THE CRUNCH
Meta has delayed the enforcement of its new business terms to 20 November, after publishers worldwide objected that the terms could let the company scrape news sites for AI training. The terms, originally due to take effect on 30 October, appeared to give Meta permission to freely scrape news sites that use its platforms and use the material for AI training. Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the new date will allow more time to explain to partners and stakeholders what is changing and what is not.
Meta did update the terms to remove language about training its products, but legal experts argued that change does not rule out the possibility. The News/Media Alliance sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday demanding a revision, warning the terms 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 the terms.
Roberts said the delay will give Meta time to lay out how it uses web crawlers and that content owners can still use robots.txt, the standard file that signals to scrapers whether they may crawl a site, to state their preferences.