The UK's Competition and Markets Authority opened a formal investigation on October 30, 2026 into whether Meta is abusing a dominant position through the commercial terms it sets for businesses that use Facebook, Instagram and its other services. The authority is acting under Chapter II of the Competition Act 1998. Its concern, according to the CMA, is that the terms could allow Meta to collect content from the websites of businesses and publishers that use its services and then use it to develop and provide its own products and services, including its AI features, "without those businesses getting a choice on if or how their content is used."

The revised terms were originally due to take effect on the same day the investigation opened. Meta had already stepped back twice: it moved the effective date to November 20, then announced on October 28 that the rollout would pause while it consulted industry groups. The CMA opened its case regardless. Its case page also reaches further than the press release headline. The investigation will assess whether Meta's "existing commercial terms, or revisions to those terms," amount to an abuse - wording that puts the contract businesses accept now within scope, not only the version that is on hold.

In Short

Meta wrote new rules for businesses on Facebook and Instagram that could let it take content from their websites and use it for its own products, including AI, with no way to say no. The UK's competition regulator is now investigating whether Meta is so powerful that businesses have no real choice but to accept, and whether pushing such rules on them breaks UK competition law. Meta has paused the new rules, but the investigation goes ahead anyway and can also look at the rules businesses already agree to. Nothing has been decided, and the first round of evidence gathering is scheduled to run until January 2027.

What the CMA will test

A Chapter II case has two steps, and the CMA has spelled out both. First, the authority will assess whether Meta holds a dominant position in a relevant market in the UK. Only if it finds one does the second question arise: whether the terms amount to an abuse of that position. The two documents published on October 30 phrase the first step slightly differently. The press release refers to "a relevant market"; the case page refers to "one or more relevant markets." Neither names a market. Whether the CMA looks at social media, at display advertising, or at a market built around businesses' access to audiences on Facebook and Instagram is not stated, and that choice will shape everything that follows, because dominance is assessed one market at a time.

The theory of harm is unfair trading conditions. According to the CMA, requiring news publishers and other content businesses to accept the terms "could amount to an unlawful imposition of unfair trading conditions for thousands of UK businesses that rely on its services to reach customers and audiences." The summary at the top of the press release uses sharper language. The CMA, it says, "will examine whether Meta is abusing a dominant position by imposing exploitative terms on publishers and advertisers."

That second group matters. Publishers have led the campaign against the terms since mid-October, but the commercial terms bind every business that runs ads or pages on Meta's platforms, and the CMA's own summary names advertisers alongside publishers. The case page goes broader still, describing the investigation as concerning "Meta's commercial terms for businesses using its platforms and services."

The press release does not use the words crawl, scrape or train. It describes terms that "allow Meta to access and use content from news publishers' websites to develop and provide its own products and services." That is a description of effect, not of method, and it leaves the CMA room to examine the clause however Meta words it in a future version.

Three companies are named as under investigation: Meta Platforms, Inc., Facebook UK Limited and Facebook Ireland Limited. The CMA adds that the investigation "may also concern other entities within Meta's corporate group, including relevant UK subsidiaries."

Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, framed the case in two paragraphs. "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," she said. "We've heard concerns from news publishers and other businesses and are acting swiftly to investigate whether Meta's proposed changes may breach competition law, using the most appropriate powers available to us to examine these issues in detail. We will be working to reach a swift and satisfactory resolution to this case."

There is a small gap between the two documents here, too. Cardell speaks of "Meta's proposed changes." The case page, the more formal of the two, lists the existing terms first.

Who brought the complaints

The CMA says it is using its Competition Act powers "so it can urgently investigate the concerns it has heard from stakeholders including the News Media Association and Movement for an Open Web (MOW)."

Movement for an Open Web, an advocacy group whose members include digital advertisers and publishers, said on October 22 that it had complained to both the CMA and the European Commission and had asked for interim measures, Reuters reported that day. Reuters also reported that the CMA had met Meta the day before to get more details on the new business terms. Meta, according to the same report, disagreed with the complaint and said its crawling terms applied only to its ads and business products, that the update did not change how it uses web crawlers, and that content owners could still use robots.txt to signal their preferences.

MOW has taken this route before. It joined the Independent Publishers Alliance's EU antitrust complaint over Google's AI Overviews, filed on June 30, 2025, which also asked for interim measures.

The News Media Association, the UK publishers' trade body, had been explicit about what it wanted from the regulator. On October 23, the day Meta delayed the website-crawling terms to November 20, its chief executive Theo Bamber called on the CMA to secure public commitments from Meta to drop the offending elements before they took effect and, if Meta refused, to stand ready to begin a strategic market status designation. The CMA has now chosen a different instrument.

Why competition law, and not the digital markets regime

The explanation sits in the fifth note to editors. "The CMA has limited powers to take action under the digital markets competition regime (DMCR) for businesses that have not been designated with strategic market status. To date, Meta has not been designated with this status under the DMCR," according to the CMA.

The difference is not academic. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, a firm with strategic market status can be made subject to conduct requirements without the CMA first proving an abuse. That is the route the authority has taken with Google. The CMA designated Google with strategic market status in general search and search advertising, a designation announced in October 2025, and on June 3, 2026 it used that status to force Google to give publishers controls to keep their content out of AI training and AI Overviews grounding, with the main obligations starting December 3, 2026.

For Meta, that door is not yet open. The CMA says it "continues to keep potential candidates for SMS designation under active review, with the next set of proposals due to be considered by the CMA Board in spring 2027." Even if Meta were among them, a designation would come long after November 20. The Competition Act 1998, by contrast, is available now. Under it, the CMA may open an investigation where it has "reasonable grounds to suspect an infringement of competition law," and the Chapter II prohibition covers conduct by one or more undertakings that amounts to an abuse of a dominant position in a market "and may affect trade within the United Kingdom."

The trade-off is the burden of proof. Instead of setting rules in advance for a designated firm, the CMA must establish dominance and abuse on the evidence, under a procedure that gives Meta the right to respond before any finding is made.

Interim measures, penalties and the timetable

The Act gives the CMA a faster tool if it wants one. According to its third note to editors, the Competition Act 1998 "also allows for the CMA to impose interim measures where temporary action is needed to prevent significant damage or protect the public interest." That is the power MOW asked for. The CMA's documents mention it but do not say whether the authority has considered using it in this case. Meta's pause means the revised terms are not in force, which is the outcome interim measures are usually sought to secure.

Interim measures against Meta are not hypothetical in Europe. In July 2026, France's competition authority imposed interim measures ordering Meta to negotiate with French press publishers over neighbouring-rights payments, after finding that Meta likely held a dominant position in personal social networking and had likely abused it. On October 29, the day before the CMA announcement, Meta lost its Paris appeal against those measures. The French case concerns different conduct, but it is a recent precedent of a European authority reaching a provisional view that Meta is dominant.

The CMA's documents do not mention financial penalties. Under the Competition Act 1998, an infringement of the Chapter II prohibition can be fined up to 10% of a company's worldwide turnover, the same ceiling that applies under the EU rules. PPC Land's own calculation in an earlier analysis of the fine risk carried by Google's and Meta's new terms put 10% of Meta's 2025 revenue at about $20.10bn. That is a statutory maximum, not an estimate of any outcome, and the CMA is explicit on the point: "At this stage, no assumptions should be made about whether competition law has been broken."

The case page sets out an indicative timetable with two entries:

  • October 2026 to January 2027 - rapid initial information gathering and engagement with Meta and third parties
  • October 30, 2026 - investigation opened

"The dates above are indicative and may change," according to the CMA. After the initial phase, the authority may close the investigation if it decides not to proceed. If it provisionally considers that competition law has been infringed, it may issue a statement of objections setting out its concerns, and the parties then get an opportunity to respond before a final decision. The case page lists no other route. Cardell's reference to a "swift and satisfactory resolution" leaves open how that resolution might come about.

The CMA has history with Meta under the same Act. Its earlier investigation into Meta's use of data obtained from its advertising customers closed in November 2023 when the authority accepted commitments from Meta, without an infringement finding.

The case team is led by Project Director Tamara Todorovic, with Assistant Project Director Sil van Kordelaar and Senior Responsible Officer Lourenco Ventura. The CMA says anyone with information relevant to the investigation may contact the team.

How the terms got here

The CMA's press release gives its own account of the dates. "Meta had originally planned to introduce changes to its commercial terms on 30 October but, following active engagement with the CMA, announced that implementation would be delayed until 20 November. Meta has since announced, on 28 October, a pause to the roll out of its commercial terms, pending a consultation with industry groups."

That attribution is worth noting. When Meta announced the delay on October 23, a Meta spokesperson told Reuters the extra time was to explain to partners and stakeholders what was changing and what was not. The CMA presents the same delay as following its engagement with the company. Both accounts can be true at once; they are not the same account.

The dispute became public in mid-October. On October 16, PPC Land reported that Meta's revised terms would let it crawl business websites and use the content to train AI from October 30. The new paragraph authorised Meta to use automated software, including scrapers and crawlers, to access and collect content from the domains associated with a business's products or services, and to use that content to develop and train Meta's products. Acceptance came through continued use, with no partial opt-out. Publishers read the paragraph as contractual consent to web scraping of their sites; Meta said the crawling terms applied only to its ads and business products.

The text then moved in ways that were hard to follow. The Verge reported on October 17 that the word "train" had been removed, but PPC Land found the AI training clause still in Meta's UK English preview on October 18. On October 22, two further fronts opened. Adweek reported that a new AI Features section would make advertisers solely responsible for the AI edits Meta makes to their ads, and the US News/Media Alliance gave Meta until October 26 to answer on the crawling terms.

After the November 20 delay, the pressure moved to regulators and courts. The European Publishers Council asked the European Commission to halt the terms before November 20, seeking review under the Digital Markets Act and EU competition law. On October 28, an Oslo court temporarily blocked Meta's new terms on an application from the Norwegian Media Businesses' Association, acting for ten media groups including NRK, TV 2 and Schibsted. The same day, Andy Stone, Meta's vice president of communications, said the company did not plan to make policy changes without a full consultation with industry groups and leaders, that the consultation could extend beyond November 20, and that the existing terms would remain in place until then. That is the pause the CMA refers to. Stone gave no end date and did not say the text would change. When Meta first moved the date, the date changed and the clause barely did: it still covered domains tied to a business's products, still allowed test credentials and still made no contractual commitment to respect robots.txt.

Two days later, the CMA opened its case.

The press release closes with a second matter that is not part of the investigation. "Separately, the CMA is seeking information from Meta on its new Meta One business subscription service and the concerns raised by the Federation of Small Businesses about the potential impact on small businesses of posting external links on Facebook and Instagram without paying a subscription fee," according to the CMA.

The authority is careful about the status of that work. "No decision has yet been taken on whether the CMA will take formal action in this area and these issues fall outside the scope of the CA98 investigation," it says. The release does not say which powers the CMA might use if it did act, and it does not describe the link limits themselves.

PPC Land's October 16 coverage noted, citing Nieman Lab, that Meta had begun restricting the number of external links some Facebook and Instagram accounts can post without a paid subscription, while the new terms would let it crawl linked content without charge. The two issues touch the same dependency from opposite ends. The commercial terms concern what Meta may take from a business's website. The link limits concern how easily a business can send Facebook and Instagram users to that website in the first place. The CMA has formally opened only the first.

Why this matters for marketers

For advertisers, the most consequential detail may be the case page's reference to existing terms. The contract under review is not a publisher-only agreement. It governs every business that uses Meta's commercial products, and when Meta delayed the revision on October 23, it moved its Self-Serve Ad Terms, which apply when advertisers use Ads Manager, on the same schedule. A finding that any part of Meta's business terms is an unfair trading condition would bear on the contract behind Meta's entire UK advertising business, not only on the crawling clause.

For publishers, the investigation is a regulatory backstop to a pause that Meta controls. Meta can end its consultation, revise the text and set a new date at any point. The CMA's evidence gathering runs to January 2027 whatever Meta does in the meantime, and the scope as written covers revisions to the terms, which would include a reworded clause.

The investigation also marks a change in where the dispute is being fought. Until October 30, the formal actions against the terms were a court application in Norway and complaints lodged with the European Commission, the CMA and, according to Press Gazette, competition authorities in Denmark and Sweden. The UK now has an open competition case with named targets, a case team and a published timetable. Whether it ends in a closure, commitments or a statement of objections, the first phase is set to finish before the CMA Board considers its next round of strategic market status proposals in spring 2027.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation, Reuters reported on October 30.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The UK Competition and Markets Authority and its chief executive Sarah Cardell; Meta Platforms, Inc., Facebook UK Limited and Facebook Ireland Limited; the News Media Association and Movement for an Open Web, whose concerns prompted the case; the Federation of Small Businesses on Meta One; and the publishers, advertisers and other UK businesses bound by Meta's commercial terms.

What: A formal investigation under Chapter II of the Competition Act 1998 into whether Meta holds a dominant position in one or more UK markets and, if so, whether its existing commercial terms or revisions to them amount to an abuse by imposing unfair trading conditions, in particular terms that could let Meta collect and use content from businesses' websites for its own products, including AI features. Separately, the CMA is seeking information on Meta One and on link posting without a subscription, outside the scope of the investigation.

When: Published and opened on October 30, 2026, the day the revised terms were originally due to take effect. Meta had moved the date to November 20 and paused the rollout on October 28. Initial information gathering is scheduled from October 2026 to January 2027; the next strategic market status proposals are due before the CMA Board in spring 2027.

Where: The United Kingdom, with Meta's terms also challenged in Norway, France and before the European Commission.

Why: The CMA has heard concerns that businesses relying on Meta to reach customers and audiences cannot refuse terms that hand Meta use of their content. Because Meta has no strategic market status designation, the CMA says its powers under the digital markets regime are limited, so it is using the Competition Act 1998, which also allows interim measures and, on an infringement finding, penalties of up to 10% of worldwide turnover