Meta postpones revised partner rules as news outlets challenge AI scraping
Meta has pushed the start date for its revised partner rules to November 20 after news organizations objected that the language could permit their sites to be harvested for AI training. A company spokesperson said the extra time will let Meta clarify what is changing and how its web crawlers work. The News/Media Alliance and publishers in Europe had pressed regulators to intervene.
Meta originally planned to enforce the revised business terms on October 30. The company now says they will take effect November 20. Spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the added time is meant to clarify what is changing and how Meta’s web crawlers operate, including content owners’ ability to use robots.txt to signal crawling preferences.
Publishers objected because the terms appeared to allow news sites using Meta’s platforms to be scraped for AI training. Although Meta removed language about “training,” legal experts said the revision did not eliminate that risk. The News/Media Alliance wrote to Mark Zuckerberg, and EU and UK advertisers and publishers asked regulators to intervene.
The delay may give news organizations and regulators more time to assess whether Meta’s terms protect publishers from unwanted AI scraping. If the rules proceed unchanged, outlets could face greater difficulty controlling how their reporting is used, potentially affecting licensing negotiations and public access to reliable news. Meta’s users and AI developers may also see uncertainty over what content can be collected, while regulators could face pressure to clarify rules for automated data collection.