Meta has delayed new business terms from October 30 to November 20 after publishers argued that the agreement could let the company scrape their websites and use the material for AI products.
The company previously removed explicit language about “training” from the terms, but legal experts said other wording could still cover content associated with a publisher’s products or services. The News/Media Alliance asked CEO Mark Zuckerberg to revise the agreement, warning of severe harm to publishers. Advertising and publishing groups in the European Union and United Kingdom also called for regulatory intervention.
Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the postponement gives the company more time to explain what is changing and how its web crawlers operate. He also said content owners will still be able to use robots.txt, the standard file through which sites signal crawler preferences.
The delay changes the enforcement date, not the disputed language itself. Robots.txt can express a site owner’s preference, but it does not by itself settle what contractual rights Meta claims when a publisher uses its business products. Publishers therefore gain several weeks to assess the terms and press for revisions, while the central question—whether the agreement authorizes AI-related collection beyond their expectations—remains unresolved.