The postponement and the stated reasons
Meta has decided to postpone the application of its new commercial terms, initially scheduled for October 30, to November 20. The decision, reported by The Verge, comes after protests from publishers around the world who feared that the new terms could authorize the company to collect content from news sites to train its artificial intelligence systems.
Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts told The Verge that the postponement is meant to allow more time to explain to partners and stakeholders what is changing and what is not. The company also specified that the postponement will allow it to explain how it uses web crawlers and the fact that content owners will still be able to use the robots.txt file to indicate their preferences regarding the scanning of sites.
Publishers' criticism and the training issue
The new commercial terms, in their initial version, appeared to give Meta permission to freely collect content from sites that use its platforms and to use the material to train artificial intelligence models. Meta later amended the terms by removing the reference to training its own products, but legal experts cited in the article argued that the change is not enough to entirely exclude this possibility.
The News/Media Alliance sent a letter on Thursday to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg requesting a review of the commercial terms out of fears of serious harm to publishers. In addition, digital advertisers and publishers in the European Union and the United Kingdom urged regulators to require Meta to suspend the new terms. The postponement therefore represents a direct response to this pressure, but it does not resolve the substantive question about the actual content of the terms.
What remains to be verified
The postponement to November 20 does not clarify whether Meta will further amend the text of the commercial terms. The company announced a greater effort to explain the changes to partners and stakeholders, but the available material does not indicate whether this will entail regulatory changes or only a communications effort. It also remains to be verified how the preference system via robots.txt will be applied and whether publishers will consider it a sufficient tool to protect their content.
The available information is based on the statement by Meta's spokesperson and on initiatives by publishers' associations. The exact wording of the News/Media Alliance letter and the responses of European and British regulators are not indicated. The matter remains open: the November 20 date is the next verifiable step, while the actual scope of the new terms will depend on the changes Meta decides to introduce.
