The UK’s competition watchdog has opened an investigation into whether Meta’s proposed new AI scraping terms could “unfairly harm” news publishers.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it will decide whether Meta is abusing a dominant position by imposing “exploitative terms” on publishers and advertisers, thus breaching competition law.
Meta’s terms change, which it has now delayed and pledged not to impose until a full consultation with publishers has been carried out, appear to give it sweeping rights to access publisher content – whether it has been published on its platforms or not.
It would mean Meta can scrape, and use for AI training and other product development, content from any publisher website – not just what has been published on Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp – if they have a business account with Meta.
The CMA said forcing publishers and other businesses to accept such terms if they want to use its platforms “could amount to an unlawful imposition of unfair trading conditions for thousands of UK businesses that rely on its services to reach customers and audiences”.
Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said: “We’ve heard concerns from news publishers and other businesses and are acting swiftly to investigate whether Meta’s proposed changes may breach competition law, using the most appropriate powers available to us to examine these issues in detail. We will be working to reach a swift and satisfactory resolution to this case.”
The investigation under the Competition Act 1998 will assess whether Meta has a dominant position in a relevant market in the UK and, if so, whether these terms and conditions amount to an abuse of that position.
News Media Association chief executive Theo Bamber welcomed the investigation, saying: “Meta has given publishers an invidious choice of giving away their content for free to power its AI products or leaving a platform which millions of Britons use to get their news.
“We applaud the Competition and Markets Authority for taking action to protect British businesses and UK citizens’ access to high-quality news, and Ministers must back them all the way. There is still a lot more work to do, but now is the time start bringing the dominance of Big Tech to an end.
“It’s clear that Meta would not have taken such a brazen step had it already been subject to the CMA’s digital markets regime, and the CMA could take much swifter action if it were. Meta must now be the primary candidate for the next Strategic Market Status investigation, ending its control over publishers’ ability to reach audiences.”
Norwegian media companies have already won a court victory prohibiting Meta from introducing the terms in their country until a court has reviewed whether they are legal.
Some small publishers in countries including Norway and the US have already decided to leave Meta in opposition to the planned changes.
Meta deleted a specific reference to AI training in the new terms in response to initial backlash but publishers say the revised wording, which includes allowing the used of scraped content to “develop, improve, research and maintain advertising and business products”, still covers Meta’s generative AI services.
Meta has said it will respect robots.txt blocks on AI scraping but this is not written into the terms.
The CMA said it is separately looking at a trial requiring Facebook pages to pay a Meta One subscription fee to post external links.
This is not yet a full investigation but the CMA said it has had concerns raised by the Federation of Small Businesses about the impact of this new policy.
News publishers are currently excluded and do not have to pay to post links.
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