Meta postponed its proposed Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms, and November 20 was not a guaranteed start date. Meta first moved the planned effective date from October 30 to November 20, then said consultation could extend beyond November 20 and implementation would be delayed if it did. The company said its existing terms would remain in force during consultation.
How the proposed terms’ timing changed
Meta announced the move to November 20 on October 23. On October 28, it said consultation could continue beyond that date, making implementation conditional on the consultation’s progress. The announcement concerned proposed terms for business use, not a change already in effect.
What Meta said the terms were for
Meta said the update was intended to help it obtain accurate information about products sold on third-party websites for advertising and recommendations on its platforms. The company said the proposal was not about scraping news sites.
The Associated Press reported that the proposed wording covered automated tools that could index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve or crawl domains, web pages and URLs associated with a business account. After criticism, Meta removed the word “train” from the proposed terms, the Associated Press reported. Publishers and legal experts questioned whether the remaining language was narrow enough, including over concerns about possible use of website content in AI products.
A temporary order in Norway and an investigation in the UK
On October 28, a Norwegian court temporarily suspended the proposed terms at the request of 180 Norwegian media companies. The order was temporary, pending a fuller assessment of the terms’ legality.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation on October 30. The regulator said requiring news publishers and other content businesses to accept the terms could amount to unfair trading conditions.
