... Meta underestimated the effect those features can have on users...
No, they know it quite well and they are doing everything they can to increase that effect.
EU puts 'addictive' design of Facebook, Instagram under the DSA microscope
Meta may have breached the European Union's Digital Services Act by designing Facebook and Instagram to keep users glued to their screens, with Brussels saying that features such as infinite scroll and autoplay should be switched off by default. The European Commission on Friday published preliminary findings accusing the social …
-
Friday 10th July 2026 13:25 GMT Filippo
I don't think they "failed to assess [the risk of addictive design]" as much as they assessed it, decided it was a good thing, and made sure to have as much of as possible.
Also, I don't think the current design of Facebook (and most other social media) is salvageable. Does anyone really believe that turning autoplay off by default and popping up a "you've been scrolling for X hours" message every now and then is going to fix the problem? Or even make a noticeable impact on it?
Fix the root issue. Ban targeted advertising. We had untargeted advertising for centuries, we had it on the Internet even; it works just fine. Banning targeted advertising would, in one stroke, sort out so many problems it's not even funny, and it has literally no drawbacks for anyone except a handful of big tech companies.
-
-
Saturday 11th July 2026 04:38 GMT Neil Barnes
Re: Close...
I agree, but wonder how you define social media? I mean, even Youtube, if you open a browser from a link, by default has the autoplay button set on. I wouldn't really consider Youtube a social medium, although the requirement to be logged in to do anything useful with it - and in particular, contribute a comment - does tend to lean that way. (Hint: freetube).
-
Monday 13th July 2026 10:48 GMT werdsmith
Re: Close...
YouTube allows you to add your own content, have followers and follow other content creators and take part in discussions about content.
Those four criteria are required to define a social media platform, as opposed to a simple comments section like this one, that only allows one of those.
-
Saturday 11th July 2026 07:15 GMT Filippo
Re: Close...
Can't. It's not a sufficiently tight definition to base legislation on. You don't want to throw out babies with that dirty bathwater. There's message boards, messaging services, news aggregators, all kind of useful things that can be toxic but aren't necessarily and by design toxic like Facebook ended up being. "Ban social media" would probably kill the service I'm typing on right now.
-
-
Friday 10th July 2026 19:53 GMT Dinanziame
Ban targeted advertising
A great first step would be to finally act against Facebook for only letting paying users opt out of targeted advertising. The law is clear that users must be able to opt out of they want — making it a paid service is a complete mockery, and they should be fined billions for that.
-
Friday 10th July 2026 21:19 GMT elsergiovolador
Advertising was targeted. Someone wouldn't advertise tyres on beauty forum or pianos on forum for foragers.
Facebook destroyed that part of the internet.
The difference was the user was in control. If you never visited a site about amateur radio, you'd never seen ads for transmitters.
Now your phone listens someone told you something about their itchy bum and now your Facebook is plastered with all sorts of scams about rectal problems.
-
Saturday 11th July 2026 07:19 GMT Filippo
Yeah. I'd like to have a separate term for "targeted by context alone" versus "targeted by user profile". Targeting by context is fine, it's been done since forever; I bet Romans hawked strigils in bathhouses.
Targeting by user profile, on the other hand, is like having someone stalk you. Just because they won't outright knife your back, it doesn't mean it's fine.
-
-
Monday 13th July 2026 10:48 GMT Wiretrip
"Ban targeted advertising"
No, the root issue is that any platform that uses algorithmic feeds to push content is exercising editorial controlmand is thus a *publisher* not a 'conduit'. We need to start treating the platforms as such. Hopefully the recent German ruling on Google AI overviews will start this ball rolling.
-
Friday 10th July 2026 13:49 GMT wiggers
Maddening...
I find Facebook highly unwatchable. I've joined a few groups but if I so much as look at another group the groups feed suddenly becomes flooded with "suggested posts" from the glanced-at group. No amount of hiding or reporting seems to remove it. So I have to look at each group individually.
-
Friday 10th July 2026 14:06 GMT David M
Re: Maddening...
If you're accessing FB from a desktop browser, take a look at fbpurity.com. It's a browser addon that lets you turn off most of the annoyances. An ad-blocker also helps. I've used this setup for years, and when I look at FB I see posts from friends, posts from groups I follow, and nothing else. Which is as it should be.
-
-
Friday 10th July 2026 14:43 GMT Snake
Strange
When I've been forced to use Facebook I don't find the interface "addictive", I find the interface *intentionally* obtuse and annoying. Why is it, when you click on a notification in your drop-down, the Faceplant app often DOESN'T take you to the post it notified you of, it (intentionally) drops you into your general feed. Which means you have to scroll past other posts to find the one you wanted - that's not " addictive", that's intentionally "obscure" in order to force to view things you didn't really give a crap about.
Lots of other things can be pointed out, as well. If "addictive" means you have the attention span of a goldfish and everything shiny put in front of you grabs your attention, then I guess it's "addictive".
What the interface really is, is "excessively spam-filled", intentionally filling your view with things that they want you to spend your time and attention on even if you don't give a rat's ass about any of it. It's the ultimate ad server, trying to draw you into caring about their feed. You can ignore it but that doesn't remove the incredible annoyance of its very existence. It's walking into a shop and getting bombarded with flat-screen TV's all running at full blast.
That isn't called "addictive", just "abusive capitalism" - must be me. Take some personal responsibility and put the damn phone down if you feel it's addictive, you know that's possible, right?
-
Friday 10th July 2026 15:28 GMT jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid
Re: Strange
Being susceptible to addictive behaviours isn't about having a short attention span. It's about simply being human and vulnerable to the psychological tricks employed to prevent a user thinking that they are at the end of an experience - like you mention. It's the same old tricks casinos and slot machines have used for years. Eye catching visuals and sounds, tantalising glimpses of what's coming next, everything to get you scrolling one more time whilst not noticing the passage of time.
Yes, put the phone down and walk away, but to be drawn in it to only be human. Facebook etc. know this full well.
-
Monday 13th July 2026 10:48 GMT Screepy
Re: Strange
"Take some personal responsibility and put the damn phone down if you feel it's addictive, you know that's possible, right?"
But that's the issue with addiction, you can't 'put it down', and FB know it.
Some people are more responsive to FBs foul tricks than others.
Some people find it easy to escape (like you), but others will drop into the black hole of the zombie scroll. Those are the souls FB are after, and there are millions and millions of them.
Just look at compulsive gamblers. They know very well it's damaging them but they just can't let go.
-
-
-
Friday 10th July 2026 17:45 GMT Like a badger
Re: Fines of up to $x billion.
Probably not. If (a) a transgression of rules can be found, and (b) it is serious, repeated and threatens people's safety, then there's a process for forcing a temporary suspension of a service. I doubt that doomscrolling will pass the second of those tests.
Had the EU not had its head up its arse and thought about what drives a business, they'd have given them the powers to ban the sale and display of advertising of ad-funded companies. That would instantly cut off the cash supply, and concentrates business minds. The UK energy regulator has handed out hundreds of millions in regulatory fines (which scared nobody), but in one or two cases it enforced a short new-sales prohibition. That scared everybody in the industry shitless, unfortunately neither regulator nor government realised that they had such a powerful tool at their disposal, nor did they learn that they should wield it more widely.
-
-
Friday 10th July 2026 16:49 GMT Herring`
Surely there is an easier way
Originally, social media was that. It showed you stuff from people you followed - and some ads. That meant they could claim they weren't publishers and not liable.
Now social media actively decides what to show you and does so according to its own whims. Like a publisher.
Similarly, when Google showed you the results of searching the web (with some ads) then they aren't liable. But if their AI summary just makes shit up, well the German courts say that they are. Which seems completely fair to me. I mean, otherwise I could launch my own AI chatbot* that just libels famous people and claim it was nothing to do with me when it claims that Piers Morgan likes to interfere with squirrels.
*It's some shitty code on top of a shitty database, not AI at all.
-
-
Monday 13th July 2026 10:51 GMT retiredFool
Re: When Zuck hears about this
Interesting and likely, but i just saw a consortium of US states are suing faceplant for 1.4T for bad behavior with kids. I think the article says goes to trial in August. I'd like to see an actual corporate execution, which 1.4T would be, but I know I'm in LaLa land to even remotely believe it could happen. Worst case, Zuck buys a Golden Arch for Trump to make it go away.
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Monday 13th July 2026 10:44 GMT Doctor Trousers
this is playing right into the hands of the tech giants. the last thing they want is for people to start talking about holding the platforms responsible for the content that they fill these endless, algorithmic timelines with. so let's makes sure the conversation is all about 'addictive design'.
Do you think you'd be seeing the same mental health and social harms in young people if these apps were designed in exactly the same way, but the content was, oh I dunno, just not actually designed to try and drive people insane?
And I'm not talking about removing the legal protections against hosts being held legally liable as publishers of user generated content. Just a legal recognition that it *stops being* user generated as soon as you start preferentially ordering and prioritising it. It becomes content the platform has published, manufactured from bits of user generated content.
