Meta Puts Business Terms in Doubt After Publisher Complaints

The announcement came on October 28, five days after Meta moved the effective date of its updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms from October 30 to November 20. That first postponement gave businesses another 21 days. Now even the revised deadline is uncertain.

A Business Page Can Bring a Website Into Scope

The disputed language would allow Meta to crawl domains, pages and URLs associated with a company’s products or services. Its reach goes beyond businesses buying advertising.

Managing a Facebook Page, for example, counts as commercial use. A casino comparison publisher with a business Page could therefore fall within the proposed terms even without running a paid campaign.

Meta changed the wording on October 16, removing an explicit reference to using collected content to "train" its products. The permitted purposes were narrowed to advertising and business products, but the crawling provision remained. Nieman Lab’s examination found that legal experts continued to question the scope of those rights.

Meta disputes the publishers’ interpretation. It says the update does not change its crawling practices and website owners can still use robots.txt to signal restrictions.

Ten Norwegian Media Companies Win Court Order

Norwegian publishers went to court rather than wait for another Meta deadline. On October 28, Oslo District Court barred the company from introducing the disputed conditions until their legality has been settled.

Ten media companies were behind the case, among them NRK, TV 2, Schibsted and Amedia. The Norwegian Media Businesses’ Association said even paywalled articles could be exposed under the proposed wording.

The dispute had already reached regulators elsewhere. On October 23, the Movement for an Open Web asked UK and EU competition authorities to intervene. Its complaints target the rights Meta could gain over websites belonging to businesses using its services.

Casino Affiliates Are Not Exempt

A casino affiliate may use a Facebook business Page to distribute reviews while keeping the articles on its own domain. The proposed crawling clause could cover that website. Buying Meta ads is not a prerequisite.

The October 28 announcement, however, changes nothing about gambling-ad approvals, targeting or access to Ads Manager. The issue is website content.

Meta has not withdrawn the contested wording.