What happened
The European Union has issued a formal warning to Meta. The company must disable autoplaying videos and infinite scroll features on its Facebook and Instagram platforms or face significant fines. This action falls under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), which aims to curb addictive design patterns in large online platforms. Ars Technica AI reported on the directive, which specifically targets mechanics designed to maximise user engagement time.
How the room's reading it
Policy watchers see this as the Digital Services Act finally showing its teeth. The move against Meta is viewed as a test case for enforcing rules against so-called 'addictive' design patterns. On platforms like X, the conversation is split. Some developers see it as a necessary check on engagement-at-all-costs metrics, while others worry about the precedent it sets for AI-driven discovery feeds. The core tension being debated is whether features like infinite scroll are genuinely harmful or simply a response to user demand for more content — and who gets to decide where that line is drawn.
Sailfish's take
We think the conversation is missing the point. This isn't about UI design patterns — it's about the AI models that power them. For years, builders have trained recommendation engines to optimise for one thing: engagement. The DSA is a direct challenge to that objective function. If your core AI loop is designed solely to keep eyeballs on a screen, you're now building on shaky ground. We've seen this coming. It's why we advise teams to build for explicit user value, not just implicit engagement. The useful question isn't whether infinite scroll is bad; it's what you're optimising for in the first place.