Meta Platforms Inc. delayed the effective date of its updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms, which include contested web crawling permissions, from October 30 to November 20, the company announced.
The postponement followed significant pushback from advocacy groups and news publishers regarding a clause that permits Meta to crawl business websites for various purposes, including generating test credentials and pulling updates.
The social media giant stated the delay would provide more time to explain the changes to its partners and stakeholders, particularly how its web crawlers operate.
Organizations such as the Movement for an Open Web, WAN-IFRA (World Association of News Publishers), and the European Alliance of News Agencies formally complained to regulators and Meta about the broad crawling provision.
The European Commission and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) are scrutinizing the revised terms. The European Commission welcomed the delay, committing to ensure Meta’s compliance with EU law, including Article 102 TFEU and the Digital Markets Act.
Publishers have requested that Meta temporarily halt the crawling provision for news content and make robots.txt directives legally binding within its terms.
Meta indicated that webmasters can use robots.txt files to influence crawling behavior. However, the new terms do not explicitly clarify whether robots.txt settings limit the permissions a business grants by accepting the terms, according to Nieman Lab.
The ongoing dispute highlights persistent tensions over data use and the market power of large digital platforms, particularly concerning how they interact with content creators and businesses.
Source: Search Engine Journal
