Meta is postponing enforcement of updated business terms to Nov. 20 after publishers said the language could let the company scrape news sites for artificial intelligence, The Verge reported Friday¹.

The terms had been set to take effect Oct. 30¹.

In a statement to The Verge, Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the later date was “to allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what’s changing and what’s not”¹.

The Verge said the original terms appeared to give Meta permission to scrape sites that use its platforms and use the material for AI training¹. Meta later removed language about “training” its products; legal experts argued that change was not enough to rule out scraping, according to The Verge¹.

The News/Media Alliance sent a letter Thursday to Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg demanding a revision, citing harm to publishers, The Verge reported¹. Digital advertisers and publishers in the European Union and the United Kingdom also urged regulators to force Meta to halt the new terms¹.

Roberts said the delay would give Meta time to describe how it uses web crawlers and that content owners can still use robots.txt to signal crawl preferences¹. It was not clear from the reporting whether Meta will further change the terms before Nov. 20¹.

Sources

1. The VergeMeta delays new business terms after publisher pushback on AI scrapingOct 23, 10:47 AM
2. ReutersMeta to delay new commercial terms criticised by publishers, advertisersOct 23, 12:35 PM

Read the original at The Verge ↗