# Meta's new terms let it crawl your site from Nov 20. Decide first

*Published 2026-10-20* | Author: brad-webb

From November 20, a Meta business account authorizes Meta's crawlers to read the sites tied to your products, and the terms never mention robots.txt, so write your answer down first.

## Meta moved the date, not the clause

Meta's revised Commercial Terms now take effect on November 20, 2026, three weeks later than the October 30 date it first set, and every company with a Meta business account agrees to them by staying on. They let Meta's crawlers read the sites tied to that company's products. My read: Meta narrowed what it can do with your pages, not which pages it can read, and if you run Meta ads, your landing pages are in scope.

The clause sits in Meta's own preview of the terms. It authorizes Meta to "crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services." The first draft let Meta use that content to train its products. The version Meta revised on Oct 16 drops training and limits the use to Meta's ads and business products. A Meta spokesperson told Nieman Lab that robots.txt preferences are still respected. Nieman Lab read the new text and found that "Meta has not included any specific language about respecting robots.txt preferences in its revised terms of services."

Glenn Gabe, a search consultant who reads these changes through client work, posted Meta's statement on Oct 18.

> Now... Meta removes language that raised scraping and AI training concerns:
>
> Glenn Gabe, @glenngabe, [post on X](https://x.com/glenngabe/status/2111819500244865245)

## Three more weeks, same answer to write

Meta told Fast Company the new date is "to allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what's changing and what's not." The clause I quoted reads the same in Meta's preview as of Oct 27. So the extra three weeks are time to write your answer, not a sign the question went away.

On November 20, every company with a Meta business account will have agreed to the crawling clause, whether anyone on the team read it or not. A B2B software company has the same account for its ads, and its pricing page, its docs and its changelog are about as tied to its products as pages get.

The terms say what Meta may read. They don't say what you said back. The one place your answer lives is robots.txt, and Benjamin Sobel, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, told Nieman Lab it states a preference, not a right. So write it on purpose, and keep the date you wrote it. It's the same rule as [on by default not being approved by default](/field-notes/on-by-default-is-not-approved-by-default): the account came with an answer, and it wasn't yours.

Gabe flagged the new date on Oct 24, the morning after Fast Company reported it.

> Meta delays new commercial terms that critics say let it scrape publisher content to November 20, a day after the News/Media Alliance demanded their withdrawal
>
> Glenn Gabe, @glenngabe, [post on X](https://x.com/glenngabe/status/2113986833235206335)

## Write your answer before November 20

Start with the list. Every domain your Meta ads and Pages link to is a domain Meta can call associated with your products, so write them all down, including the old campaign subdomain nobody has touched in a year. Then read the crawling clause in Meta's preview once, all the way through.

Decide which of those pages Meta's crawlers may read, put that in robots.txt, and save Meta's statement to Nieman Lab beside the change. Nieman Lab reports there's no way for a business account to opt out before the date, so the rule you write is the answer you'll have on the 20th.

*Before Meta's terms take effect*

Before November 20, list the domains your Meta ads point at, decide which pages Meta's crawlers may read, and put that answer in robots.txt.

## Where this came from

- [Meta Commercial Terms, updates effective November 20, 2026](https://www.facebook.com/legal/commercial_terms_preview), Meta, Oct 23, 2026
- [Legal experts warn Meta's new terms still grant broad scraping permissions, despite language changes](https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/legal-experts-warn-metas-new-terms-still-grant-broad-scraping-permissions-despite-language-changes/), Nieman Lab, Oct 17, 2026
- [Meta quietly delays controversial update that critics say will allow website scraping](https://www.fastcompany.com/91628981/meta-quietly-delays-controversial-update-that-critics-say-will-allow-website-scraping), Fast Company, Oct 23, 2026
- [Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) on X](https://x.com/glenngabe/status/2111819500244865245), Oct 18, 2026
- [Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) on X](https://x.com/glenngabe/status/2113986833235206335), Oct 24, 2026

Source: /noise-to-motion/meta-crawling-terms-october-30