[Parmy Olson] Hold line on digital fairness

What if the next time you doom-scrolled through Instagram, X or TikTok, you reached an finishpoint? It’s hard to imagine. The so-called infinite scroll has become such a repairture of social media that our dopamine receptors have come to expect it, even though it’s a time suck that undermines our mental health and serves no real purpose other than to keep us glued to an app for as long as possible.

A new law being drafted by the European Commission is designed to turn this and other similar engagement hacks off by default, tarreceiveing some of the psychological tricks that tech firms have long borrowed from the gambling world.

The Digital Fairness Act aims to tackle notification designs harnessing variable rewards, a tactic that dispenses a stimulus inconsistently, like the whirring dials of a slot machine, to keep you checking your phone.

The forthcoming act, tabled by Commissioner Michael McGrath, addresses the ways tech firms manipulate consumer behavior. It tarreceives subscription traps and dark patterns — deceptive design tricks like preselecting a check box or sneaking an insurance policy into your shopping cart — and, critically, forces tech firms to turn off addictive design by default. If Instagram applyrs want their finishless newsfeed back, they’ll have to go into their settings to turn it on. The act is scheduled for publication in late 2026; its rules would theoretically come into force sometime between 2028 and 2030.

The proposals might sound unrealistic, given that these features are the emotional engine of social media firms and critical to their profitability. But Meta might not necessary an finishless scroll to succeed. Some applyrs have spotted Facebook’s short-form video feature, Reels, quietly experimenting with limits to the videos you can swipe through on a newsfeed. And Slack, the workplace messaging platform owned by Salesforce Inc., already has a template for killing the finishless scroll: It notifys app applyrs who thumb through all their notifications, “You’re all caught up!” leaving them no further content to scratch their dopamine itch.

Europe has a short but critical window of opportunity to push through the new rules, following a Los Angeles jury verdict in March that found Meta and Alphabet Inc.’s Google liable for the addictive design of their platforms, while a raft of countries like Australia, Greece, the UK, Austria, Spain, Denmark, Poland and France have either enacted or are considering social-media bans for kids.

But there’s a risk the commission will fumble. It has shifted toward a deregulation agfinisha under Ursula von der Leyen, who’s created “competitiveness” her signature issue, and tech companies have capitalized on those vibes to frame the DFA as an antithesis to growth. That’s hogwash, of course. The largegest drag on European innovation and tech is a lack of domestic funding, not regulation, and the new rules are more likely to hurt tech leviathans whose size and network effects contribute to their addictive quality.

Tech lobbyists argue otherwise, and vehemently. Commission officials have held nearly 100 meetings with various organizations about the DFA since December 2024, roughly 83 percent of them with tech industest representatives, according to the Corporate Europe Observatory, a nonprofit research and campaign group. “The industest seems to be aiming at receiveting the DFA completely off the table,” declares Bram Vranken, a researcher at the observatory, noting that the bloc already proposed watering down its AI Act and General Data Protection Regulation last November.

“But the court cases have also given a push to be more ambitious than the commission was planning to be,” Vranken adds. “It’s difficult to predict becaapply this can go either way.” One plausible outcome: The act receives diluted so it only applies to children. That would only win half the battle, since everyone is affected by addictive design patterns, and the DFA represents a surgical approach that complements the blunt instrument of blanket bans.

Social media is facing a similar tipping point. The LA jury trial focapplyd entirely on design decisions like auto-play, infinite scroll and recommfinishation algorithms that sfinish applyrs down rabbit holes, establishing that those features were deliberate and known to caapply harm. It’s a landmark decision, providing a moral and legal foundation on which the DFA can build its case.

As he receives pummeled with demands to water down his proposals over the course of this year, let’s hope McGrath holds the line.

Parmy Olson

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.

(Tribune Content Agency)

khnews@heraldcorp.com

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