Meta indefinitely pauses commercial terms that would have let it crawl business websites for AI training

What happened

Meta has indefinitely paused its planned update to the Meta Commercial Terms, Product Catalog Terms, Self-Serve Ad Terms and Ad Creative Generative AI Terms, and the changes will not take effect on 20 November 2026. On 5 November 2026 Meta took down the preview link to the proposed terms and posted a notice on its Business Help Centre saying the updates "are now paused and will not take effect on November 20, 2026" and that "our existing terms remain in effect" while it continues consulting stakeholders. No new effective date was given. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the pause to Nieman Lab, saying: "We're pausing the changes as we continue to engage with stakeholders and take our time to get this right."

What the terms would have done

The proposed terms, first reported by Nieman Lab on 15 October 2026, would have authorised Meta to send crawlers across websites associated with any business using its products commercially and to use "any content" found there to "train" its products, with no opt-out other than stopping use of Meta's business tools. On 16 October Meta removed the word "train" and limited the stated use to "advertising and business products", and on 23 October it moved the effective date from 30 October to 20 November. The 5 November pause removes that date entirely, though the changes are paused rather than withdrawn.

Context

The pause follows publisher backlash and regulatory and court action: on 28 October Meta pledged to consult news publishers and industry leaders before putting new terms into effect; courts in Norway (28 October) and Brazil (3 November) issued preliminary injunctions blocking the terms; the UK Competition and Markets Authority opened a formal investigation on 30 October into whether the terms abuse a dominant position; and US Senators Adam Schiff and Marsha Blackburn wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the end of October asking him to withdraw the terms. The pause does not end the CMA investigation or the court cases in Norway and Brazil.