Meta has suspended revised commercial terms that could have allowed it to scrape content from news publishers' websites, after the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority opened a formal investigation on Oct. 30 into whether the terms breach competition law.

Meta had planned to introduce the changes on Oct. 30. After engaging with the CMA, the company pushed implementation back to Nov. 20. On Oct. 28, Meta announced a full pause to the rollout pending consultation with industry groups, according to the regulator.

What do the revised terms allow?

The CMA said the terms could permit Meta to use content from businesses' websites to develop its own products and services, including AI features, without those businesses having any choice over whether or how their content is used. The agency said it is concerned that forcing news publishers to accept the terms might constitute illegally imposing unfair trading conditions.

The terms grant Meta permission to deploy bots, web scrapers and other automated tools (software that extracts data from web pages) to crawl the domains and pages linked to a business account, according to The Associated Press. They would have covered every business client and offered no compensation for extracted content.

What is the CMA investigating?

The investigation will assess whether Meta holds a dominant position in a relevant U.K. market and, if so, whether the terms abuse that position. The CMA stressed that it has made no decision on whether Meta broke the law. It will gather evidence from Meta and affected third parties.

"Where a company holds a dominant position, it must not use that position to impose unfair terms," CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell said in a statement.

The regulator said it acted on concerns from stakeholders, including the News Media Association and the Movement for an Open Web.

How has Meta responded?

Meta spokesman Andy Stone wrote on X on Oct. 16 that the update was intended to let Meta pull accurate product information from third-party sites for ads and recommendations, and was "not about scraping news sites," according to The Associated Press. Stone also posted that Meta does not intend to alter its policies until it has fully consulted industry groups, and that its current terms remain unchanged for now.

What happened in Norway and Brussels?

A Norwegian court ordered a temporary halt to the terms on Oct. 28, responding to a petition from 180 Norwegian media companies, according to The Associated Press. The injunction remains in force until the legality of the terms has been thoroughly evaluated.

The Norwegian Media Businesses' Association said the delay and Meta's assurances did not go far enough, according to the AP.

The Movement for an Open Web called the pause and the CMA investigation a "significant win." "Unless the CMA and other regulators make it abundantly and quickly clear that this sort of anti-competitive landgrab is not acceptable, then we will continue to see the tech giants throwing their weight around in this way," said Tim Cowen of the group.

The European Commission held talks with Meta about the proposed terms and welcomed the delay, according to the AP. Commission spokesperson Sara Simonini said the Commission remains determined to hold Meta's conduct to the standards of E.U. law.

What is at stake for publishers?

The case tests whether platform operators can condition access to business tools on consent to large-scale content extraction. For news publishers, the terms raised the prospect of their journalism feeding Meta's AI products without payment or an opt-out. Regulators on two continents have now signaled that such conditions face legal scrutiny under competition law.