Meta has confirmed that non-personalized content feeds are incoming on Facebook and Instagram in the European Union ahead of the August 25 deadline for compliance with the bloc’s rebooted digital rulebook, the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Meta’s move follows a similar announcement by TikTok earlier this month.
The DSA requires larger platforms and search engines (so-called VLOPs and VLOSE) to allow users in the region to switch off AI-driven “personalization” — a feature which selects and displays content based on tracking and profiling individual users.
Under the DSA, users of larger platforms — 19 of which the EU designated back in April — must be offered a choice of a non-algorithmic feed, where content sorting is not based on tracking.
Instead, content could be ordered and displayed chronologically (based on when a post was made) or ranked by local popularity (for ordering search results). The bloc’s concern is that AI-driven feeds undermine user autonomy and choice and set up conditions where users could be subject to filter bubbles and at risk of addiction or even facing automated manipulation.
Writing in a blog post summarizing several changes it’s making in the name of DSA compliance, Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, avoided discussion of the downsides of its AI recommender systems — couching the non-personalized feed as another option for users to “view and discover” content:
We’re now allowing our European community to view and discover content on Reels, Stories, Search, and other parts of Facebook and Instagram that is not ranked by Meta using these [AI recommender] systems. For example, on Facebook and Instagram, users can view Stories and Reels only from people they follow, ranked in chronological order, newest to oldest. They will also be able to view Search results based only on the words they enter rather than…