Meta delays revised business terms over scraping concerns
The new start date gives publishers and businesses until 20 November to review clauses that still leave the scope of Meta's web scraping open to question.
Meta has pushed back the start date of its revised commercial terms from October 30 to November 20, giving partners more time to understand the changes. The contested clause would have let Meta deploy crawlers and automated tools against web domains tied to business accounts, and it could be used to develop its products. After publishers objected, Meta dropped the explicit mention of AI training, though the wider scraping rights remained in question. The News Media Alliance has demanded the terms be withdrawn, and complaints have been lodged with antitrust regulators. Meta says site owners will be able to block crawlers using robots.txt, a control that Reuters reported some AI firms already ignore.
Why it matters
For publishers and businesses with Meta accounts, the delay buys time to examine how far the revised terms let Meta crawl their domains, even though the explicit AI training reference has been removed. Site owners are being told that robots.txt will let them signal their preferences to crawlers, but Reuters has reported that several AI companies' crawlers regularly ignore that file, so the protection it offers is uncertain. Until the terms are settled, the balance between Meta's access to web content and the control publishers retain over it remains unresolved.
Series Meta business website AI terms
- Meta delays revised business terms over scraping concerns
- Meta's revised business terms may still let it scrape news sites for AI, experts say
- Meta plans commercial terms change that could widen access to business website content
- Meta’s new terms may expand AI access to business websites
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