The President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) has opened an investigation following changes made to Facebook by the Meta group, the Office informed in a statement. 

Polish publishers’ content on the platform is displayed as a single link and not, as before, as a graphic preview of the material. 

‘The change may have resulted in lower interest in journalistic content and reduced the number of article views,’ – UOKiK explained.

In response to a question from the Polish Press Agency (PAP), the Meta group said that the way posts with links to articles are displayed on Facebook for users in Poland has been changed temporarily, in response to Poland’s implementation of Article 15 of the EU Copyright Directive. 

„Media outlets regard Facebook as a crucial platform for content distribution,” said UOKIK Director Tomasz Chrosny.

According to Meta, the Polish implementation goes beyond the scope of this directive. Meta indicated that it is awaiting legal clarification from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

The statement reminds that such restrictive practices are punishable by a financial penalty of up to 10 per cent of the company’s turnover.

Editor-in-chief of Onet and head of the Polish Media Council Bartosz Węglarczyk said in September that “Facebook has gone to war with the Polish media. (…) We are being punished for changes in copyright law that big tech does not like.”

On 20 September this year, an amendment to the Copyright and Related Rights Act came into force. According to the new law journalists and publishers have the right to claim remuneration for content used by big-tech companies. As a result of this act, Facebook decided to change the rules for the publication of texts limiting itself to headlines and links only, without publishing images and text.

Source: PAP

Photo:  Dado Ruvic

Tomasz Modrzejewski