Brussels has decided that infinite scroll is not a feature but a hazard. On Friday, the European Commission told Meta to dismantle the design tricks that keep people glued to Facebook and Instagram, or risk a fine that could run into billions, in a fresh set of charges under the EU’s Digital Services Act.
The Commission’s preliminary findings accuse Meta of building the two platforms to get users hooked, and of failing to properly assess the risks that design poses to their physical and mental health, especially children and vulnerable adults. It is the latest turn in an addictive-design probe that has been building for more than a year.
The regulator was unusually specific about what it wants changed. Meta should disable features such as autoplay and infinite scroll by default, introduce effective screen-time breaks, and retune its recommender systems so they are less relentlessly oriented toward engagement.
Underneath the demand is a complaint about choice. The Commission said Meta does offer tools to manage time on its apps, but that they are too easily overridden, dismissed or technically awkward to use, leaving the default experience tuned for maximum attention rather than user wellbeing.
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The move builds on an earlier finding. Brussels had already accused Meta of failing to keep under-13s off Facebook and Instagram, and Friday’s charges widen the case from who is on the platforms to how the platforms are built to hold them there.
The mechanism is the Digital Services Act, the bloc’s content and safety rulebook for large platforms, which requires the biggest services to identify and mitigate what it calls systemic risks. Addiction by design, in the Commission’s reading, is one of them.
Central to the case is what officials have called the “rabbit-hole” effect, where a personalised feed keeps serving content that holds a young user’s attention long past the point they meant to stop. The Commission’s argument is that the harm is structural rather than incidental, baked into how the products are engineered to reward time spent.
The stakes are set by the same law. If the findings are confirmed after Meta responds, the company faces a fine of up to 6% of its total worldwide annual turnover, which on recent revenue would run into the billions, though the EU’s actual penalties have tended to land well below that ceiling.
This is not yet a final decision. The charges are preliminary, and Meta can reply before the Commission rules in the coming months, a process that can stretch out and that leaves room for the company to propose remedies rather than simply write a cheque.
Meta’s response was measured but unyielding. The company said it disagreed with the findings while promising to “engage constructively” with the Commission, the familiar posture of a firm that means to contest the substance without antagonising the regulator.
The case fits a wider European turn toward protecting children online, from age-based social-media protections pushed at the top of the Commission to a run of national moves across member states. Design, rather than content, is increasingly where regulators are training their attention.
That shift is what makes the case matter beyond Meta. If Brussels can compel a platform to switch off autoplay and soften its algorithm by default, it sets a template that reaches every large service built on the same engagement mechanics, from short-video apps to feeds far beyond Facebook and Instagram.
For now, the order is a demand rather than a done deal, and the features it targets remain switched on. But the Commission has named the thing it wants gone, and attached a number to the cost of keeping it.
