Publishers and advertisers seek EU and UK suspension of Meta’s new commercial terms
A trade group says the terms could give Meta sweeping rights over online content. Meta disputes that reading, while EU and UK regulators consider the complaint.
Meta’s commercial terms due to take effect on October 30 face a request for emergency suspension from publishers and digital advertisers. The Movement for an Open Web asked European Union and UK competition regulators on October 22 to intervene, according to Reuters, arguing that the terms could give Meta sweeping rights to use their online content for artificial intelligence services.
The group, whose members include businesses in both sectors, requested interim measures from the European Commission and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority. Such measures would require it to show serious and irreparable harm from the alleged anticompetitive conduct, Reuters reported. Neither regulator has announced a suspension.
Why publishers object to Meta’s terms
Tim Cowen, a co-founder of the Movement for an Open Web, said many businesses effectively have to use Meta’s services and would have no way to opt out of giving up rights to their digital content. He alleged that the terms could allow Meta to collect material from nearly every website and use it in AI services that compete with those businesses. Those are the group’s claims about the terms, rather than an established account of what rights Meta would gain.
Meta rejected the complaint. A company spokesperson said the consolidated crawling provisions apply only to its advertising and business products and clarify its existing position. They do not change how Meta’s web crawlers operate or override content owners’ preferences expressed through robots.txt, the spokesperson said. Meta has separately described web crawling as automated collection of publicly accessible information, distinguishing it from unauthorized scraping of its own products.
What EU and UK regulators have said
The CMA said it met Meta on October 21 to seek more detail about the business terms. It said it was in urgent discussions with the company and was considering its next steps. The European Commission said it had received a complaint and would assess it under its usual procedure, while working to ensure Meta’s practices comply with EU law.
The request adds to objections raised by other publisher groups. Reuters reported that the European Publishers Council complained the previous week, while Germany’s Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers Association and Association of the Free Press raised similar concerns earlier this week. The new terms remain scheduled to take effect on October 30 as regulators consider the request.
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Sources and context
- Publishers, advertisers call EU, UK antitrust regulators to suspend Meta's new commercial termsChannel News Asia (Reuters)
- How We Combat ScrapingMeta
AI-assisted article checked against the listed sources. NewsJaws did not conduct interviews or attend the reported events.
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