Meta has pushed the start of its new business terms to 20 November from 30 October, Reuters reported. Publishers say the terms let Meta crawl their websites for its products. The delay came a day after the News/Media Alliance demanded the terms be withdrawn.
Meta has pushed back new business terms that publishers say would let it scrape their websites, Reuters reported on Friday. The terms will now take effect on 20 November instead of 30 October.
The delay is “to allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what’s changing and what’s not,” a Meta spokesperson said.
The wording publishers object to looked the same, and Meta still plans to go ahead, Fast Company reported. The spokesperson added that website owners can still use robots.txt, a file that tells crawlers which pages to skip, to signal their preferences. Some web firms now give publishers more control: Cloudflare now blocks AI training crawlers by default on many sites’ pages with ads.
The terms apply to businesses that use Meta’s tools, such as ads, Facebook Pages or Instagram business accounts. They let Meta send automated crawlers to websites linked to those accounts and use the content to develop its advertising and business products. Businesses accept the terms just by using those tools.
Meta dropped the word “train” from the terms last week after an outcry. Publishers say the new wording still leaves room for AI training. Five big publishers are already suing Meta, saying it pirated their books to train its Llama models.
The delay came a day after the News/Media Alliance, which represents more than 2,000 US publishers, sent Mark Zuckerberg a letter demanding that Meta withdraw the terms. It said publishers can’t really block Meta’s crawlers, because their ads need them to work.
“News publishers will be forced into providing their valuable journalism to support the development of products that may be used to compete with them,” the letter said.
Pressure is also building in Europe. On Wednesday, European publishers asked regulators in the EU and UK to suspend the terms, and Britain’s competition watchdog has asked Meta to explain them.
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