EU threatens Meta with a $12B fine for making Instagram too addictive
EU regulators finally noticed that scrolling Instagram at 2 AM isn't a healthy lifestyle choice.
European regulators just hit Meta with a massive warning over how Facebook and Instagram are designed. According to Brussels, features like infinite scroll, autoplay, and algorithmic recommendations are intentionally engineered to keep people glued to their screens until their brains melt.
The tech giant's defense was basically that parents should just use parental controls and screen-time limits. The EU shot that right down, pointing out that existing time limits are laughably easy to bypass, while parental controls require parents to have an engineering degree just to figure them out. If Meta refuses to kill autoplay and endless feeds, they face a fine of up to 6% of their total global revenue — roughly $12 billion.
Meta claims their teen safety features are working fine, but regulators are already floating the idea of an actual social media ban for kids.
Silicon Valley spent fifteen years perfecting algorithms to capture human attention, only to realize European bureaucrats have infinite patience for issuing fines.
Source: CNBC
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