EU Commission Cracks Down on Meta and X Over Digital Services Act Violations

The European Commission released preliminary findings that Meta's Instagram and Facebook employ design features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay videos, push notifications and highly personalized recommendation systems that encourage compulsive use, breaching the Digital Services Act (DSA). The regulator said the company failed to protect minors and did not provide effective parental‑control tools, and it demanded structural changes – disabling autoplay and infinite scroll by default, adding screen‑time pauses and altering algorithms – with a potential multimillion‑euro penalty.

In a separate action, the Commission announced that it accepts the corrective measures proposed by Elon Musk’s platform X following a €120 million fine for DSA breaches. The accepted plan includes improving transparency of the ad repository, granting researchers better data‑access via an API, and subjecting the changes to an independent audit within six months. Both actions reflect intensified EU enforcement of the DSA on leading US‑based social‑media companies.