Meta pledges to consult publishers before amending commercial terms
Meta delayed its commercial terms update after publisher criticism, while industry groups say they have not been consulted despite reliance on the platform.
Meta postponed an update to its commercial terms and announced it will consult industry groups and leaders before introducing the changes, after a wave of anger from publishers, according to Digiday.
Groups representing publishers, including the News Media Alliance, Digital Content Next and The Professional Publishers Association, told Digiday they had not yet received a call. The Guardian's head of public policy, Tami Hoffman, expressed concern that some publishers may ultimately decide to leave Meta's platforms because of the updated terms.
Chatbeat data covering more than 2,500 domains show Meta's platforms took an average 3.47% of global publisher traffic in July 2026, while visits to Facebook for the ten largest publisher sites fell 5% year on year according to Similarweb data. Even so, heads of audience at three publishers told Digiday the platforms remain important for branded content, paid media, reach, engagement, awareness and connecting with community. One said their publisher had deprioritized Facebook after traffic from Meta's platforms fell from more than a fifth of its global traffic to a negligible share, though Instagram remained important for brand awareness and community engagement.
Publisher groups are pressing regulators and legislators to change the terms, amid an investigation by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), a Norwegian court order and letters from US senators urging Meta to reverse the proposed terms. Eilidh Wilson, head of policy and public affairs at the PPA, said publishers have adapted by using Meta for audience engagement, conversion and subscription acquisition, and that Meta needs to separate access to its platform from permission to collect publisher content, and that the terms as drafted leave publishers with an impossible choice between withdrawing from services their businesses rely on or accepting the collection and use of their content.
What do these terms mean?
Referral traffic: Visits that reach a publisher's website through a link on another platform, and an important source of audience.
Web crawling: A platform's program automatically collecting website pages to read, index or use in training systems.
Terms of service: The agreement setting out the platform's rights and the user's or publisher's obligations when using its services.
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