Meta has indefinitely paused an update to its commercial terms that would have required Meta Business account holders to allow broad AI training on external websites linked from Facebook.
The pause follows weeks of backlash. "We're pausing the changes as we continue to engage with stakeholders and take our time to get this right. In the meantime, our existing terms remain in effect," a Meta spokesperson told Reuters. The company gave no new timeline and did not say whether the wording will change.
The objections began soon after Meta notified business account holders of the update. Legal experts told Nieman Lab that the language was vague enough to let Meta ignore the scraping preferences sites set in robots.txt files. That is a plain-text file where a website tells automated crawlers which pages to stay away from. They warned Meta could then crawl large amounts of content from outside Facebook for AI training.
Nieman Lab also raised a money concern. Virtually every news publisher has a Facebook page, and the outlet argued that Meta could potentially avoid millions of dollars in licensing fees if the update went ahead as planned. That is the outlet's reading of the stakes, not something Meta has said.
The dispute turns on a weak point in how the web works. Robots.txt is a convention, not a law, so crawlers honor it by choice. Terms of service can override a convention. Contract language that says a business agrees to AI training would sidestep it for anyone who signed.
A pause is not a cancellation. Meta said it is still engaging with stakeholders, which suggests a revised version could return. The open question is whether it will state plainly what it may crawl, and whether publishers will see that as a substitute for a licensing deal.