Meta delays new commercial terms after publishers object to AI scraping

Meta postponed the effective date of its new commercial terms from October 30 to November 20. Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the delay was to allow more time to explain to partners and stakeholders what is changing and what is not. The terms had previously been said to allow Meta to freely scrape and use content from news websites on its platform for AI training; although Meta has removed wording involving training its products, legal experts believe this is still not enough to rule out that possibility. The News/Media Alliance has written to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding revisions to the terms, and digital advertisers and publishers in the EU and the UK have also called on regulators to intervene. Roberts said that during the delay Meta will explain how it uses web crawlers and that content providers can still express preferences through robots.txt.