CMA Opens Investigation into Meta's Publisher and Advertiser Terms

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has launched a formal investigation into whether Meta's proposed new commercial terms for publishers and advertisers amount to an abuse of a dominant position, the regulator announced on Friday.

The investigation, opened under the Competition Act 1998, will assess whether Meta holds a dominant position in a relevant UK market and, if so, whether the terms constitute an abuse of that position [1]. CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said the authority had "heard concerns from news publishers and other businesses and are acting swiftly to investigate whether Meta's proposed changes may breach competition law" [1].

What the terms would allow

Meta's revised Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms, originally set to take effect on October 30 before being delayed to November 20, would authorise the company to crawl any website associated with a business that uses Meta's products — not only content posted on Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp [1]. The authorisation covers "automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers and user agents)" and the creation of test credentials to bypass registration walls [3].

An earlier version of the terms explicitly mentioned using scraped content "to provide, develop, improve, research, train" Meta products [3]. Meta removed that sentence after initial backlash, but the revised wording still permits use of crawled content to "provide, develop, improve, research and maintain advertising and business products" [1][3]. Publishers and the News/Media Alliance argue this phrasing is undefined and still covers generative AI services [1][3].

Publisher objections

The core objection is that a single business relationship — maintaining a Facebook page or buying ads — becomes the legal basis for access to a publisher's entire domain and archive [3]. Angela Mills Wade, executive director of the European Publishers Council, told Reuters that maintaining a business page or advertising a subscription should not confer general rights over a publisher's website and archive, and that uses beyond those necessary to provide the specific service requested should require separate, express authorisation from the relevant rightsholder [3].

Theo Bamber, chief executive of the News Media Association, described the delay as "a pause not a solution" and called on the CMA to secure public commitments from Meta to abandon the contested elements or begin a Strategic Market Status investigation [3]. The CMA designated Google with Strategic Market Status in general search and search advertising in September 2025; Meta holds no such designation [3].

International precedent

Norwegian media companies have already won a court ruling prohibiting Meta from introducing the terms in Norway until a court reviews their legality [1]. Some small publishers in Norway and the US have left Meta's platforms in opposition to the planned changes [1].

The European Commission welcomed Meta's three-week delay but separately sent information requests to companies that have not published summaries of data used to train general-purpose AI models, an obligation under the EU AI Act [3]. Reuters did not report whether Meta was among the recipients [3].

Meta's response

Meta said there were "no grounds" for an investigation [2]. A Meta spokesperson told Reuters the company had "already committed not to change our terms without consulting publishers and other stakeholders" and welcomed "the opportunity to explain our approach to the CMA" [2]. The company framed the delay to November 20 as time to "explain to our partners and stakeholders what's changing and what's not," not to rewrite the terms [3].

Discrepancy between announcement and published terms

As of the evening of October 23, the UK English preview page at facebook.com/legal/commercial_terms_preview still displayed "Effective date: 30 October 2026" with no reference to November 20 [3]. A reader accessing the page from France reported the same discrepancy [3]. Bamber stated the CMA had confirmed the pause was in place and global, but the CMA has not publicly confirmed this [3]. Which document governs on October 30 if the pages are not updated remains unanswered by Meta [3].

What happens next

The investigation proceeds while the terms are scheduled to take effect on November 20 unless further delayed or changed. The News/Media Alliance had set an October 26 deadline for a public response from Meta [3]. Product browsing in existing Meta ads was due to switch on October 28 [3].