Meta Delays New Business Terms Until Nov. 20 After Publisher Pushback

The updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms will now take effect Nov. 20, three weeks later than planned, after the News/Media Alliance called on Meta to withdraw the automated-access language.

Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the extension would give the company more time to explain changes to partners and stakeholders, including its use of web crawlers. The Alliance, which says it represents more than 2,000 U.S. publishers, asked CEO Mark Zuckerberg to withdraw the terms in an Oct. 22 letter.

The letter describes the updated terms as allowing automated tools to access and collect material from websites connected to a business’s products or services, then revisit those sites for updates. It says the revised wording removed an explicit reference to “train” but retained language allowing collected material to be used to develop, improve, research and maintain advertising and business products. The revision followed Meta’s earlier removal of training language from the planned terms.

Meta says site owners can use robots.txt to signal crawler preferences. The Alliance says the terms do not explicitly require Meta to honor those signals. The delay announcement did not say the crawling language had been withdrawn; the updated terms are scheduled to take effect Nov. 20.