Meta Postpones to 20 November a Clause Letting It Crawl the Websites of Any Business on Facebook or Instagram, After the World's News Publishers Object

Meta has postponed the start of its new Commercial Terms, the rules for anyone who uses Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger for business, from 30 October to 20 November 2026, according to WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers. The delay came a day after WAN-IFRA wrote to Meta's Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan, asking it to suspend a clause that lets the company crawl publishers' websites. Lusa, the Portuguese news agency, reported the letter on Friday.

WAN-IFRA welcomed the postponement but said it "does not address our concerns".

What the clause says

Meta's preview text is broader than news. A business that accepts the terms authorises Meta, or anyone acting for it, to use "web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers and user agents" and to "create test credentials" to access and collect the domains and pages "associated with your products or services", or made available "through your or users' use" of Meta's products. Meta may also "periodically pull updates" from those pages.

The stated purpose is to "provide, develop, improve, research and maintain advertising and business products". Business use is defined widely, from running ads or selling products to simply managing a Page.

WAN-IFRA says Meta removed an explicit reference to AI training after criticism. Its letter argues that the remaining wording still covers generative AI, because Meta's own Commercial Terms include separate terms for its AI business assistant. It adds that Meta's public promise to respect robots.txt, the file websites use to turn crawlers away, is not written into the terms.

What the publishers want

WAN-IFRA, which says it represents more than 20,000 media brands in 120 countries, sets out seven requests. Among them:

• suspend the crawling clause for news publishers pending talks;
• drop the right to create test credentials and promise not to get around paywalls or registration walls;
• make robots.txt and EU text and data mining opt-outs binding;
• keep publishers' content out of AI systems unless it is licensed;
• let publishers refuse the clause without losing Meta's business tools.

The letter also objects to limits being tested under Meta One, Meta's new subscription service, under which Facebook Pages must pay to post more than two links a month to their own websites. Regulators are involved too. The letter says the European press associations EMMA, ENPA, EPC and NME have asked the European Commission for interim measures under the Digital Markets Act. In a statement on 16 October, the European Publishers Council said it was writing to Commission Executive Vice-Presidents Ribera and Virkkunen.

What it means if you use Meta in Portugal

Nothing changes for personal accounts: the clause sits in the terms for business use. It does reach well beyond newspapers, though. A café, a language school or a small online shop in Portugal with a Facebook Page or an Instagram business profile and its own website falls within the wording. WAN-IFRA says the only alternative Meta offers is to stop using its products for business altogether.

For readers, the European Publishers Council warns that the clause could let Meta treat a news article as fair game simply because someone shared the link. A reader cannot hand over rights they do not hold, it says. We recently looked at how often paid influencer posts in Portugal go unlabelled.

What happens next

WAN-IFRA asked Meta for a written reply by 27 October and a meeting before the terms take effect, which is now 20 November. When we checked on Friday evening, Meta's own preview of the terms still gave 30 October, and Meta had published no reply. The European Commission has not said whether it will act on the publishers' request.