The European Union accused Meta on Friday of breaching its social media law by designing Facebook and Instagram to get users hooked, and demanded it disable “key addictive features” like infinite scrolling.
The EU’s executive arm issued a fresh set of charges against Meta Platforms as a part of its investigation under the 27-nation bloc’s strict digital rule book often called the Digital Services Act. The sweeping set of regulations from Brussels requires tech platforms to guard web users under threat of hefty fines.
The European Commission said Meta didn’t properly assess the risks its design features pose to the physical and mental health of users, including minors. And while the corporate has tools and controls to assist manage Facebook and Instagram use, it said they were easily overridden, dismissed, or technically difficult to make use of.
Meta “must implement design changes” to Instagram and Facebook, equivalent to disabling “key addictive features” like autoplay of videos and infinite scroll so that they’re not turned on by default, the commission said in its preliminary findings.
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Meta now has the prospect to reply and defend itself before the commission issues its final decision, which could end in a positive price as much as six per cent of the corporate’s global annual revenue.
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Meta said Friday that the preliminary findings don’t recognize the steps that the corporate has already taken to guard teens.
“Since this investigation began, we rolled out Teen Accounts that robotically protect teens and put parents on top of things – allowing them to dam access to Instagram at night and cap day by day screen time at just quarter-hour,” Meta said in a prepared statement.
“We share the European Commission’s commitment to providing teens with secure, positive online experiences and can proceed to have interaction constructively with them.”
Europe is committed to enforcing its laws that holds platforms accountable for addictive design features, said Henna Virkkunen, an executive vice-president on the commission overseeing tech.
“Protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans have to be a priority for social media platforms,” Virkkunen said in a written statement.
Facebook and Instagram design features, including personalized recommendations and push notifications, serve up an infinite stream of content, putting users’ brains on “autopilot” and fueling compulsive use, the commission said.
Meanwhile, screen time controls that oldsters can impose on their teens’ devices could be “easily dismissed” and don’t end in a meaningful reduction of use, the commission said. And the controls are undermined by the technical expertise, effort and time that oldsters need to grasp and use them, it said.
The commission’s proposed design changes also included finding higher ways to encourage screen time breaks, and changing the content advice system in order that it’s less “engagement-oriented.”
The preliminary findings are the most recent charges since Brussels opened its investigation in 2024 over concerns that the social media giant wasn’t doing enough to guard children online.
The EU said earlier this yr that Meta had failed to forestall children under 13, the corporate’s minimum age to make use of Facebook and Instagram, from signing up. It also said Meta was not doing enough to discover and take away underage users after they’d opened accounts.
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