Meta says publishers retain crawling controls
Meta PlatformsCompany public-affairs spokesperson, in an email quoted by Nieman Lab
Meta says the terms consolidate existing permissions, preserve robots.txt controls and do not change its crawling practices.
“content owners can still manage how their content is accessed by using robots.txt.”
Reporting
Where this statement fits
Meta defends commercial scraping terms; Grimmelmann calls them overbroad
Meta's proposed commercial terms authorize collection from websites connected to business users and training uses of that content. Meta says the update consolidates existing terms without changing its crawling practices. James Grimmelmann and other legal experts question the breadth of the permission.
Source and context
Reporting
About this source
Nieman Lab reports competing readings of the proposed terms and quotes Meta saying content owners retain robots.txt controls.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Before the quotation
Meta supplied a response to Nieman Lab about its updated commercial terms.
After the quotation
The company did not answer the outlet's separate question about using test credentials for paid content.
How this statement is classified
The label describes this statement's response within the context above.
Why this label?
The issue is meta's proposed commercial terms authorizing website collection and training uses. Meta defends the update as preserving existing permissions and controls.
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More from this case
Read the full caseGrimmelmann criticizes the breadth of Meta's terms
“Meta's new scraping terms really are absurdly broad.”Read statement
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The Dispute Index. "Meta says publishers retain crawling controls". First published: 2026-10-16. Last updated: 2026-10-16. https://disputeindex.com/events/5810-meta-says-the-terms-consolidate-existing-permissions-preserve