CMA says it is "very alive" to Meta's plan to scrape publisher content

The Competition and Markets Authority is taking Meta's plan to give itself sweeping rights to scrape content from any publisher with a business account on Facebook or Instagram "very seriously", its leadership told Parliament this week. The new terms are due to come into force on Friday 30 October, and would let Meta crawl and reuse publisher content even where it was never posted to a Meta platform. CMA executive director of digital markets Will Hayter has written to Meta and has a meeting set for today, but the watchdog cannot formally block the change because Meta has not yet been designated with strategic market status under the Digital Markets Act. "We are very alive to the potential impact that this could have for UK businesses, and it is something that we will take very seriously," CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell told the Communications and Digital Committee. Meta has removed the word "train" from the terms, but US media lawyer Matt Topic told Nieman Lab the revision still allows Meta to use scraped content to develop "any business product", adding "I think 'develop' is broad enough to include 'train'". Digital Content Next chief executive Jason Kint called the correction a "farce", while a Meta spokesperson insisted the terms "only apply to our ads and business products".

The crux

Meta is unilaterally rewriting the terms under which it can take and reuse publisher content, and the UK's competition authority is watching closely but cannot yet act, leaving publishers a one-week window to decide whether to block, licence or contest the change.

Sell-side read

If you hold a business account on Meta platforms, the 30 October effective date is the trigger for a robots.txt and legal review now, because the CMA's hands are tied until Meta gets strategic market status, which is not on the table this week.

Watch

The outcome of Hayter's meeting with Meta and whether the CMA moves to use its competition enforcement powers, which Cardell said is "the option" without a live designation.