Meta delays new terms due to AI content scraping backlash

Meta decided to postpone the effective date of its new business terms after publishers expressed concerns and faced backlash that news sites could be scraped for AI training purposes. According to a statement made by company spokesperson Daniel Roberts to The Verge, the new terms, which were normally planned to take effect on October 30, have been postponed to November 20, 2026.

Meta's postponement decision came following an official request sent by News/Media Alliance CEO Mark Zuckerberg warning of "serious harm" that could be inflicted on the publishing industry. Although Meta removed certain "training" phrases from the terms, legal experts argued that the changes made were insufficient. In addition, regulators in the European Union and the United Kingdom were also urged by publishers to halt the new terms. Meta plans to use this extension to clarify the use of web crawlers and their role in specifying scraping preferences in robots.txt files.