Oslo court temporarily blocks Meta's new Commercial Terms pending a ruling on their legality

What happened

On 28 October 2026, the Oslo District Court prohibited Meta from implementing changes to its Commercial Terms until their legality has been finally determined, according to the Norwegian Media Businesses' Association (MBL), which brought the case on behalf of ten Norwegian media companies. MBL had filed for a temporary injunction at the court on 27 October 2026, one day earlier.

The ten applicants named by MBL are NRK, TV 2, Schibsted, Amedia, Polaris, Aller, DN, Mentor Medier, NTB and Hordaland Folkeblad, spanning the public broadcaster, the national news agency, the business daily DN and the main newspaper groups.

The dispute over the terms

The publishers say the revised Commercial Terms for business accounts on Facebook and Instagram would let Meta collect articles, photographs and videos from their websites, including material behind paywalls, with no way to refuse short of deleting their accounts, and that the content could be used to develop AI products competing with them. The original Section 1 crawling clause, reported on 16 October 2026, authorised automated collection from websites associated with a business's use of Meta's products and listed training among the uses. Meta later revised the text to remove the word "train" and, on 23 October, moved the effective date from 30 October to 20 November 2026.

Meta's position on the same day

Earlier on 28 October, Meta's vice president of communications Andy Stone said the company would not change its policies "without a full consultation with industry groups and leaders," that the consultation could extend beyond 20 November, and that the existing terms would remain in place until then. No response from Meta to the court order itself was reported in the source.

Limits

This is interim relief, not a judgment on whether the terms are lawful. The order was issued on an emergency basis without hearing Meta, according to AFP reporting cited in the source. MBL has not published the court's written decision, so the reasoning attributed to the court by MBL's chair — that Meta holds a dominant position in the relevant market and that the terms are unreasonable — is the winning side's summary and has not been checked against the decision text. The scope of the prohibition (the ten applicants only, Norwegian businesses generally, or wider) is not stated in the published material. This item records the court's order of 28 October; the filing and injunction request of 27 October were covered in a separate, already published item.