Meta Postpones Commercial Terms Update to November 20 Amid Scrutiny Over AI Scraping

Meta Platforms has postponed the effective date of its updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms from October 30 to November 20 following widespread industry and regulatory backlash. Digital advertisers, publishers, and a news trade group raised concerns that the revision grants sweeping rights to scrape web content to train artificial intelligence models. Objections prompted formal antitrust complaints in the European Union and the United Kingdom, alongside warnings from US Senator Marsha Blackburn. Meta denied allegations of overreach, stating the extension allows time to consult partners while clarifying that crawler access remains controllable via robots.txt.