The European Commission’s preliminary finding against Meta treats autoplay and infinite scroll as a defect Meta should have caught before shipping. Brussels says Instagram and Facebook’s autoplay, infinite scroll, and personalized recommender systems weren’t properly risk-assessed under the DSA, the law requiring platforms to identify and mitigate systemic risks to users’ wellbeing. I’ve read enough systemic-risk findings to recognize the pattern: the Commission wants proof Meta assessed the risk before deploying the feature, not after regulators came knocking.
The old yardstick for compliance was self-policing: ship the addictive feature, then bolt on a usage dashboard. Meta rolled out Teen Accounts mid-investigation, capping screen time at 15 minutes and blocking nighttime access. The Commission’s answer: those tools only work if a parent has “adequate technical expertise” and the time to use them. That’s a polite way of saying the default setting is still the problem, not the parent.
Meta’s spokesperson gave the industry-standard non-denial: Ben Walters told Reuters that Meta disagrees with the commission’s preliminary findings. I’ve read that sentence in a dozen warning-letter replies under different letterhead. It buys time. It doesn’t buy exoneration.
Meta now has 90 days to file its formal defense. Worth reading the preliminary findings before that clock runs out.
— Rebecca Lauren