Meta delays new business terms after publisher pushback over AI scraping

Meta delayed enforcement of new business terms from October 30 to November 20 after publishers questioned whether the rules could allow the company to scrape news sites for AI training. Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the delay would give the company more time to explain to partners and other stakeholders “what’s changing and what’s not.”

The terms were revised to remove language about “training” its products, but legal experts said the change did not rule out that possibility. The News/Media Alliance asked CEO Mark Zuckerberg to revise the rules, while digital advertisers and publishers in the European Union and the UK urged regulators to intervene. Meta says it will explain how it uses web crawlers and that content owners will still be able to signal preferences through robots.txt, which tells scrapers whether they can access a site.