. Meta declined to answer Nieman Lab\u2019s questions about whether the \u201ctest credentials\u201d would bypass paywalls or other paid content.\nAny attempt to train Meta\u2019s AI products with content collected under these new terms would still hinge on unsettled legal questions about AI training and fair use, legal experts said. Several lawsuits between publishers and AI developers are currently winding their way through federal courts. That includes a class-action suit filed in May by five large book publishers, alleging Meta pirated millions of books in order to train its Llama large language models (LLMs).\nMeta\u2019s decision to tether access to its business products to broad scraping permissions echoes a concept in antitrust law called \u201ctying,\u201d according to Benjamin Sobel, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin. \u201cIf you want to use the Meta products that require acceptance of the commercial terms, you have to also acquiesce to the scraping and crawling permissions exacted in those terms.\u201d\nSobel compared the move to Google\u2019s recent policies around its AI search products. In order to appear in Google\u2019s traditional search results, publishers now have to consent to their content also being used in AI Overviews and AI Mode.\nMeta\u2019s new commercial terms come on the heels of the company\u2019s rollout of its paid subscription service, Meta One. The cash-for-links program restricts the number of external links that some accounts on Facebook and Instagram can post without subscribing. Put another way, Meta has begun charging users to post links to the same content that it will be permitted to crawl for free. Earlier this month, Press Gazette reported that some news publishers are currently exempt from the link limit. Meta declined to answer Nieman Lab\u2019s question about the service. \nNieman Lab first learned about Meta\u2019s new commercial terms through a reader tip. Stephen Beale, the founder and editor of The Steampunk Explorer, got in touch when he saw a notice of the upcoming change in his Meta Business Suite dashboard. \n\u201cTraditionally, you have this idea that Meta might be using content [posted] on Facebook or Instagram for training,\u201d Beale told Nieman Lab. \u201cBut this was different because they\u2019re saying that [since you are] a business user of Facebook, they have the right to go out and grab information from basically wherever you have a presence.\u201d\nBeale has long depended on Facebook as a way to connect with his audience and refer traffic to his site. Fans of steampunk \u2014 a retrofuturistic subgenre of science fiction \u2014 skew older, he said, and the community is \u201ctotally entrenched on Facebook.\u201d For many, their only interactions with the community happen on Facebook or at in-person events that they learned about on Facebook.\nBeale said he\u2019s seriously considering shutting down his accounts before October 30.\n\u201cI know my site has been scraped to death,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it just seems like such an arrogant, in-your-face move on [Meta\u2019s] part\u2026 It just makes me angry and I don\u2019t want them to get away with it.\u201d\nAre you considering changing how you use Meta-owned platforms? Let us know at [email\u00a0protected]. \nAndrew Deck is a staff writer covering AI at Nieman Lab. Have tips about how AI is being used in your newsroom? You can reach Andrew via email, Bluesky, or Signal (+1 203-841-6241)." ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792145128.357192", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:34.443244+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:34.434751+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Meta\u2019s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say | Nieman Journalism Lab", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792145128.357192", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:34.410182+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--reject=js,mjs,woff,woff2,ttf,otf,eot,mp4,m4v,mov,webm,ogv,mkv,avi,flv", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "--timestamping", "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say/" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:34.401229+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say/index.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792145128.357192", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-16T10:06:32.485937+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Meta\u2019s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say | Nieman Journalism Lab", "warc": null, "wget": "www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say/index.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1792145128.357192", "newest_archive_date": "2026-10-16T10:06:36.672558+00:00", "num_failures": 1, "num_outputs": 5, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-10-16T10:06:31.332493+00:00", "path": "/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say/", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "1dfa2a2c-d144-40c5-87b3-9a40d6ec6681", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1792145128-import.txt" ], "tags": null, "tags_str": "", "timestamp": "1792145128.357192", "title": "Meta\u2019s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say | Nieman Journalism Lab", "updated": "2026-10-16T10:06:31.332059+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-10-16 10:06", "url": "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say/" }