Meta Shelves Business Terms That Publishers Said Would Let It Scrape Their Websites

The changes covered the Meta Commercial Terms, Product Catalog Terms, Self-Serve Ad Terms and Ad Creative Generative AI Terms. They were first due to take effect on October 30 and were then delayed to November 20. In a notice on its business help pages, Meta now says the updates "are now paused and will not take effect on November 20, 2026," that it is "continuing to consult with stakeholders" and that its existing terms remain in effect, according to 404 Media.

The retreat matters beyond Meta. It is one of the clearest cases so far of a large platform trying to secure access to third-party content through its standard contract terms rather than through licensing deals, and of courts and competition regulators in Europe moving quickly to stop it before the terms took effect.

The draft terms would have required business accounts to let Meta "use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of" its products, 404 Media reported. They also authorised Meta to use automated tools such as scrapers and bots to index, cache, analyse, collect, retrieve or crawl domains linked to a business account, according to the Associated Press. Because news organisations run business pages on Facebook and Instagram, publishers read the terms as covering their own websites, including paywalled articles.

Meta has disputed that reading. Spokesman Andy Stone wrote on X on October 16 that the update was "designed to make sure we're able to pull accurate information about products for sale on third-party websites" and was "not about scraping news sites." After Nieman Lab reported that the wording could allow Meta to train AI on news content, the company removed the word "train" and limited the permitted uses to advertising and business products. Publishers said the revised wording still covered its generative AI services.

The legal pressure built quickly. On October 28 the Oslo District Court granted a temporary injunction suspending the terms at the request of 180 Norwegian media companies, backed by the publishers' association Mediebedriftenes Landsforening (MBL), until it can rule on whether they are lawful, Press Gazette reported. The UK Competition and Markets Authority opened its own investigation, saying the terms could amount to an unlawful imposition of unfair trading conditions. The European Commission said it had discussed the terms with Meta and would make sure the company complies with EU rules on abuse of dominance and on the obligations of gatekeeper platforms.

Publisher groups elsewhere joined in. The Association of American Publishers called on Meta to drop the terms, and publisher organisations in Denmark and Sweden have contacted or reported Meta to their competition authorities, according to Press Gazette. US Senator Adam Schiff asked Meta to guarantee protection for paywalls and robots.txt, the file sites use to block crawlers. Meta has said it will respect robots.txt blocks on AI scraping, but that commitment is not written into the terms.

MBL chief executive Randi S. Øgrey said the earlier postponement was not enough. The association wants Meta to commit in writing to respecting publishers' restrictions on scraping and to require a separate, paid and voluntary agreement before using journalism in AI products.

The Norwegian court still has to decide the legality of the terms, and the CMA has not said when its review will end. Meta has given no new date for the update.