Meta says it’ll probably delay its controversial new business terms again

Meta is signaling another delay to its new business terms, after publishers pushed back hard over what the rules seemed to allow around AI training. The company had been set to roll them out on October 30, but now says the change may slip beyond November 20 as it works through the backlash.

On X, Meta communications head Andy Stone said the company does “not plan to make policy changes without a full consultation with industry groups and leaders.” That’s a notable shift in tone from a company that had already attracted attention for what publishers saw as a broad permission slip.

The source of the anger was simple enough: the new terms appeared to let Meta train its AI models on news sites that use Facebook and Instagram. That was enough to set off alarm bells among publishers, who are already wary of how their material gets used in AI systems.

Meta has since revised the policy language, removing wording that suggested it could “train” its products on content scraped from those sites. But the fact that the company is still talking about another delay shows how messy this rollout has become. A policy update that was supposed to be routine has turned into a public fight over who gets to set the rules for AI training.