Meta May Delay Its New Rules for Visiting Business Websites Again

Meta is considering another delay to new business terms that would let its software automatically visit businesses' websites. The company said the start date could slip past November 20 if its talks with publishers run longer.

The terms give Meta permission to use automated programs to reach businesses' websites. These include scrapers, bots, crawlers and spiders, which are tools that visit web pages and copy what they find. Meta says it would use them to provide, develop, improve, research and maintain its advertising and business products.

Engadget reported Meta's latest position. Meta's website still lists November 20 as the start date. Meta has said its current terms stay in place until any updated terms take effect.

The date has already moved. The changes were first set for October 30. After complaints, Meta pushed them to November 20. Reuters reported on October 23 that the delay was meant to address concerns from publishers. Advertisers also raised concerns, and Reuters described the terms as criticised by both groups.

The wording has changed too. Earlier this month, Meta removed the word "train" from the terms and added a reference to "advertising and business products." Andy Stone, a Meta spokesperson, said the new terms are not about scraping news sites. He also said Meta will respect content owners' robots.txt preferences. Stone added that Meta does not plan to change its policies without a full consultation with industry groups and leaders.

Robots.txt is a small text file that website owners use to say which automated visitors may look at which pages. Think of it as a "Do Not Enter" sign. Well-behaved visitors obey it, but nothing forces them to.

The reaction has gone beyond trade complaints. A group of Norway-based news outlets has sued Meta over the new terms. California Senator Adam Schiff called on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to withdraw the business-terms changes, making him the second lawmaker to do so. The Verge reported that legal experts said the terms could be used to freely scrape news sites.

The core disagreement is over what the words mean. Meta says the clause covers advertising and business products, not news content. Legal observers read the same clause as broad enough to include news sites. Both readings depend on how the phrase "advertising and business products" is applied in practice.

In my view, the robots.txt pledge is the most concrete part of Meta's position, and also the part that depends most on trust. The file has no enforcement behind it. A promise to honour it helps a publisher only if Meta's crawlers are limited enough that obeying the sign actually restricts what gets copied. That question belongs to the consultation, and to any technical detail Meta publishes about which programs it runs and what they fetch.

The broader context here is a wider pattern. For years, publishers have tried to separate the different reasons a company might copy their pages, such as search indexing, training and commercial products. Most of the current friction comes from terms that blur those categories. Clear rules, with separate permissions for each purpose and signals that crawlers must follow, would give publishers real control and give advertisers predictable rules. Whether Meta's consultation gets there is not yet known. If it does, the process could offer a usable model for how platforms define automated access to content they do not own.

For now, the existing terms remain in force. The November 20 date stays on Meta's website while the company talks with publishers and industry groups.