Balanced Economy Project together with a coalition of civil society organisations led by Article 19 have written to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) urging it to take decisive action on Meta’s new commercial terms.
Meta’s new business terms self-authorise the company to crawl and reuse content from the websites of businesses using its services, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – raising major concerns among news publishers, digital businesses and civil society.
The terms were originally meant to come into force on 28 October, but Meta paused the roll out, pending consultation with industry leaders. Subsequently, on 30 October, the CMA decided to open an investigation into Meta’s new terms, to assess if they amount to the imposition of unfair trading conditions.
The signatories welcome the CMA investigation – but timely and effective solutions are still needed to prevent Meta from taking action that would harm its users, and society at large. The pause of the new terms roll-out is revocable at any time and still exposes businesses to unfair terms that could be activated without notice.
You can read the full letter here