TL;DR

Movement for an Open Web, a campaign group whose members include publishers and digital advertisers, has filed complaints with the UK Competition and Markets Authority and the European Commission over Meta’s new commercial terms, Reuters reported on 22 October. It wants interim measures to stop the terms taking effect on 30 October, arguing they would let Meta reuse members’ content in its AI products without limit. The CMA says it is in “urgent discussions” with Meta.

The complaint

Co-founder Tim Cowen called the terms “clearly anti-competitive”, arguing that firms which depend on Meta could not refuse and would lose control of their digital content without any opt-out. In his words, the change hands Meta “a free hand to scrape content from nearly every website in the world” for AI products that could then compete with those same businesses.

Meta disputes this. A spokesperson said the consolidated crawling terms apply only to its ads and business products, that this has been made explicit in the wording, and that “it does not change how Meta uses web crawlers”. Site owners can still use robots.txt to set their preferences, the company added.

Where the regulators stand

The CMA met Meta on Wednesday 21 October to get more detail on the terms. “We recognise the concerns that have been raised by businesses in the UK,” a spokesperson said, adding that the authority is considering its next steps. The European Commission said it would assess the complaint under its usual procedure.

To win interim measures, complainants must show they face serious and irreparable harm from the alleged conduct. Reuters notes the complaint follows similar objections in the past fortnight from the European Publishers Council, Germany’s BDZV and the press association MVFP.

Looking forward

When we covered the dispute on 20 October, a challenge to the CMA was still being prepared. It has now been filed, a little over a week before the terms are due to apply. In our view, the CMA’s choice of words matters: “urgent discussions” suggests it may seek concessions from Meta rather than impose interim measures, which carry a high legal bar. For UK publishers, the practical question is whether Meta’s assurance about robots.txt is written into the terms clearly enough to hold before 30 October.