EU targets TikTok, Meta, X with Digital Fairness Act

On May 12 in Copenhagen, the EU is drafting a Digital Fairness Act to curb addictive social media design and strengthen child protections on platforms including TikTok, Meta, and X, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

She said the proposal, due later in 2026, would ban manipulative features, address influencer marketing, and may include a minimum age for platform access, while the Commission also weighs stricter limits on AI use in social media.

The move would expand the Digital Services Act, under which the EU is already investigating TikTok, X, Instagram, and Facebook over risks tied to harmful content, age checks, and features such as endless scroll, autoplay, and push notifications.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

A new law is needed because current rules only partly cover addictive design

Current EU consumer and data protection laws reach addictive design only in limited ways 1.
Features like infinite scroll aim to hold attention. They may not tie directly to measurable financial harm or unlawful data collection 1.
To support new rules, the European Commission set up a panel with experts in neuroscience and child psychology. It will deliver findings and recommendations by summer 2026 2.
The EU is also building its own age verification app. It says the app meets the “highest privacy standards in the world,” and member states can add it to their digital wallets 3.

New rules could remake social media business models and raise trade tensions

Rules for “addictive” features could change how platforms like TikTok operate. More than half of U.S. teenagers use the app every day 4.
Changes to core mechanics would also affect ad performance. Marketing teams and brands may spread spending across more channels and build first-party data collection, meaning information they gather directly from their own customers 4.
This fits a broader global push. Australia, the U.K., France, and Turkey are debating or rolling out limits on teenage social media use 5.
The push could also sharpen transatlantic tension. The U.S. has weighed tariffs to “combat digital service taxes (DSTs), fines, practices, and policies that foreign governments levy on American companies,” and said fines topped US$7 billion over the past two years 3.