Britain Opens Meta Probe Over Terms That Could Let It Mine Publisher Sites for AI

Meta wrote rules that could let it pull content off publishers' own websites and feed it into its AI. Britain's competition regulator has now opened a formal investigation into them.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced the case on Friday, October 30, under Chapter II of the Competition Act 1998. In its press release, the CMA said Meta's commercial terms could let it collect content from the websites of businesses and publishers that use its services, then use it to develop its own products, "including its AI features", "without those businesses getting a choice on if or how their content is used."

That is a suspicion, not a verdict. The CMA says plainly that "no decision has yet been made on whether Meta has broken the law" and that no one should assume competition law has been broken. It must first decide whether Meta holds a dominant position in a relevant UK market. Only then does it ask whether the terms are an abuse.

"Digital platforms play an important role in helping UK businesses reach millions of customers around the world. But where a company holds a dominant position, it must not use that position to impose unfair terms." Sarah Cardell, CMA chief executive

Meta is not conceding anything. A spokesperson told Reuters, as carried by CNA, that there were "no grounds" for an investigation. "We've already committed not to change our terms without consulting publishers and other stakeholders," the spokesperson said.

The timing is the interesting part. According to the CMA, Meta first planned to switch the terms on October 30, then pushed the date to November 20 after what the regulator calls active engagement with it. On October 28 Meta went further and paused the rollout pending a consultation with industry groups. The CMA opened its case two days later anyway. A pause Meta controls alone was evidently not enough.

The case page also reaches past the paused rewrite. The CMA says it will look at whether Meta's "existing commercial terms, or revisions to those terms" amount to an abuse. So the contract businesses have already accepted is in scope, along with whatever Meta writes next.

A lever the CMA does not have yet

Why use this route? The CMA says in its notes to editors that it has limited powers under the newer digital markets regime for firms without strategic market status, and Meta has not been given that label. The next designation proposals are not due before the CMA Board until spring 2027. The older Competition Act is available today, and it lets the CMA consider interim measures where temporary action is needed to prevent significant damage.

The CMA names the News Media Association and Movement for an Open Web among the stakeholders whose concerns it heard. Trade outlet PPC Land reports that an Oslo court temporarily blocked the terms on October 28 after ten Norwegian media groups applied, a detail I could not confirm independently. Meta has said its crawling terms apply only to its ads and business products, and that content owners can still use robots.txt, according to PPC Land's account of earlier Reuters reporting.

The fight over AI and other people's content keeps shifting from copyright toward competition and contract law. When AI firms backed a shared training opt-out in a standard we covered earlier, the open question was whether opting out would ever be real. The Meta case asks a sharper version. If you rely on a platform to reach readers, how free are you to say no?

Initial evidence gathering is indicatively scheduled from October 2026 to January 2027, and the CMA says the dates may change. It could then close the case, or issue a statement of objections if it provisionally finds an infringement. PPC Land notes that a Chapter II breach can carry fines of up to 10 percent of worldwide turnover. That is a ceiling, not a forecast.

For now, Meta has a paused rulebook and a regulator reading it closely.