eBay Blocks Meta's Muse and Other AI Agents From Its Platform

eBay appears to have blocked AI agents, including Meta's Muse, from browsing its platform, The Verge reported on November 10, 2026.

A reader told The Verge that for several weeks he had used Muse to browse and curate a daily digest of watches for sale on platforms like eBay, including links to listings, price, shipping details, and notes about condition or style. This weekend, Muse was unable to pull any links or details from eBay, with Muse saying it was blocked from the site. The Verge said it was able to re-create the experience using other search requests, and in some cases Muse instead directed users to outside sites that mirrored eBay listings.

eBay previously updated its user agreement to ban the use of tools like "buy-for-me agents" and "LLM-driven bots" that place orders without human review. Until recently, though, agents like Muse were able to browse the site and pull listings for users.

"AI is becoming embedded throughout the platform for the discovery, personalization, and selling process," eBay spokesperson Sybille St. Arromand told The Verge in an email. St. Arromand declined to directly answer whether eBay recently imposed new limits on AI agents.

"As it pertains to third-parties, we take a selective approach to how they access and interact with our marketplace. We have restricted agent access in certain cases, including unauthorized scraping and training on our data," St. Arromand said. "We have ongoing discussions with potential partners and are evaluating ways third-party agents could help new customers discover eBay's unmatched inventory, and our focus is on preserving the trusted end-to-end experience that buyers and sellers expect from eBay."

Meta declined to comment.

The Verge reported that retailers and service providers show varying levels of comfort with third-party agents. Amazon is blocking external agents entirely from browsing or shopping. Target has restrictions that allow agents to successfully browse in some instances but get blocked in others. Shopify has opened its catalog of a billion listings so that shoppers can set up their agents to purchase items on their behalf.

The Verge also reported that Uber said it fulfilled only four rides via third-party agents in Q3 and only around 500 Uber Eats orders during the week of Halloween. DoorDash said it fulfilled only "several hundred" orders placed via third-party agents, and reported 993 million total orders last quarter.

Sources

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.