Meta pauses new scraping terms after publisher complaints

Meta has postponed the rollout of its updated commercial terms indefinitely, and no new date has been announced. That's according to PYMNTS, citing the news agency Reuters. For now, the existing terms still apply.

The delay comes after several publisher organizations complained about the wording.

What did the terms say?

The terms gave Meta the right to use crawlers, bots and other automated tools to access and collect content from websites linked to a company's products or services. A crawler is a program that automatically goes through websites and pulls content.

In the first version, dated October 15, the collected content could be used to "develop, improve, research, train and maintain" Meta's products. The following day, Meta removed the word "train" and narrowed the purpose to advertising and business products.

The terms were originally set to take effect on October 30, 2026, but the date was pushed to November 20, 2026.

Complaints from the industry

The European Publishers Council, the News Media Association in the UK, the News/Media Alliance and a handful of publishers and advertisers complained. According to PPC Land, they argue that the clause gives Meta broad rights over any website linked to a business. The only real way to opt out, they say, is to leave Meta's platforms.

PYMNTS reports that competition authorities in the EU and the UK have received complaints about the terms, but that no formal investigations have been confirmed. Social Media Today, by contrast, reports that the UK competition authority, the CMA, has opened an investigation. The sources therefore disagree on that point.

Meta's explanation

Meta says the changes clarify existing rights and do not grant new rights to scrape beyond what robots.txt allows. Robots.txt is a small text file where a website can tell automated programs what they may and may not do. Meta has said the company respects such preferences. According to Social Media Today, Meta has also stated that the purpose is data collection solely for ad targeting, not scraping.

However, according to Nieman Lab's review, no version of the terms contains explicit language saying Meta respects robots.txt.

Legal experts remain skeptical

Benjamin Sobel of the University of Wisconsin points out that following robots.txt is voluntary and, on its own, cannot legally prevent access without additional protection.

James Grimmelmann of Cornell Law says the wording about developing advertising and business products is still broad enough to "drive a truck through." Matt Topic of Loevy & Loevy assesses that the revised version still lets Meta use scraped content to develop any business product, and that "develop" is broad enough to include "train" as well.

Meta has said the company will not make policy changes without a full consultation with industry organizations and leaders. According to Meta, the consultation could run past November 20. If so, Meta will delay the introduction of the new terms.