Meta needs to draw a clear line between providing a service and appropriating rights from their business users

Promoting journalism must not mean surrendering control over it.

The European Publishers Council has written again to the European Commission about Meta’s proposed Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms, now due to take effect on 20 November 2026, but little has changed in substance. 

Publishers should not have to choose between using gatekeeping platforms to reach readers and accepting unrelated exploitation of their journalism.

These concerns extend across sectors. Businesses use Meta’s platforms to distribute content, reach customers and promote their products and services. Access to those functions must not become a means of obtaining permissions beyond what is necessary to provide the service requested.

For publishers, the stakes include control over their journalism and the revenues that fund professional reporting. Any additional uses must require separate, express authorisation, with a meaningful right to refuse without penalty.

Revised wording leaves important questions unanswered

Meta has removed the express reference to “train” from its website-scraping provision and attached its stated purposes around advertising and business products, alongside the integrity and security of Meta’s products.

However, removing that one word does not establish an express exclusion of AI training, fine-tuning, grounding, or the generation and display of answers and summaries.

On the contrary - the authorisation remains extensive. It covers automated access,

indexing, caching, analysis, collection and retrieval of website content, the creation of test credentials and the periodic collection of updates. Meta needs to explain precisely what it intends to collect, why that collection is necessary and how the material may subsequently be used.

Maintaining a business Page or advertising a subscription should not confer general rights over a publisher’s website and archive. Information promoting a publication must be distinguished from the journalism within it.

Express permission and a meaningful right to refuse

Uses beyond those necessary to provide the specific service requested should require separate, express authorisation from the relevant rightsholder.

The proposed terms provide no express contractual mechanism allowing publishers to refuse the additional permissions while continuing to use Meta’s business services. Publishers must remain free to negotiate the scope, value and price of additional uses, or refuse them, without losing access to those services or suffering penalties.

Meta’s references to robots.txt do not resolve this concern. Technical controls over crawler access cannot substitute for clear, enforceable contractual limits on collection and subsequent reuse. Publishers also need to know which automated agent is acting, on whose behalf and for what purpose.

The permissions must be assessed alongside existing warranty, indemnity and liability provisions that place substantial responsibilities on businesses while sharply limiting Meta’s own contractual liability.

Commission action sought before implementation

We are asking the Commission to scrutinise the proposed conditions under the Digital Markets Act and EU competition law, including whether access to designated services is being made conditional on unfair terms.

If interim measures cannot be adopted before 20 November, we’ve asked the EC to seek an immediate undertaking from Meta to postpone implementation of the contested provisions until the Commission has completed its assessment and determined what action is required.

Once content has been collected and incorporated into datasets, models or competing services, restoring control may be extremely difficult. The postponement provides an opportunity to address these concerns before implementation.

Copyright is about control as well as remuneration. Publishers and other businesses must remain free to decide how their content is used.