Publishers ask EU and UK regulators to stop Meta’s new terms before October 30

Movement for an Open Web, a group of digital advertisers and publishers, has asked the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to suspend Meta’s new terms, Reuters reported on October 22. The terms take effect on October 30.

The group wants interim measures, which would freeze the terms while regulators look into them. To get them, it has to show serious harm that could not be undone later. Its complaint says the terms give Meta an unlimited right to use members’ content in its AI services.

Meta’s October 30 terms cover every Facebook Page owner’s website

Under the new terms, any business with a Facebook Page or Instagram account lets Meta crawl its website. Meta told Reuters the crawling terms apply only to its ads and business products, and that it has made this clearer in the text. It also said the update does not change how its crawlers work. Site owners can still use robots.txt, the file that tells bots what they may visit.

“This is not about scraping news sites,” Meta said in its statement. Tim Cowen, co-founder of Movement for an Open Web, called the terms “clearly anti-competitive”.

European Publishers Council and two German groups complained first

This is not the first complaint. According to Reuters, the European Publishers Council filed a similar one the week before. Germany’s digital and newspaper publishers’ association BDZV and the magazine publishers’ association MVFP followed earlier this week.

The CMA met Meta on Wednesday, October 21. A spokesperson said the regulator is in “urgent discussions” with the company. The Commission said it had received the complaint and would assess it under its usual procedure.

US publishers fight AI bots in Congress

Publishers have pushed back on AI crawlers before. In the US they took the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act to Congress, and the SPUR coalition released its own AI tracking standard.

Will the Commission or the CMA act before October 30? If neither does, the terms will apply from that day to every business with a Facebook Page or Instagram account.