Publishers, advertisers call EU, UK antitrust regulators to suspend Meta's new commercial terms

On October 22, 2026, the Movement for an Open Web, an advocacy group of digital advertisers and publishers, said it had complained to the European Commission and the UK's Competition and Markets Authority and requested interim measures against Meta's new commercial terms, due to take effect October 30. The group alleges the terms give Meta an unlimited right to use publisher content for its AI services, with co-founder Tim Cowen calling them anti-competitive and saying businesses would be forced to sign away rights to their digital content with no opt-out. A Meta spokesperson disagreed, saying the consolidated crawling terms apply only to ads and business products, do not supersede robots.txt preferences, and 'don't give us new rights.' The CMA said it met with Meta on October 21 and is in 'urgent discussions' on next steps, while the European Commission did not immediately respond. The move follows similar complaints by the European Publishers Council last week and German publisher groups BDZV and MVFP earlier this week.