The folks at Bits of Freedom (BoF) have a reason to rejoice as a judge from the Amsterdam District Court recently ruled that Meta must respect its users" choices regarding algorithmic feeds.
For context, last month, BoF sued Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA). If you"re not familiar, Bits of Freedom is a Dutch non-profit advocacy group that fights for privacy and digital rights. The organization has this annual event, the Big Brother Awards, where it names and shames the year"s biggest privacy violators (check out last year"s winners here).
In its lawsuit against Meta, the digital human rights organization argued that Meta fails to give users the choice to permanently opt out of its algorithmic feeds. This is something that it sees as a problem during election periods, like the one leading up to the Dutch elections on October 29.
In Instagram"s case, the option for a chronological feed was hidden behind the Instagram logo. On Facebook, you"d have to go all the way to a different menu to find it. The court"s ruling called this implementation a forbidden "dark pattern" under Article 25 of the DSA, because it creates "choice fatigue" by constantly resetting the user"s selection.
The DSA was proposed by the EU alongside the Digital Markets Act (DMA) back in 2020. This law forces platforms to get their act together by establishing rules for tackling illegal content, giving users the right to challenge moderation decisions, and demanding transparency about the algorithms they use, and specifically targets "Very Large Online Platforms" (VLOPs) and "Very Large Online Search Engines" (VLOSEs), services that have over 45 million monthly active users in the EU.
Companies that have pushed back against these regulations include Meta itself, which has warned that the rules could lead to censorship, and X, where Elon Musk has resisted the EU"s content moderation policies.
Following the court order, Meta has two weeks to make the user"s choice for a non-profiled, chronological feed persistent and more accessible. This means the setting must be saved even if you close the app or navigate to a different section. If Meta fails to comply, it will face a penalty of €100,000 per day for failure to do so, with a maximum fine of €5,000,000.
Meta is also required to pay BoF"s legal fees. Maartje Knaap, spokesperson for BoF, said it is "absolutely unacceptable that a handful of American tech billionaires determine how we see the world" and that the decision "shows that Meta is not untouchable."