Meta moved the start of its new Commercial Terms from 30 October to 20 November 2026, as its own terms page now says, and on 28 October paused the rollout pending a consultation with industry, as the CMA's 30 October press release confirms.
History. Of five platforms that reached day six of a protest without fully backing down, as Meta has now, two did so later, both on day eight.
Hunch. Meta's communications chief Andy Stone said on 16 October there was no change to how Meta uses web crawlers, and the right is still in the new text.
The Meta market resolves on Meta's commercial terms page and Meta statements: YES if by the end of 30 October 2026, London time, Meta withdraws the new terms, delays them past 30 October for all users or for the EU or UK, removes the right to crawl business websites, or automatically leaves out all news and magazine publishers' sites in at least the EU and UK. An opt-out by form or robots.txt, an exclusion for only some publishers or only those who sign a deal, or a new purpose for the same right is NO, and The Guardian and BBC News are backups if Meta's page cannot be read.
We looked for cases where a platform changed its terms to gain rights over its users’ content, and users protested in public. We found ten such fights since 2009. Three involved Facebook, Instagram or Meta, and none was about websites outside the platform.