EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

Scope of the EU DSA Action

• Thread centers on the EU Commission’s preliminary finding that Instagram and Facebook’s “addictive design” breaches the Digital Services Act (DSA).
• Focus is on algorithmic feeds, infinite scroll, autoplay, and highly personalized recommendations, especially regarding harm to children.

Addictive Design and Algorithms

• Many argue the core harm is engagement‑optimized feeds: rage‑inducing content, endless “slop” videos, and recommendation loops resembling slot machines.
• Some distinguish between legitimate reporting that provokes anger and “ragebait” that uses disinformation or extreme framing purely to drive engagement.
• Several note that social features morphed into algorithmic discovery feeds that prioritize attention over actual social connections.

Free Speech, Censorship, and Democracy

• One camp sees this as needed regulation of manipulative design, not of content or speech.
• Another camp fears a slippery slope: “protect the kids” used as a pretext to later steer algorithms toward state propaganda or suppress dissent.
• There is debate over whether social media is uniquely democratizing (citizen journalism, protest organization) or heavily distorted by bot farms and foreign influence operations.

Comparisons to TV, Drugs, and Human Nature

• Some note TV has long been addictive, with far less scrutiny, and suggest governments tolerated TV because they influenced it more.
• Others respond that smartphones’ ubiquity and personalization make social platforms qualitatively more powerful than TV.
• Analogies to alcohol, heroin, and “junk food” are used both to justify strict regulation and to criticize what some see as moral panic.

Advertising and Business Models

• Many tie addictiveness to ad‑driven models and profiling.
• Proposals include taxing ad revenue, restricting online ads, or even banning online advertising entirely, with counter‑arguments that this would cripple media and “free” services.

Proposed Remedies and Alternatives

• Ideas include:
  • Mandatory chronological, followed‑only feeds as default, with optional recommender algorithms.
  • Strong user controls or third‑party/opensource feed algorithms.
  • Banning or heavily restricting discovery feeds and autoplay/infinite scroll.
  • Promoting the fediverse, personal websites, or subscription models.

Skepticism About Enforcement and Effectiveness

• Some doubt the EU can meaningfully force Meta to redesign rather than treat fines as a cost of business.
• Others point to pollution and advertising rules as precedents for effective behavioral change when penalties and enforcement are strong.

Personal Anecdotes and Harms

• Multiple anecdotes describe compulsive scrolling undermining parenting, chores, mental health, and susceptibility to health misinformation and scams.
• There is disagreement over whether “social media addiction” is a medically valid diagnosis, but broad agreement that compulsive use and harms are real.