The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened a formal investigation into Meta Platforms over commercial terms that could allow the company to collect content from business and publisher websites and use the material to develop its products, including artificial intelligence features.
Announced on 30 October, the investigation will examine whether Meta holds a dominant position in relevant UK markets and whether its proposed contractual conditions amount to an abuse of that position. The regulator is particularly concerned that businesses may have little meaningful choice over how Meta accesses and uses content from their websites if they want to continue using its commercial services.
The CMA is investigating Meta Platforms Inc., Facebook UK Limited and Facebook Ireland Limited under Chapter II of the Competition Act 1998. It has not concluded that the companies have breached competition law.
The dispute centres on changes to Meta’s Commercial Terms of Use, which were due to take effect on 30 October. The proposed provisions would have allowed Meta and companies acting on its behalf to use automated technologies, including bots, crawlers and web scrapers, to access, collect, retrieve, index, cache and analyse content from websites associated with businesses using its services.
The original wording also included permission to use collected material to provide, develop, improve, research, train and maintain Meta’s products and services. This raised concerns among publishers because the provisions were not limited to content they had specifically submitted for advertising or shared through Facebook and Instagram.
Meta revised the wording on 16 October, removing explicit references to training and narrowing the stated purposes to advertising and business products, alongside product integrity and security. However, legal experts and publishing organisations questioned whether the remaining permissions were still broad enough to cover the development of AI features.
One concern was that a business could face the prospect of allowing Meta to crawl a wider range of its website content simply because it maintained a commercial presence on the company’s platforms. The proposed terms also raised questions about whether publishers could effectively restrict automated access through robots.txt instructions, which websites use to communicate crawling preferences to automated systems.
The News Media Association (NMA) and Movement for an Open Web (MOW) brought the concerns to the regulator’s attention. The NMA argued that publishers could be placed in a difficult position because they rely on Facebook to reach audiences. On 23 October, MOW filed formal competition complaints with the CMA and European Commission, arguing that businesses should not have to accept broad website-crawling permissions as a condition of using Meta’s services.
Meta has defended the proposed changes, arguing that they were intended to support its advertising and business products, including the retrieval of accurate information about products sold through external websites. The company has also maintained that publishers can use technical measures to control crawler access.
On 28 October, Meta paused the proposed changes while it consulted publishers and other industry stakeholders. The company indicated that the consultation could continue beyond 20 November, in which case implementation would be delayed further. Its existing commercial terms remain in effect during the process.
Responding to the CMA’s announcement, a Meta spokesperson said: “There are no grounds for a competition investigation.” The company reiterated its commitment to consulting publishers and other stakeholders before making changes to its terms and said it welcomed the opportunity to explain its position to the regulator.
The CMA’s investigation will assess whether Meta holds a dominant position in the relevant markets and, if so, whether the proposed terms constitute unfair trading conditions. Section 18 of the Competition Act 1998 prohibits the abuse of a dominant position, including the imposition of unfair trading conditions.
The regulator has not determined which market definition will apply or established that Meta is dominant for the purposes of this investigation. Its initial work will involve gathering information from Meta and affected third parties, with an initial evidence-gathering period running from October 2026 to January 2027.
The CMA is also considering concerns about Meta’s new business subscription service, Meta One, following complaints from the Federation of Small Businesses over restrictions on posting external links without paying a subscription fee. The regulator confirmed that this matter is separate from the formal investigation into Meta’s commercial terms and has not yet decided whether to take further action.
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