Overview
- The Competition and Markets Authority has launched a formal investigation under the Competition Act 1998 to gather evidence on Meta’s proposed commercial terms and to assess whether Meta holds a dominant position in relevant UK markets.
- Regulators say the contested clauses could let Meta automatically access and reuse content from publishers’ and businesses’ websites to develop its own products, including advertising tools and AI features, without those sites having an effective choice over use.
- Meta has paused and delayed the planned rollout of the new terms while it consults industry groups and has told the CMA it is willing to explain its approach.
- The CMA can seek interim measures if it finds urgent harm and is separately seeking information on Meta One and concerns about charging to post external links raised by small businesses, though those issues are outside the current CA98 evidence-gathering scope.
- Publishers and small firms warn the terms could force them to trade control of their content for access to Meta’s distribution and ad channels, and the probe adds to cross-border legal and regulatory pressure on platform practices despite Meta not being designated under the UK digital markets strategic market status regime.