A third-party issue has just landed on our plate: yet another distraction taking attention away from reporting and development of our local news enterprise. But this one’s especially nasty.
Meta, which owns and runs Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and others, recently confirmed imminent changes to the terms of using their services: alterations provided on short notice that hit local news especially hard.
In Meta’s upcoming terms on October 30, 2026 (as below), if any enterprise has any type of presence on Facebook or Instagram, then Meta and their cronies — and their AI bots — have a right to scrape away that business’s content published outside of Meta and sell or use it in competing business products.
This scraping applies even to third-party websites like the McKinley Park News that are entirely separate from Meta and its services.
Meta’s also asserting the right to send fake AI-driven bots into our membership to spy and steal via unfettered scraping for whatever purpose they please.
Footprint and Reach
Facebook and Instagram are the two Meta-owned channels through which the McKinley Park News has shared links to our all-original neighborhood news and features.
Over the past 10 years of publishing, we’ve attracted a couple thousand followers and enjoyed sharing pertinent news links via member groups. Even though resulting web traffic is a pretty small slice of our total, we’ve connected with others through Instagram and Facebook, and placed updates where they’d get noticed.
The Choice Is Clear
Regardless of any benefit, we can neither give away our hard-won, all-original, all-human news product nor expose our users and members to predatory AI scanning and exploitation.
Although Meta’s new terms do not specify these violations, the terms certainly give Meta the right to commit them without consequence or remuneration.
Don’t Trust Meta
I don’t trust Meta will do the right thing: It has continually demonstrated bad faith against its members and customers, as well as our economy, society, democracy and journalism.
In contrast, the McKinley Park News prioritizes you, dear reader, via ensconcing your trust in us through all things: not just the truthful facts we relate in our news publishing.
Humans Only
Our Terms of Service make this very clear: The McKinley Park News is only made available and accessible to human beings, and bots and automated processes may not touch our service at all.
Our terms also detail how we’ll never share or sell your member or user information with any third party, even our Sponsors.
Walk the Walk
We prioritize the interests of our human users above all else, including technical privacy and safety measures like severing Google-provided services and promoting User Technology Recommendations that keep you safe and secure online.
On the McKinley Park News, clearly identified marketing and advertising is always associated with an active Sponsor, who engages with us via an agreement that specifies total separation of considerations between news and advertising.
100 Percent Human
We abhor and decry AI, for there is no ethical use for a tool built on stolen goods, which includes the content and data pilfered from the McKinley Park News. Being a victim of AI is just one of the reasons why we are 100 percent human and zero percent AI.
The McKinley Park News stands nearly alone in treating you, dear reader, as a customer, rather than exploiting you as a product. Even local news charities betray their promise to the public good by exposing their users to harmful and unwanted consumer surveillance.
A Sucker’s Bet
We will survive severance from Meta, Facebook and Instagram because our bottom-up, micro-local news service engages in direct connections with our audience across many other face-to-face and online channels.
We strive to own our relationships and have always understood that building a business on the good graces of a third party is a sucker’s bet, whether Meta, Google or any other channel through which we might choose to share links to our news.
October 30 Deadline
Meta’s implementation of their new terms begins on Friday, October 30, at which point we’d automatically be opted into their scraping, theft, plagiarism and exploitation. We’ll pull the plug before that.
On or around Wednesday, October 28, the McKinley Park News will be deleting our accounts and pages on Facebook and Instagram: the only option for enterprises that don’t want to follow Meta’s new terms of service.
Connect on Website and Newsletter
We of course will continue to publish our all-original neighborhood news and features like our local calendar of events, available in both our mckinleypark.news website and email newsletter.
To our Facebook and Instagram followers, we recommend you sign up with your privacy assured for our free weekly email newsletter, which keeps you connected to our latest news and the upcoming week’s neighborhood events. Click here to sign up.
In a sea of slop and spying, the McKinley Park News will continue to be an all-original, all-human source that you can trust for your neighborhood news and information.
APPENDIX
Evaluation of Meta’s Updated Terms of Service
As posted by Meta at https://www.facebook.com/legal/commercial_terms_preview, their upcoming terms will include the following passage:
You authorize us (or any entity acting on our behalf) to use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents) and create test credentials to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services, or that are made available through your or users' use of Meta Company Products and services, and to periodically pull updates from such domains, web pages, or URLs in order to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products (including business, commercial and related products to help you create and deliver ads and other commercial content, provide users information about your products and services, and connect you with users who may be interested in your products and services) and maintain the integrity and security of Meta Company Products.
Examining this closely shows how specific elements would impact the McKinley Park News and our users:
“You authorize us (or any entity acting on our behalf) …”
So not only Meta would claim the right to scraping our news away: It could be any entity, disclosed or not, supposedly authorized by Meta that could do so. Meta could sublicense and sell the right to scrape and steal from us to anyone they wished.
“… use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents) ...”
Meta will sic their vacuum of inhuman automated tech against us, including AI training agents, to the detriment of our service's speed and reliability.
“… and create test credentials …”
This is code for Meta’s allowance to invade our all-human membership community with fraudulent AI agents signing up to spy and scrape toward whatever purposes they choose.
“… to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services, or that are made available through your or users' use of Meta Company Products and services …”
Meta states that because mckinleypark.news is “associated” with our separate commercial presence on their service, they get to take everything we publish on our own website — “any content” — and store and use it on their service.
“… and to periodically pull updates from such domains, web pages, or URLs …”
Meta will scrape and steal continually from us: This isn’t a one-time thing, and we’d have no control or understanding of how and when they’d dig into our server, platform and service.
“… in order to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products …”
Meta will create products based on what they’ve scraped from us: They will take our original local news and employ it in equivalent products that will directly compete against the McKinley Park News, whether from Meta or a third party to whom they’ve sold our content.
The McKinley Park News is not alone in our alarm about Meta’s new terms of service and note some others who have identified this issue:
- The Nieman Lab published “Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say” on October 15, 2026.
- The “News/Media Alliance Statement on Changes to Meta Commercial Terms of Use” was issued on October 16, 2026.
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