Meta has confirmed that non-personalized content feeds are to come to Facebook and Instagram in the European Union by the August 25 deadline to comply with the bloc's rebooted digital rulebook, the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Meta just made an announcement about this, not long after TikTok said it would make non-personalized content feeds in the European Union by August 25.

The DSA would demand that the bigger platforms and search engines, known as VLOPs and VLOSE, empower users in the region to deactivate AI-driven "personalisation," which selects and renders 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 shown chronologically-typically based on the time it was made-or ranked for local popularity-such as for ordering search results. One of the concerns of this bloc is that AI-generated feeds undermine user autonomy and choices and sets up conditions to have users become subject to filter bubbles and at risks of addiction or even more severe conditions: automated manipulation.

Writing in a blog post summarizing a number of changes it's making in the name of DSA compliance, Meta's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, avoided talking about the downsides of its AI recommender systems-cloaking the non-personalized feed as another choice for users to "view and discover" content:

We are now providing our community in Europe with the ability to view and discover things on Reels, Stories, Search, and more parts of Facebook and Instagram that are not sorted by Meta using these AI recommender systems. For example, on Facebook and Instagram, users will be able to view Stories and Reels only from accounts they follow, ordered chronologically, newest first. They will be able also to see search results in only the words entered - not personalized especially to those individuals based on the specific activity and interests each previously showed.

It is unknown when Meta will launch the off switch for AI, but the deadline for VLOPs' compliance with DSA falls this Friday, so most probably it is going to be available very soon. Penalties for non-compliance with pan-EU regulation can scale up to 6% of global annual turnover.

The sight of social media giants like Meta and TikTok whose ad-funded business models depend on keeping eyeballs stuck to their platforms giving users options that are likely to be-in typical tech terminology-less sticky is a milestone indeed. And it's one being achieved by the pioneering pan-EU regulation.

According to Clegg's blog post, non-algorithmic feeds will be available to its "European community". So users in the U.S. who want more control over what they see on Facebook and Instagram are clearly out of luck.

We have also asked Meta to confirm that the U.K., which is no longer an EU member after the Brexit referendum vote, will be excluded from the option to deny content personalization.

U.K. Facebook users are already being given no choice but to accept its ad tracking — whereas Meta has just signaled it will switch to seek users in the EU to consent to ad tracking once the bloc's data protection laws are fully enforced and several major penalties have been levied for breaches of the General Data Protection Regulation. So Meta users in the U.K. set to see a rising privacy rights gap compared to what their peers experience elsewhere on the continent.

How long that can continue while Meta presents itself as less user-controlled in the US and U.K. versus the EU at least is to be determined.

The adtech giant also is clearly hoping to persuade the EU users not to flip the AI off switch by doubling down on transparency measures and providing what it says is an "unprecedented level of insight into how our AI systems rank content.".

This is actually another compliance step since the DSA requires VLOPs and VLOSE to provide clear information about AI recommender systems, which should detail the main parameters and all available options for users to modify or influence such. Although, from the perspective of Meta, if it can persuade the users in the EU to just "tweak" the algorithmic recommendations they are getting instead of turning off its "personalization," i.e. surveillance, it could manage to keep content stickiness at the same level or even increase it. So Clegg talking about "unprecedented insights" through publishing 22 "system cards" on Facebook and Instagram. But of course drowning users in convoluted settings vs giving them a clear choice up-front has been a Facebook modus operandi since forever.

Another DSA-driven change his blog post mentions is an enhanced level of ads transparency. Though Meta was one of the first movers in ads transparency, thanks to (er) the Cambridge Analytica data misuse voter targeting scandal, it is being made to go further now that the EU law kicks in. Again though, the increased level of transparency Meta is offering around ad targeting will only apply to ads targeting people in the EU.

Meta says it will build on an existing Ad Library "to show and store all ads which target people in the EU, including dates the ad ran, the parameters used to target (e.g., age, gender, location) [and] who was served the ad", among other data points. It also explains how it will store the ads in its public Ad Library for a year.

Also arriving with the deadline for DSA compliance: More instruments for researchers to examine content on Meta's services – which is another area subject to regulation under DSA.

"We're also introducing two new tools for researchers – the Meta Content Library and API," Clegg writes. The library will be composed of public postings by Pages, Posts, Groups and Events on Facebook. There will also be public postings by individuals and business accounts on Instagram. This way, the searcher will have a chance to sort through the public content presented in a graphical User Interface (UI) or obtain it programmatically using API. These tools will provide the fullest access to publicly available content across Facebook and Instagram of any research tool we have created to date.

As the blog post points out, the company has not granted access at this level to outside researchers before. Indeed, third party researchers have frequently complained that the tech giants are deliberately hamstringing them from studying the platforms and their societal impact. So the obvious take away is that real transparency on the platforms requires dedicated platform regulation.

Other DSA compliance work Clegg's blog post mentions that the company's compliance team has done includes some changes to reporting tools for illegal content — which is a core focus for the DSA.
He also lets slip that the tech giant has more than 1,000 people working on compliance with the pan-EU law. We have worked very hard since last November when the DSA was in force to respond to those new rules and adapt existing safety and integrity systems and processes we have in many of the areas regulated by the DSA, writes he. "We formed one of the biggest cross-functional teams in our history. to develop solutions to the requirements of the DSA. These include steps to make things more transparent about how our systems work, and to provide users with more options to manage their experiences on Facebook and Instagram. We have established a new, independent compliance function to help us manage our regulatory obligations on an ongoing basis.

The DSA also imposes some restrictions on VLOPs ability to target ads based on profiling of individuals by tracking and processing their personal data, such as a complete prohibition of the use of minors' data for ad targeting. Sensitive personal data is prohibited from being used for ad targeting.

On ad targeting Clegg's blog post has relatively little to say. He merely chooses to flag a change Meta made back in February — when it announced it had stopped targeting teens aged 13-17 with ads based on tracking their activity on its apps. "Age and location is now the only information about teens that advertisers can use to show them ads," he also writes now.

However, age and location can still be personal data under EU law. So it remains to be seen whether the EU will deem Meta's interpretation of the DSA's prohibition there to be compliant or not.

Meta has also previously claimed to have stopped allowing advertisers to use sensitive personal data like political views, religion and sexual orientation for ad targeting. However, a pattern of problems with ad targeting through the use of proxies for sensitive categories of data — such as when Facebook was found to have permitted advertisers to use "ethnic affinity" targeting to bar users from seeing ads in protected categories such as housing and employment — suggests regulators should not accept its claim to have stopped that kind of sensitive targeting on its face either.

Even a cookie pop-up that pops up on Meta's Transparency Center when you visit the web page (see screengrab below) raises compliance questions since it doesn't offer users a clear option to refuse tracking for content personalization and other (non-essential) uses, meaning Meta's 1,000-strong+ compliance team has more work to do.

The scale of the task Meta is facing to comply with the EU's expanded digital rulebook - of which DSA is but one part; also to be included will be its sister regulation, the Digital Markets Act; an ex ante competition reform targeted at the most powerful platform giants (which Meta anticipates will include it) - goes a long way to explaining why the launch in the region has not yet come to pass.