Once again, the internet is scrambling over Meta policy changes, and with good reason. If you’re a creator, you probably have already heard about this. As a Jouzt founder, I wanted to discuss this, as it is the reason why we created Jouzt in the first place, and it matters A LOT.

Just a reminder that No AI is used in the writing of these posts – you’re hearing from us directly 😊

This is a very important post, and if you use Instagram, Facebook or any Meta products you should definitely read on.

Quick summary of what’s happening

On October 30th 2026, these new policies will come into effect. They can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/legal/commercial_terms_preview

Here’s the most important stuff:

  • Anything a “Business account” posts on a meta platform can be scraped and used by meta or third parties to train AI (they changed the word “train” after scrutiny but potato = potato), including content that lives on other sites/links associated with your account.
  • A business account is defined by “purpose”. It doesn’t seem to define it specifically. So arguably any account that shares a link can now legally be scraped (We suspect every account was already being scraped and used to train AI).
  • The terms heavily indemnify Meta and put the legal risk on those who use Meta, with regards to what THEY scrape from YOUR links.
  • No partial opt out. If you’re using Meta after October 30th, you agree to these terms.

Why this matters

Essentially, if you are on Instagram, Facebook etc after October 30th, you’re giving them permission to scrape your site, use it how they want, and be held legally responsible if they scrape something they shouldn’t have.

Why this isn’t fair

Meta, and companies like it, have a monopoly on people’s attention. Businesses rely on these platforms for customers; they will lose too much by deleting these channels. Meta must know this. They must know that people can’t just leave without losing their audience, customer base, and in many cases, a lot of money, time, effort…

What WE are doing, and something shocking we found…

We also use Instagram for reaching people and so we’re in the same boat as you. We can’t exactly stop using Instagram, but at the same time, Meta’s new policy is saying they can scrape our entire platform now?!

What we can do is put in blockers. This is something we’ve already done and it’s been successful so far. When you post on Jouzt your content gets encrypted and we only serve renderings of it, which we then do our best to block from being crawled by anything that isn’t a search or indexing crawler (which is important so people can find you on Jouzt). Basically, we block AI crawlers, including Meta’s.

In response to the latest news, I had a look at how our blockers are performing and found something shocking:

Over the last 30 days (ending 23rd October), Meta’s crawling agent attempted to hit our media bucket (where posts are stored) exactly 298,460 times.

This screenshot was taken today from our AI crawl reports:

This is a 100% targeted attempt to scrape media on our site, by Meta, occurring well before the 30th of October when these new terms come in…

Thankfully, our blockers are holding and 100% of these attempts are being blocked.

We can’t guarantee that we can always shield our platform from being crawled. But this is the case for any website. Anyone claiming 100% protection is unfortunately lying. It’s becoming a very sad reality that until the giants fall, anything you post anywhere has at least a chance of being scraped. and if you post on any meta site you’re the first to be crawled.

What YOU can do.

  1. You can research AI poisoners (we aren’t confident enough in any to recommend them specifically but you should consider your options when sharing anything anywhere).
  2. You can support alternatives to these giants, and help us reclaim the online world.

Why are we (Jouzt) writing a blog post about this?

To be honest, none of this surprises us. These new terms are just providing protections for what we believe has been happening for years: blatant scraping and A.I training performed by big companies, targeting everything they can.

We conceptualized Jouzt about 2 years ago in anticipation of what we’re seeing right now. It was evident then that the AI steamroller had no brakes. Our goal has been to create an alternative with the hopes that enough people like us would get tired of all of this. Not just an art community, but an actual alternative social platform that is human first, complete with everything you expect from Instagram or Facebook, minus all the corporate, predatory, evil stuff.

Meta have over 3.5 billion users. We have just over 2000 today – positive, supportive, humans creating like humans are meant to. We have started with art but everyone is welcome on Jouzt and our goal is to reach out to people of all demographics. We are here and waiting to support anyone who sees what we see.

We know we’re competing with giants in the social space. But if you’re tired of having your attention exploited by trillion-dollar companies, know that there is at least one alternative. Support people who post on Jouzt, and other platforms that are user-first.

YOU power these machines by using them. Recognise that your attention and participation matter. Make informed decisions about where you spend time online and how it shapes the world.

We feel strongly about this and if you’d like to speak with our passionate team you can message us at Jouzt.com/jouzt or on our official Discord server, both links below.

Thank you.