Meta crawler Meta-ExternalAgent crashed small business site

Small business website owners report that aggressive web crawlers operated by Meta are causing severe traffic surges, resource spikes, and website crashes. Website managers state that bots such as Meta-ExternalAgent and Meta-WebIndexer have gotten stuck in loops or triggered excessive downloads, forcing owners to manually block them through firewall and server file adjustments. The incidents highlight growing concerns among micro businesses regarding AI crawlers and Meta's planned commercial terms updates. Open article →