eBay has blocked third-party AI agents, including Meta’s Muse, from browsing its marketplace, marking another obstacle in the broader push toward agentic commerce. The restriction came to light in November 2026 after a reader told The Verge that Muse — which had been curating a daily digest of watch listings from eBay for several weeks — was suddenly unable to pull any links or details from the site. The Verge confirmed the block by recreating the experience with other search requests.
eBay spokesperson Sybille St. Arromand acknowledged the restrictions in a statement but did not directly confirm whether new limits had recently been imposed. “We have restricted agent access in certain cases, including unauthorized scraping and training on our data,” St. Arromand said, adding that eBay is “evaluating ways third-party agents could help new customers discover eBay’s unmatched inventory.” Meta declined to comment.
eBay had previously updated its user agreement to ban “buy-for-me agents” and “LLM-driven bots” that place orders without human review, though agents like Muse had still been able to browse listings until recently. In some cases following the block, Muse directed users to outside sites that mirrored eBay listings rather than to eBay itself.
The move reflects a wider pattern of retailers taking varied stances on AI agent access. Amazon is blocking external agents entirely, Target allows browsing in some instances but not others, and Shopify has opened its catalog of a billion listings to agent-driven purchases. The inconsistency raises questions about how reliably AI agents can serve as shopping tools.
The scale of agentic commerce also appears limited for now. Uber reported just four rides fulfilled via third-party agents in Q3 2026, along with roughly 500 Uber Eats orders during Halloween week. DoorDash said it fulfilled only “several hundred” agent-placed orders against a total of 993 million orders last quarter — suggesting that widespread consumer adoption of AI shopping agents remains a distant prospect.
Source: The Verge