Meta pushed its new business terms to November 20 after publisher pushback, The Verge, Nieman Lab and Fast Company reported. Critics say the terms would allow broad scraping of news sites tied to Meta business accounts.

The terms had been set to take effect on October 30. Nieman Lab first reported on them on October 15. They would cover websites linked to business accounts on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads. Nearly every news outlet has at least one such account, Nieman Lab said.

On October 16, Meta removed the word "train" from the terms and limited use of future scraped content to advertising and business products, Nieman Lab reported. Legal experts still said the change did not rule out broad scraping. Meta has not added robots.txt language into the terms text itself, Nieman Lab said as of October 23.

A Meta spokesperson said the delay gives the company more time to explain what is changing and what is not. That includes how Meta uses web crawlers and that content owners can still use robots.txt to signal preferences, The Verge and Nieman Lab reported. Fast Company also described the delay as quiet and tied it to the same publisher pressure.

News groups on both sides of the Atlantic had pressed Meta after the first reports, Nieman Lab said. Meta says the delay is about clarity for partners. Critics say the written terms still leave too much room until the text itself changes.

What we know: Meta moved the effective date of its new business terms from October 30 to November 20 after news-industry pushback.
What we don't: Whether Meta will add clearer robots.txt language to the terms, or how many publishers will keep blocking crawlers.