Brazil court blocks Meta from using news content for AI training

A São Paulo court granted a preliminary injunction on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, suspending part of Meta's new commercial rules for media companies. Judge Guilherme Madeira Dezem of the 44th Civil Court of the Central Civil Forum issued the ruling in a lawsuit filed by Abert, ANJ, and Aner, associations representing Brazilian broadcasters, newspapers, and magazine publishers.

The decision blocks Meta from requiring media outlets to authorize automatic collection of their website content as a condition for keeping their accounts on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. The new terms were scheduled to take effect on November 20, 2026.

“The injunction is a very positive signal that there are limits to the abuse of economic power by a large digital platform.”

The judge also ordered Meta to keep the accounts, profiles, pages, groups, and tools of the associations fully operational. The company may not impose different or retaliatory treatment on outlets that reject the new conditions. Violation of any order may result in a daily fine of 1 million reais, initially capped at 100 million reais.

Additionally, Meta is prohibited from using, or allowing third parties to use, automated software, robots, bots, and crawlers to access and collect content from the entities' websites to train its artificial intelligence systems. The associations argued that Meta unilaterally changed its Commercial Terms and that the data collection would cover reports, photographs, illustrations, programs, and audiovisual productions, including copyrighted material.

Poder360 reported that it contacted Meta's press office by email and messaging app to ask whether the company wished to comment on the ruling. No response had been received by the time of publication. InfoMoney quoted ANJ's executive president calling the injunction a positive signal that there are limits to economic power abuse by a large digital platform.