Meta pauses Facebook terms that forced AI training on linked sites

Meta has indefinitely paused a planned update to its commercial terms that would have required Meta Business account users to allow broad AI training on external websites linked from Facebook pages. A spokesperson told Reuters existing terms stay in effect while Meta engages stakeholders. The change had already been delayed from 30 Oct to 20 Nov after backlash; courts in Brazil and Norway issued preliminary injunctions, the UK CMA opened an investigation, and US senators asked Meta to withdraw. Critics said the language could ignore robots.txt and even required test credentials to bypass paywalls. Meta says its crawling practices are unchanged and robots.txt still applies.