FacebookBot: user agent, purpose, and whether to allow it
FacebookBot is a Meta crawler distinct from facebookexternalhit, historically associated with speech and language model training.
Specification
| Operator | Meta |
|---|---|
| Purpose | TrainingCollects content that may be used to train future models. Blocking it removes your content from future training runs. It does not affect whether a model can find and cite you today. |
| Agent kind | CrawlerAutonomous crawler. Appears in your logs under its own user-agent. |
| User agent | Not documented by Meta. Kymo matches this agent on the token FacebookBot, observed in real logs rather than published in operator documentation. |
| robots.txt token | FacebookBot |
| robots.txt compliance | No operator statement located |
| Verification | No published method, user agent is the only signal |
| Sends referral traffic | No |
| Attaches a citation | No |
| Status | Active |
| Legacy Kymo category | training |
| Source | Observed in real logs, no operator documentation locatedMeta publishes no crawler documentation that Kymo could locate. Everything on this page comes from observed traffic, not from a vendor page. |
| Verified on |
What blocking it costs you
Blocking FacebookBot does not affect link previews, which are handled by facebookexternalhit, and does not affect meta-externalagent. Each Meta token must be addressed separately.
robots.txt directives
Both blocks below address FacebookBot only. Rules for one token never apply to another, even from the same operator.
Allow FacebookBot
User-agent: FacebookBot Allow: /
Block FacebookBot
User-agent: FacebookBot Disallow: /
Questions
What is the FacebookBot user agent?
Meta documents the robots.txt token FacebookBot but does not publish a full user-agent string for it. Kymo records this agent from observation rather than from documentation.
Does FacebookBot respect robots.txt?
No operator statement located
What does blocking FacebookBot cost me?
Blocking FacebookBot does not affect link previews, which are handled by facebookexternalhit, and does not affect meta-externalagent. Each Meta token must be addressed separately.
Related crawlers
All AI crawlers and control tokens
See this bot in your own logs
Kymo classifies every crawler hit server-side using this registry, so FacebookBot shows up under Meta with its purpose attached. Read how crawler detection works, or run a free free AI visibility check to see what each crawler currently gets back from your server. No account needed for the check.