Here’s how to protect your website from Meta's new terms of service

If you’ve seen headlines about Meta “taking” your website content, you’re not overreacting. You also don’t need to delete your accounts. Here’s what changed and what to do about it.

What’s changing

Starting October 30, Meta’s updated terms apply to anyone who uses its products for business. That includes running ads, managing a Facebook or Instagram business page, and using Meta Business Suite. The new terms let Meta send automated crawlers to the websites connected to your business and use what they collect for its own products.

Why you should care

Your work trains their tools for free. Your blog posts, portfolio photos, service descriptions, and prices can all become material Meta uses to build its products— and you get none of the credit. And there’s no opt-out.

What you can do

Every website has a small file called robots.txt that tells crawlers what they’re allowed to visit. Meta says it respects that file, so adding these two lines tells Meta’s training crawler to get lost:

User-agent: meta-externalagent

Disallow: /

Don't worry, this doesn't block Meta from your site completely. Your link previews on Facebook and Instagram use a different crawler, so they'll keep working. Meta can also still find your site to answer questions about your business.

How to add it on your platform

• WordPress: If you use an SEO plugin like Yoast, its file editor lets you edit robots.txt from your dashboard. Otherwise, you can add it in your host’s file manager.

• Wix: Wix has a robots.txt editor in its SEO settings.

• Shopify: You can add a robots.txt.liquid template in your theme’s code editor.

• Squarespace: While you can’t edit the file directly, you can turn on the setting that blocks known AI crawlers. But leave the setting that blocks search engines alone.

Once it’s done, visit yourwebsite.com/robots.txt and look for “meta-externalagent” to confirm it worked. Changes can take up to a day to take effect.

Want me to handle it?

If you’re a Curious Work client, I’ve already taken care of this for you. If you’re not and this sounds like a lot, just reach out. I’m happy to take a look at your site.