BRUSSELS — Digital advertisers and publishers asked regulators in the European Union and Britain on Thursday to suspend Meta Platforms’ new commercial terms, saying the terms would let Meta use their content for its AI services without limit, according to Reuters.
The Movement for an Open Web said it has complained to the European Commission and Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority and asked for interim measures. The terms are due to take effect Oct. 30.
Tim Cowen, a co-founder of the group, called the terms “clearly anti-competitive.” Many businesses, he said, have little choice but to use Meta’s services, and the conditions would force them to sign away rights to their digital content with no way to opt out.
“The terms would give Meta a free hand to scrape content from nearly every website in the world, potentially using that data to power AI-powered services that would then compete with those businesses”
— Tim Cowen, co-founder of the Movement for an Open Web
Meta disagreed. A spokesperson said the crawling terms the company consolidated applied only to its ads and business products, and that Meta has clarified that point in the terms themselves. “It does not change how Meta uses web crawlers,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that content owners can still use robots.txt to signal their preferences. “This is not about scraping news sites, and these updates don’t give us new rights that supersede those preferences.”
The CMA said it met Meta on Wednesday to get more details. “This is an important issue and we recognise the concerns that have been raised by businesses in the UK. We are engaged in urgent discussions with Meta as we consider our next steps,” a CMA spokesperson said.
The European Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters. Groups seeking interim measures have to show they would suffer serious and irreparable damage from the alleged practices.
The complaint follows similar criticism from the European Publishers Council last week and from German publisher groups earlier this week.
Have something to promote?
Bring your business, services or event to our readers.
