Meta delays new business terms after publisher pushback on AI scraping

Meta is delaying the enforcement of its new business terms after publishers raised concerns that they could allow the company to scrape news sites for AI training, as reported earlier by Fast Company. In a statement to The Verge, Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts says the terms will go into effect on November 20th “to allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what’s changing and what’s not.”

The business terms, which were originally supposed to go into effect on October 30th, appeared to give Meta permission to freely scrape the new sites that use its platforms, while using the material for AI training. Though Meta updated these terms to remove language about “training” its products, legal experts argued the change is not enough to rule out the possibility.

The News/Media Alliance sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, demanding that the company revise its business terms over concerns that they would cause “severe harm” to publishers. Digital advertisers and publishers in the European Union and the UK also urged regulators to force Meta to halt its new terms.

In response to this backlash, Meta is now delaying its new terms entirely. Roberts says the delay will give Meta more time to lay out “how Meta uses web crawlers and the fact that content owners will still be able to use robots.txt to signal preferences,” referring to the file that signals to scrapers whether they can crawl a site.