What happened
Meta has moved the start of its updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms from 30 October to 20 November 2026, a spokesperson told Reuters on 23 October. Publishers and advertisers had told EU and UK competition authorities that the terms gave Meta an unlimited right to use their content for its AI services. Meta rejects that reading.
The terms cover businesses that use Meta tools such as ads, Facebook Pages and Instagram business accounts, and let Meta crawl websites linked to those accounts. Meta removed the word "train" from the clause before it announced the delay.
Why it matters
Festivals, distributors and production companies with a linked Page usually keep trailers, stills and press kits on that site.
Meta says site owners can still use robots.txt. Its crawler documentation lists meta-externalagent, for uses such as training foundation AI models, and meta-externalads, for advertising and business products, as blockable there. Two others, meta-externalfetcher and facebookexternalhit, may bypass robots.txt in some cases.
Still open
The wording that will apply from 20 November, which crawler the terms rely on, and whether EU or UK authorities act on the complaints. As of 29 October.
For your film
Before 20 November, check the robots.txt file on any site linked to a Meta business account and decide whether to add rules for meta-externalagent and meta-externalads. The terms name neither.