A cross-party group of EU lawmakers sent a joint letter on 3 September telling the European Commission to force an overhaul of Facebook and Instagram.
The document calls for an end to the endless Digital Services Act investigation in a swift non-compliance ruling and heavy fines, while warning regulators that European children should get the same safety redesign Meta just agreed to in the US.
Meta settled with 47 US states, Washington DC and multiple other territories on 26 August, agreeing to an $18 billion penalty alongside court-enforceable product changes for underage users on Facebook and Instagram. The letter demands that the European Commission secure those same product redesigns rather than simply pocketing a fine.
What Meta Agreed To In The US
The design changes packed into the US deal carry some muscle.
Facebook and Instagram now come with a shared two-hour daily limit that requires a parent to unlock. Access freezes between midnight and 6am under a new “night mode”, which keeps direct messages open while silencing alerts during school hours and late nights. Gentle pop-ups interrupt continuous scrolling every 15 minutes, and public like counts are hidden by default. Teenagers also get a non-personalised feed option, a switch to disable autoplay and a total ban on cosmetic-surgery filters, anchored by stricter age checks and expanded parent oversight.
The execution is phased over the coming year, starting with uncurated feeds in four months, general design compliance in six, and full age-verification mandates within twelve, all backed by a ten-year mandate on key features. This is far from a standard payout deal where Meta settles and forgets. American judges now hold direct, ongoing oversight to verify every software promise.
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Fines Versus Mandated Redesign
Under the Digital Services Act, finding a major platform in breach now allows the European Commission to impose a non-compliance decision with fines reaching 6% of worldwide turnover. This standard financial punishment lets tech giants absorb huge sums as standard overhead, and offers little reason to alter their product architecture.
But the DSA gives the Commission more than fining power. It requires large platforms to run systemic risk assessments covering risks stemming from the design of their service, including algorithmic systems, and to adopt proportionate mitigation measures. Protecting minors specifically is named as a key risk category.
In July 2026, the Commission warned Meta that its addictive designs had to go, specifically citing default infinite scrolling, autoplay loops, engagement-driven recommendations and a lack of screen-time breaks.
The recent Temu proceedings highlight the regulatory machinery behind these threats, where an initial non-compliance finding allowed regulators to invoke Article 75 and mandate structural code changes rather than just taking a check. If a tech firm refuses to fall into line and causes ongoing harm, European law provides the ultimate lever: freezing platform access across Europe.
The legal tools to force mandated redesign already exist. What’s been missing so far is the political will to actually use them against a company as large and litigious as Meta, instead of settling for the fine that everyone already expects to happen anyway.
What This Would Mean For TikTok, YouTube And Snapchat
While the letter skips the detailed tech specs, its central demand is quite straightforward. Lawmakers want a true commitment to change, not just a settlement that fades once the headlines move on.
If European regulators make Meta the new standard and not just a one-off exception, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat are the obvious next targets. All three are already under the same DSA obligations, since regulators have treated addictive design as an industry-wide hazard rather than a Meta-specific problem. A precedent that replaces fines with mandatory code changes would put every major platform under the kind of ongoing legal monitoring a fine alone never creates.
Whether regulators actually enforce structural fixes, or settle for the financial penalty everyone already expects, is the question this campaign is trying to force into the open.
