Norwegian court temporarily bans Meta from changing Facebook and Instagram terms — RMF24

A court in Norway has temporarily barred Meta from introducing new terms of use for business accounts on Facebook and Instagram. The restriction will remain in force until a final decision is made on the legality of the proposed changes, RMF24 reports.

Lawsuit by Norwegian publishers

Norway’s public broadcaster NRK, TV channel TV 2, NTB news agency, and major publishing groups Schibsted, Amedia and Polaris jointly filed a case against the US company. The Norwegian newspaper VG reported the court’s decision.

The dispute concerns new rules that Meta planned to introduce on November 20. According to the publishers, these terms would have enabled the corporation to automatically obtain articles, photographs and video recordings from their websites. The rules were also to apply to materials available only to subscribers.

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Risk of losing control over content

Media companies said they would not have been able to reject the new terms without deleting their accounts from the platforms and losing contact with their audiences. They also feared that Meta would use their materials to develop artificial intelligence tools that would later compete with publishers’ services.

The court concluded that the unilateral introduction of such terms puts newsrooms in a forced position and could result in them losing control over their own content. Meta must also pay NOK 1.2 million in legal costs.

NRK director Olav A. Nyhus called the ruling a signal to technology companies, which should not use market power to appropriate others’ content through unilateral changes to platform rules. Meta representatives told NRK that the company does not plan to make changes without broad consultations with the industry. The court’s decision is temporary: if appealed, the case will be considered in civil proceedings.