Meta postpones new business terms to November 20

By VK

Published 25 Oct 2026, 11:44 UTC

Reporting from The Verge

Meta moved its new business terms to November 20 after publisher protests, as legal experts say the revised wording could still permit AI training.

What it means for founders

Your website may be in scope. As reported, the terms cover content on sites associated with a Meta business account, not only news outlets. If you run ads or a business page and your site hosts docs, datasets, paid content or original media, read the clause before November 20 and decide whether the trade is acceptable.
Put your crawling preferences on record. Meta's defense rests on robots.txt. Audit yours now so it states exactly what you allow. It records your position, though experts warn Meta could argue the contract outranks it.
Distribution now carries data terms. The publishers' complaint is that Meta is tying access to its audience to content rights. Treat any channel you depend on as one that can rewrite those terms, and keep a second route to customers.
Watch November 20 and the regulators. The signals are whether the text changes or only the explanation does, and whether any EU or UK authority steps in.

The story

Meta has pushed back new rules for business accounts, published on its commercial terms page, by three weeks. The terms were set to take effect on Friday, October 30, and will now apply from Friday, November 20. Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts told The Verge the extra weeks will let Meta walk partners through what the update does and does not change, including how it uses crawlers and the continued role of robots.txt. Fast Company had reported the delay earlier.

The postponement comes days after Meta deleted the word train from the clause covering business websites, a change Enki covered when Meta dropped the AI training clause.

Who pushed back

The News/Media Alliance wrote to Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, October 22, pressing for changes and saying publishers stood to suffer badly. In an earlier statement, dated October 16, the trade group argued that businesses could avoid the terms only by abandoning Meta's products. In it, president and CEO Danielle Coffey called the original terms "outrageous and probably illegal" and argued that the risk reached well past news, to any company holding a Meta business account and intellectual property on the web. Publishers and digital advertisers across the EU and Britain have also asked regulators to stop Meta enforcing the terms, The Verge reported.

What legal experts say remains possible

The original wording, per The Verge, let Meta use any material from sites tied to a business account for developing, researching and training its products. With training struck out, two legal experts interviewed by Nieman Lab, as cited in a second Verge report, argue the gap is still open. James Grimmelmann, a digital and information law professor at Cornell Law School, says the revision does nothing to narrow the language covering sites associated with a business's products or services, which could still let Meta scrape whole sites. Matt Topic, a media and IP attorney at Loevy & Loevy, argues Meta can still use scraped material to develop any business product, a phrase that appears undefined, and that develop can cover training. Before the revision, experts told Nieman Lab that Meta might argue its contract outranks robots.txt blocks.

Roberts told The Verge on October 22 that the update does not target news sites or give Meta fresh rights over robots.txt choices.

What we don't know yet

Whether Meta will rewrite the terms again before November 20, or only explain them.
Whether EU or UK regulators will respond to the complaints.
How Meta would settle a clash between a robots.txt block and the contract.