eBay appears to block third-party AI agents from browsing its marketplace

What happened

eBay appears to have blocked third-party AI agents from browsing its marketplace, with Meta's Muse among the tools now locked out, according to The Verge.

The report centers on a reader who, for several weeks, had Muse compile a daily digest of watches for sale on eBay and other platforms, complete with links, prices, shipping details and notes on condition or style. Over the weekend, Muse could no longer retrieve any links or details from eBay and reported that it was blocked from the site. The Verge says it reproduced the behavior with other search requests, and in some cases Muse instead directed users to outside sites that mirrored eBay listings.

eBay confirms restrictions, not the change

The apparent block would extend a policy eBay had already put on paper. According to The Verge, the company earlier updated its user agreement to ban tools such as "buy-for-me agents" and "LLM-driven bots" that place orders without human review. Until recently, however, agents like Muse could still browse the site and surface listings for users.

Asked directly whether new limits had been imposed, eBay spokesperson Sybille St. Arromand declined to say, telling The Verge that the company takes "a selective approach" to how third parties access and interact with the marketplace. She said eBay has restricted agent access "in certain cases, including unauthorized scraping and training on our data," and added that the company is in ongoing discussions with potential partners and evaluating how third-party agents could help new customers discover its inventory. Meta declined to comment.

Retailers are splitting on agent access

The Verge frames eBay's decision as part of a broader divide. Amazon blocks external agents entirely from browsing or shopping, while Target's restrictions allow agents to browse successfully in some instances and get blocked in others. Shopify has moved in the opposite direction, opening its catalog of a billion listings so shoppers can set up agents to purchase items on their behalf.

The underlying tension is that retail sites largely assume they are selling to humans, with human limitations, rather than automated clients. In October, The Verge found that Muse could effectively hold product listings hostage on The RealReal, a secondhand designer consignment site, by having the agent continually add a product to a cart. The RealReal updated its bot system after that reporting.

Agent-driven commerce is still tiny

For all the industry noise, measured usage remains minuscule. According to figures cited by The Verge, Uber fulfilled only four rides via third-party agents in the third quarter and around 500 Uber Eats orders during the week of Halloween. DoorDash said "several hundred" orders were placed via third-party agents, against 993 million total orders reported for its last quarter.

Why it matters

Shopping is one of the most-cited promises of AI agents — booking travel, finding deals, buying on a person's behalf — but that promise depends entirely on retailers letting automated clients in. eBay's apparent block targets browsing, not just purchasing, which closes off even the passive, read-only workflows that had been working and pushes agents toward mirror sites with less accountable data.

The spokesperson's language signals where this is likely heading: selective, negotiated access for approved partners rather than an open door for any agent. With real-world agent order volumes measured in the hundreds against totals in the hundreds of millions, retailers currently have little commercial pressure to accommodate bots. But the access decisions being made now — through unilateral blocks, partnerships and platform policies — will shape whether agentic commerce becomes a mainstream channel or stays a novelty.