Meta (which includes Facebook and Instagram) is making changes to expand on its AI crawling. But the good news is, there are several different options to protect your website.
Let’s take a look at what changes are being made, why, and how you can prevent Meta accessing your website content.
How To Protect Your Website Content From Meta’s AI Crawlers Share on X
What’s happening with Meta?
Meta is updating its terms to explicitly give its automated systems permission to access, crawl, index, cache, and collect content from external websites linked to Meta business accounts from November 20, 2026.
Does it affect me?
It affects you if any of the following is true:
- You have a Facebook page or;
- You have an Instagram Creator account or Instagram Business Account or;
- You run Facebook ads or;
- You sell products from any Meta platform or;
- You use Meta Business Suite (either the app or on desktop)
and
- You have a website.
What Meta says it’s doing with the data
Meta claims that the web scraping is strictly intended for its advertising and commercial ecosystem. According to Meta, the scraped data will be used to:
Enhance Generative AI for Advertisers: Auto-generate ad copy, product catalog descriptions, images, and targeted campaigns based on what is listed on a business’s actual website.
Improve Product Catalogs & E-Commerce Tools: Fetch real-time pricing, stock availability, and metadata directly from external store pages to update Facebook and Instagram Shop listings.
Integrate AI Business Assistants: Power Meta’s upcoming AI tools that assist businesses in responding to customer inquiries and creating promotional content.
However, early drafts of the updated agreement included explicit language allowing Meta to use the scraped web content to “train” AI models. Although it removed the word “train,” legal experts argue the broad authorization to “analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl” content still gives Meta broad rights to use web content across its commercial products.
The short version: Many groups and organizations are concerned that Meta will scrape proprietary content such as text and images to train its general AI foundation models without paying licensing fees.
The updated terms also state that Meta can use crawlers with “test credentials,” raising fears that it could bypass paywalls or private pages to collect data.
Do I need to take any action?
If you’re not bothered about Meta using your website content for AI purposes, you don’t need to do anything. However, if you want to stop this happening, keep reading for your options.
How to stop Meta scraping your website
There are several different options to stop Meta scraping your website, so don’t panic!
01. Robots.txt (Meta’s recommended option)
Meta states that website owners who don’t want their external websites scraped can add rules to their website’s robots.txt file to prevent Meta’s AI web crawlers and it will continue to respect that.
If you’d like to update your robots.txt file yourself, add the following:
User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent
Disallow: /
User-agent: Meta-ExternalAds
Disallow: /
User-agent: Meta-WebIndexer
Disallow: /
If you need help with this and you’re a Lyrical Host customer, just raise a support ticket from your account and the support team will do it for you.
However, Meta could change their mind on whether they respect robot.txt rules in the future, so you may want to consider the next option instead.
02. Server level blocking via .htaccess (our recommended option)
This option means that meta AI crawlers and user-agents are shown a 403 forbidden error when trying to access your website.
This is more “forceful” than a robots.txt option, which can be ignored.
It also still gives you full control over what you’re blocking. If you want to block Meta’s AI crawlers but still allow ChatGPT’s (for example if you’re running a business website and want to show up as a recommended option in their answers), this allows you to do just that.
If you’re a Lyrical Host customer, just raise a ticket saying that you’d like Meta’s AI crawlers (and any others you don’t want to be able to access your website) and our support team will do the rest. The reason we haven’t included step-by-step instructions here is because it’s very easy to take your website down if you make a mistake with this, so we’d rather you contact us and we’ll do it for you, rather than you following rogue AI instructions!
There is some debate on the internet about whether Meta would see this as breaching their terms, although there is no evidence yet either way. If you’re concerned about your account potentially getting banned, it’s better to use option 01 above.
03. Using Cloudflare to block AI scraping
If you’re a Cloudflare user, go to Security > Web Application Firewall (WAF) > Tools and turn on the AI Scraper Blocking toggle. This will automatically stop verified AI crawlers, including Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic.
For more granular control, you can create custom rules for your Cloudflare Web Application Firewall to target specific bot categories. These options are available on both free and paid Cloudflare plans.
What is Cloudflare and should I use it as a Lyrical Host customer? Most people use Cloudflare for the CDN service, which offers speed and security benefits for your website. However, as a Lyrical Host customer, you already have our CDN built in so you don’t need it. However, if you would like to use Cloudflare, our support team can help you set it up for your website – you can choose from free and paid plans.
It’s important to note you need to change your DNS to Cloudflare’s in order to use their services, and this means that if Cloudflare goes down, your website will also go down. While Cloudflare generally has very good uptime, it does open up another potential source of website downtime for you, so it’s something to consider before making your decision.
04. Stop using Meta’s business services
This is the most extreme solution, unless you’ve been planning on getting rid of your Facebook Page or Instagram Creator/Business account anyway.
If this is the last straw for you, it’s not worth it, and it’s not sending you any traffic or providing leads, then you can just delete your account. However, it’s not clear how Meta would treat another page or account popping up and linking to your website to impersonate you.
Side quest 01: Protecting your Instagram & Facebook account content from being scraped
The above options are for preventing your website being scraped by Meta’s AI tools, but it will also use content on your Instagram and Facebook in a similar way. As far as we’re aware, currently, the only way to prevent this is if you’re in the UK or EU, by following the steps below.
01. From your Instagram account, click the three line menu at the top right, which takes you to Setting and Activity.
02. Keep scrolling down and click “Privacy Centre”.
03. From the paragraph text that appears, click the word “object” where it is highlighted in blue.
04. This takes you to a page on help.instagram.com where you can object to Meta using your public information, such as posts, photos and comments to help train Meta AI. Just enter your email into the box. There is a space to add comments, but this is optional. You will then get an email back from Meta to confirm you’ve opted out.
Side quest 02: Anti-AI image tools
If your images are especially important to you, for example you’re a photographer or run a food blog, there are a couple of free tools you may also find interesting, Glaze and Nightshade.
You need to run your images through them first, before uploading them to your website, so they’re not a retroactive option (but something you could do moving forward).
Glaze subtly alters pixel structures in ways invisible to humans, making it difficult for AI models to read or replicate your distinct artistic style.
Nightshade disrupts AI training datasets by misdirecting visual associations (e.g. making it interpret a visual style as something completely different).
You can use them both together or individually.
These tools don’t interfere with accessibility, meaning screen reader users and legitimate search engine bots can still access your content as normal.
Both these tools work across all AI crawlers and tools, so if you are looking for a solution just to stop Meta’s AI crawlers, this isn’t the right solution for you.
FAQs
Does option 02. above stop search engines like Googlebot from being able to access my website? What about other AIs like ChatGPT?
No, it just stops Meta’s AI agents. If you would like to block other AIs from accessing your website, just let our support team know and they can block any/all others for you.
You may not want to do this if you have a business website that could be recommended via an AI tool as it may prevent you getting leads/sales.
What if I want Meta crawlers to be able to access my website to pull just titles, image and snippet text as it normally does (so they show up as a link preview when someone posts a link to my website on Facebook or Instagram)?
Using the options above, you’ll just be blocking/restricting Meta’s AI crawlers, so their usual user agents will be able to access your title and image previews as normal and they will still show up when people are posting them.
Can I put fake/confusing ALT tags on images, or replace text with images of text that have no ALTs, or similar?
No, we strongly advise against doing this as people using screen readers to visit your website will also be negatively impacted. Additionally, it will also cause problems for search engine bots reading your content and other bots who have a legitimate reason to visit your website.
Does watermarking my images protect them against AI crawlers?
No, AI tools ignore (and can remove) visible watermarks you add to your images.
Glaze, Nightshade and other similar solutions work by mathematically altering the underlying pixel data across the whole image. An AI model can’t just “erase” or crop this noise out with a watermark remover because the poisoning is baked into the artwork’s core structure. Additionally, if an AI tries to train on a Glazed or Nightshaded image, it absorbs corrupted data that misdirects its learning.
We hope you found this post useful; if you have any questions, just create a support ticket in your Lyrical Host account and the team will answer any questions you have.
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