New EU law lets social media users opt out of AI-driven personalised feeds
London, Aug 25 (IANS) Social media users in the European Union (EU) can now opt out of AI-driven personalised content feeds on mainstream social networks.
The change is the result of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which allows users on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat to decline “personalised” content feeds based on “relevance” (i.e. tracking) and allows them to choose a more traditional news feed that displays posts from friends in chronological order, reports TechCrunch on Friday.
Facebook has already launched a new Feeds tab globally that follows this chronological format.
This move by Meta (Facebook’s parent company) shows compliance with the DSA’s requirement to give users the choice of viewing non-personalised content.
Notably, there are no “Suggested For You” posts in the new chronological Facebook news feed.
Moreover, the report said that YouTube has also made changes to accommodate user preferences.
Users who have turned off the “watch history” feature will no longer receive video recommendations based on previous viewing.
The new law, driven by the DSA, applies to all users, not just those in the EU, the report mentioned.
By allowing users to disable profiling-based recommendations for content, platforms are challenged to engage users within their closed ecosystems. Platforms like these curate personalized content based on users’ habits and interests.
With the DSA, users will be empowered to control their online experience and address this information asymmetry.
Meanwhile, Google has said it will increase how much information it provides about ads targeted at users in the European Union (EU), as the new set of regulations known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) comes into force on August 25.
Google will also expand data access to third-party researchers studying systemic content risks in the region.
“We are also making changes to provide new kinds of visibility into our content moderation decisions and give users different ways to contact us. And we are updating our reporting and appeals processes to provide specified types of information and context about our decisions,” said the tech giant.