Meta Indefinitely Pauses Terms Update That Would Have Allowed Scraping Business Users' Sites
The November 20 changes drew injunctions in Norway and Brazil, a UK competition investigation and a letter from two U.S. senators, Nieman Lab reports.
Photo: LPS.1 / CC0 via Wikimedia Commons
Meta has paused indefinitely an update to its commercial terms that would have let it scrape websites belonging to Meta Business account users, Nieman Lab reported after the company acted on November 5.
What changed
Meta's Business Help Center now says: "These updates are now paused and will not take effect on November 20, 2026." A spokesperson said the company is "pausing the changes as we continue to engage with stakeholders and take our time to get this right." Meta also removed the preview link to the proposed terms, and the existing terms remain in effect.
The package covered the Meta Commercial Terms, Product Catalog Terms, Self-Serve Ad Terms and Ad Creative Generative AI Terms. Nieman Lab first reported on the terms on October 15.
Timeline
- October 16: Meta removed the word "train" and limited future scraped content to "advertising and business products."
- October 23: The effective date moved from October 30 to November 20.
- October 28: Communications chief Andy Stone said Meta would not change policy "without a full consultation with industry groups and leaders."
- November 5: The changes were paused.
The pressure
According to Nieman Lab:
- Courts in Norway and Brazil issued preliminary injunctions blocking the terms after lawsuits by media organizations.
- The UK Competition and Markets Authority opened a formal investigation into whether Meta was abusing a dominant position by imposing exploitative terms on publishers and advertisers.
- Senators Adam Schiff and Marsha Blackburn wrote to Mark Zuckerberg at the end of October asking him to withdraw the terms. Schiff called them "a gross abuse of Meta's power."
- UK politicians and German publishers asked regulators to pause the terms before the original deadline.
Context
Whether websites can be scraped to feed AI products has become a flashpoint between publishers and technology companies. Meta did not say whether it will reissue a revised version of the terms or when.
