Meta's Oct. 30 business terms let it crawl linked websites. Contractors running Facebook or Instagram ads should check their site settings first

Meta's updated commercial terms take effect October 30 and let it collect content from websites tied to business accounts, with no opt-out for advertisers. If your company runs Facebook or Instagram ads or a business page, ask whoever manages your website to review its crawler settings before then.

What changed in Meta's business terms?

Meta consolidated its commercial and self-serve advertising terms, and the new version authorizes automated collection of content from business-linked websites. Quartz reported that Meta revised the wording on October 16 to drop the word "train" and narrow the stated purpose to advertising and business products, after criticism that the terms permitted AI training on site content.

The reporting disagrees on what is left. PPC Land reported that the training sentence was still on Meta's preview page days after the removal was reported, and ContentGrip found the clause remaining in some regional versions. Meta says the update does not change how its crawlers work.

SC Media reported the terms cover business customers' content. Per the reporting, businesses that decline risk losing access to Meta's products for commercial purposes.

Why should a trade sub or GC care?

This isn't about news publishers alone. Most contractors with an ad account have a website that holds material they may not want in someone else's training set:

• Project galleries with named owners, addresses and photos of occupied buildings
• Case studies that state contract sizes, delivery methods or owner names
• Subcontractor prequalification and bid-invitation pages
• Careers pages with pay ranges
• Safety or capability statements written for a specific client

None of that is secret, since it's already public. The change is who may collect it systematically and what it may be used for. Some owners and federal or institutional clients restrict how their project information is shared. Check whether your contracts cover photos and descriptions of their facilities before you assume a public gallery is fair game.

What should a contractor do before October 30?

1. List every site tied to your Meta business account. That's the domain on your ad account or business page, plus any landing-page builder you use.
2. Ask whoever hosts the site to check robots.txt. Meta says site owners can still block its crawler this way, and it names the AI training crawler as meta-externalagent. A line disallowing that user agent takes a web developer minutes.
3. Pull anything that shouldn't be public. If an owner-confidential project or a priced case study is on the site, remove it. A crawler block only works for crawlers that honor it.
4. Check client contracts. Look for publicity or confidentiality clauses before you post more project photos.
5. Decide whether the ad spend is worth the terms. There is no opt-out, so the choice is accept or lose access.

What's still unclear?

Whether Meta will use collected site content to train models is the open question. Legal experts quoted in coverage said the language could still reach sites tied to business accounts, and Meta says it does not plan to use the terms to override robots.txt. Neither claim can be verified from outside Meta, and the terms differ by region and by the version of the preview page.

For a 40-person sub, the practical risk is small and the fix is cheap. Treat it as a ten-minute site audit, not an emergency, and make it a standing habit before any platform terms change: know what your public website says, and who is allowed to read it.