Meta has indefinitely paused an update to its commercial terms that would have compelled Meta Business account holders—including news publishers—to permit extensive AI training on external websites linked from their Facebook pages. The proposed terms, initially slated for October 30 then delayed to November 20, contained vague language that legal experts warned could override robots.txt scraping preferences and enable exhaustive crawling of off-platform content, potentially allowing Meta to avoid millions in licensing fees. Crucially, the update offered no opt-out mechanism; retaining a business page required granting Meta permission to crawl all linked sites and even mandated that publishers create test credentials allowing Meta’s bots to bypass paywalls reliably. The move triggered global legal and regulatory pushback: courts in Brazil and Norway issued preliminary injunctions blocking the terms following lawsuits, while the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority opened a formal investigation into whether Meta exploited its dominant position to seize valuable AI training data. Amid mounting scrutiny, a Meta spokesperson told Reuters the company is pausing changes to continue stakeholder engagement, leaving existing terms in effect.