Meta shelves business terms that let it use advertisers' site content

Summary

• Meta paused its business terms update days before the November 20 start date, leaving current terms in force.
• The shelved text would have let Meta use advertisers' domains, pages and links across its ad products.
• Pause follows a Norwegian court injunction, a UK competition probe and pressure from two US senators.

The latest

Meta has suspended a package of business terms that would have required advertisers to let it use content from their own websites, telling businesses on November 5, 2026 that the update will not take effect on November 20 and that existing terms stay in force. The company said it is still consulting affected parties and will provide a further update. No new date was announced.

Details

• What was paused: According to Meta's Business Help Center page, the suspension covers four documents: the commercial terms, the product catalog terms, the self-serve advertising terms, and the generative AI terms for ad creative. Meta said its current terms remain in effect until further notice.
• The original text: As first drafted, the update obliged business accounts to permit Meta to use content from their domains, pages and links to provide, develop, improve, research, train and maintain the safety of Meta products — a scope spanning the company's full product range, not advertising alone.
• The rewrite: After an earlier delay, Meta removed training from the list of permitted uses and narrowed the scope to its advertising and business products, according to the company. The right to crawl advertisers' sites stayed in the text through that revision.
• Crawling unchanged: Meta said its crawling practices have not changed and that site owners can still use the robots.txt file to signal their preferences. The company gave no indication that the pause alters how its crawlers currently operate.
• The timeline: The proposal surfaced in press reports on October 15. Meta initially planned to apply the terms on October 30, then announced on October 23 a delay to November 20, after objections from journalists and users over use of content from sites outside Facebook and Instagram to train generative AI.
• Norway: A Norwegian court granted a temporary injunction on October 28 suspending the new terms, in a case backed by the Norwegian Media Businesses Association and 180 Norwegian media companies — the first binding legal block on the package.
• UK regulator: The Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation on October 30 into whether Meta is abusing a dominant position by imposing exploitative terms on publishers and advertisers. The authority has not announced an outcome.
• Brussels and Washington: The European Commission discussed the terms with Meta and welcomed the delay. Senators Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, and Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, wrote to Mark Zuckerberg asking him to withdraw the terms as drafted.
• Meta's framing: Andy Stone, a Meta vice president, wrote on October 28 that the company cares deeply about its partners and does not intend to make policy changes without full consultation. In its November statement, Meta said it is pausing the changes to "take our time to get this right."

Background

Meta's existing terms already govern advertisers' use of its ad products. The disputed update would have extended its reach to content hosted on advertisers' own websites and linked pages, a category previously outside the agreement.

Between the lines

The sequence of concessions tracks the pressure: Meta delayed once after public objections, stripped the word training and narrowed the scope, then suspended the package entirely in the week following a Norwegian injunction and a UK competition probe. The crawling right survived each revision, and Meta's statement that crawling practices are unchanged signals the underlying data access was never the part on the table.

What's next

Watch for a new effective date from Meta, the Competition and Markets Authority's next step in its investigation, and whether the Norwegian court's temporary injunction is extended or converted into a full ruling.

Source: Meta Business Help Center, Dataconomy, Nieman Lab, Relevant Audience, AI Weekly