8 ms·

NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

327 points by mattashii 1y ago

mattashii 1y ago
Judgement (dutch): https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/20251002-vonnis-kort-geding.pdf https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025... The judgement requires Meta to change their platforms within 2 weeks so that the user's choice is persistent. If not implemented in 2 weeks, there is a daily penalty of €100'000, up to a maximum of €5 million.
- jacooper 1y ago
  Lol 5 million is pocket change for meta, wtf are these courts doing?
  - tantalor 1y ago
    Maybe it's per user?
    - hsuduebc2 1y ago
      I believe that is kind of a warning. The major fines based on the global revenue is issued usually by some european institution.
    - diggan 1y ago
      Doesn't seem like it: > 5.3. orders Meta Ireland to pay BoE a penalty of €100,000.00 for each day or part thereof that it does not, or does not fully, comply with the orders under 5.1 and/or 5.2, up to a maximum total of €5,000,000.00. Original: > 5.3. veroordeelt Meta Ierland om aan BoE een dangsom te betalen van € 100.000.00 oor iedere dag of gedeelte daarvan dat zij niet of niet volledig aan de beelen onder 5.1 en/of 5.2 oldoet. tot een maximum an in totaal € 5.000.000.00 is bereikt. It seems like usually they start with smaller fines, and if the offense is repeated, they ramp it up. Kind of makes sense.
    - markus92 1y ago
      Na, but under the Dutch legal you can go back to the court if they pay the 5 million without changing anything and ask if they can increase it cus it clearly wasn’t enough. They’ll just keep tacking zeroes on.
      - jeroenhd 1y ago
        Yes and no. The judge can choose to tack on zeroes to make Meta comply, but they may also find that monetary fines are not sufficient and take other measures. This is not just a money printing machine you can keep coming back to. If Meta can provide a reasonable time frame for compliance, the judge may also choose to let the existing limit on reparations stand rather than increase it, despite them not complying the day they hit the 5 million euro mark. It's all up to what the judge deems reasonable to make Meta comply with the court's orders.
        markus92 1y ago
        Exactly, they can’t just pay the 5 million and call it a day.
  - maccard 1y ago
    The goal isn’t to penalize, it’s to get them to comply.
    - throwaw12 1y ago
      for 5 million? I am willing to pay 0.01$ out of my pocket to not comply with some regulations in my country. I can even pay annually
      - maccard 1y ago
        Yes, for 5 million. It’s an intentional slap on the wrist because they don’t actually want to fine them, they just want them to change their behaviour. The general MO of European courts is to get people to comply, not to punish non compliance. There’s a subtle difference. If Meta change their tact in the next two weeks then they got what they wanted. If they don’t, fine increases and they’ll escalate responses.
        Twirrim 1y ago
        Failure to comply will also increasingly prejudice later legal cases and judgments down the road.
        niek_pas 1y ago
        Some useful context here is that the Netherlands is holding a general election on 29 October, which is why the deadline of two weeks was imposed. If Meta does not comply with the two weeks deadline and instead pays the (tiny) $5 million fine, that could have serious consequences for the democratic process in the Netherlands. Escalating after two weeks might be too little, too late.
        maccard 1y ago
        That’s actually really interesting to know. I don’t think it would have serious implications if they chose to pay, but I do think it will be catastrophic if meta refuse to change and NL don’t escalate to the point of forcing compliance.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    This is 5 million for this particular court case. Nothing is preventing others from filing their own, very similar cases. If Meta ignores the court's decision, a second lawsuit may end much worse for them. Though, practically speaking, America has been threatening to make the trade war they started much worse for the EU if it tried to enforce things like DSA and GDPR fines. We'll have to see how enforceable these laws really are.
    - gman83 1y ago
      The US wouldn't be doing this if these American tech companies weren't lobbying the government hard to kill the DSA & GDPR. It seems like all regulatory enforcement is out of the window with this administration, so if they can kill the European regulations, they're free to do as they like. The scoping of the trade war as the US having a deficit with all countries by not counting services is ridiculous, it's the most important sector of the economy, and the US has a massive surplus in services.
      - deaux 1y ago
        Ding ding ding! If the EU had even the tiniest of balls, they would've accepted the US tariffs with open arms while applying equivalent ones on services at the same time. Glazing Trump during the announcement about how great of an idea it is to institute these things, how much fairer they make it.
  - __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
    Fines in general aren't effective. Perhaps this case doesn't warrant it, but generally speaking I'd like to see allocating jailtime across the top shareholders as an option. If my dog bites somebody, I'm on the hook, it should be no different with a company.
    - DoktorDelta 1y ago
      "I'll Believe That Corporations Are People When Texas Executes One" ~Robert Reich
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      > but generally speaking I'd like to see allocating jailtime across the top shareholders as an option. Shareholders don’t control day to day operations of a company. Top shareholders rarely have enough shares by themselves to control anything about the company. Remember the VW emissions cheating scandal where people were jailed? It would be completely unreasonable to jail top shareholders because some manager somewhere concocted a scheme to cheat on emissions. Jailing top shareholders for decisions made by the company would be a weird misdirected use of the justice system. If someone is to be jailed, it should be people responsible for the decision. That said, I can’t believe anyone would be watching the news about the current U.S. administration threatening companies with spurious and often nonsensical demands and think that we should be normalizing the process of letting the government jail individuals if the company does something the government doesn’t like that would have previously been a small fine. You can’t think of any way this power might be abused by elected officials?
      - __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
        The only sense in which punishment of any kind is reasonable is when it works to disincentivise harmful behavior. If higher risks for shareholders convince them to take a more active role in ensuring that their investment isn't causing harm to the rest of us, then they're at least as reasonable than any other sort of punishment. If the cheating had gone unnoticed, the shareholders would've been rewarded, so they should bear some risk whether or not they sold after the crime was committed. As it is, we've got incentives set up to encourage investment in bad behavior so long as you get out before your people get caught. As for the government abusing the justice system... What rules would create justice is sort of orthogonal to the circumstances under which the rules are broken.
  - RobotToaster 1y ago
    It also means that after 50 days there's basically no incentive to comply.
- pettertb 1y ago
  Fines up to 5 million Euros against meta Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - N70Phone 1y ago
    > Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a! That is the implication. The point of the first fine isn't to actually hurt Meta. It's to signal that there will be consequences, that the excuse of "but we thought it was legal" is gone now and give them one final chance to get their act together. It's to pre-emptively clear away any possibility for Meta to appeal to either higher courts or the court of public opinion that they're being treated unfairly. Which they would do if you immediately hit them with a say, €5 billion fine.
- mrtksn 1y ago
  That how you build up a case for transferring control. First its "lol, 5m is a pocket change" and it becomes argument of politicians for tighter control over Meta. Then Zuck says they are trying to make the world a better place but it doesn't stick, people side with the politician who is building a career by sticking it to Meta. So not entirely useless.
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    I'm not sure if you're arguing for more or less control being transferred from Meta towards the state, but I agree with your observation.
- dmd 1y ago
  The judge: five .... MEEEIIILLIONNNN ... euros! Meta: lol
- belter 1y ago
  One less principal engineer signing bonus ...:-)
- mglazebrook 1y ago
  I doubt they will meet the deadline or care over 5mill. It just is pennies to them.
  - inetknght 1y ago
    The thing about ignoring courts' orders is... well, courts don't exactly look favorably on people who ignore them. Looking forward to court's round 2, then.
    - randomtoast 1y ago
      Yes, but it buys you some time. Also, Meta could appeal it.
    - lucianbr 1y ago
      They are not going to ignore it. They are going to appeal it with a hundred lawyers and a truckload of documents with arguments, and somehow get it watered down. This is what it looks like from my pov anyway. I think courts are generally swayed by many lawyer-hours and many legal-sounding-documents, because the judges are law professionals too, and naturally they think the profession is admirable, and so is doing so much legal analysis. Maybe the judges in NL are better than that, what do I know.
- lucumo 1y ago
  Note that the penalty for non-compliance will be forfeited to Bits of Freedom. It's not like a traffic fine that has to be paid to the government. In Dutch this is called a "last onder dwangsom": an injuctive order enforced by a conditional fine.
  - lucumo 1y ago
    As an addition, 5 million is a lot for BoF. At the end of 2024 their balance was a little over 1.8 million EUR. Even a single day's worth of coercive fine (100k EUR) would be meaningful to them. Their annual report is online at https://2024.bitsoffreedom.nl/en/ https://2024.bitsoffreedom.nl/en/ for people who want to learn more.
- FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago
  I’m almost hoping Facebook is going to refuse to change, a couple million to BoF would a very nice gift to them.
AdriaanvRossum 1y ago
Lekker bezig.
- sborsje 1y ago
  For non-Dutchies: Lekker busy.
lofaszvanitt 1y ago
English https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2025/10/02/judge-in-the-bits-of-freedom-vs-meta-lawsuit-meta-must-respect-users-choice/ https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2025/10/02/judge-in-the-bits-of...
hsuduebc2 1y ago
As a European, I’m glad that the influence of big, potentially dangerous companies is being kept in check. From the start of October, Meta is completely switching off political ads and now I can look forward to my feed stopping with tabloids, politics and Russian propaganda and going back to technical curiosities and capybaras.
- eru 1y ago
  Why don't you just stop using Facebook, if you don't like it?
  - astonex 1y ago
    It's about making the right choices for society as a whole
    - eru 1y ago
      Not using Facebook might be the right choice.
      - hiccuphippo 1y ago
        Because the alternatives are not going to try exploit us when they grow big enough?
        snoman 1y ago
        Not if there’s enough of them.
      - nathan_compton 1y ago
        It probably is the right choice. But that hardly means that we can't also regulate Facebook.
  - rosseitsa 1y ago
    There is a level of investment we put in the platforms we use. This comment is akin to asking farmers cut off from repairing their equipment "why don't you buy tractors from a different company instead of fighting to fix your existing ones?" The investment in the case of social media is the network you've built. In my country most local events are announced primarily on facebook for example.
55555 1y ago
Please for the love of god make it a legal requirement that messaging must be made available as a separate app without addictive feeds. Or make it such that users can disable the feed in settings. We need to be able to message our friends without seeing a feed without having to convert all of our friends to a new platform.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  Messenger is already a separate app.
  - moolcool 1y ago
    Instagram Messenger is not
    - sigzero 1y ago
      Isn't it free? You're asking a lot for something that is "free".
      - darkwater 1y ago
        You can actually pay for Instagram, if you don't want ads. You still have messages tied with the feed. Now, one must also say that Instagram wasn't the incumbent messaging platform in any place in the world. It's just that newer generations always cannot tolerate to do things like their parents did, so if their parents primarily used Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger (oh, wait, all of them owned by Meta!) to communicate, they ought to find a new platform to get locked in.
- pimlottc 1y ago
  Completely. I'm not normally on Instagram but I recently made meet some new friends that use it for messaging. The number of times I've open the app to message someone and gotten distracted by the feed...
- Aurornis 1y ago
spacecadet 1y ago
Should be a fixed % tax that is permanent and on all prior and future revenue.
quotemstr 1y ago
This is over the "most recent" mode? Absolutely moronic decision. It punishes companies for giving users any choice at all.
- hnuser123456 1y ago
  Yes, the issue is forced algorithm-based feeds, where Meta is free to profile as deeply as they want and exploit what should be private knowledge about you. A "most recent" feed (of things you already chose to subscribe to/follow) should be a standard option on any social media app, and the app shouldn't switch back to their toxic algorithm automatically anytime you look away. This behavior itself shows how much Meta wants to control what you see and is extra impetus to require a simple chronological feed option that is selectable as default, and that the user's choice is respected. IIRC, around 2008-2009, "most recent" was the only kind of feed, and within the span of a couple years, they added their "personalized" feed but would let you switch between the two freely (and the setting would persist), and not much later, the setting would no longer persist.
  - quotemstr 1y ago
    There are probably people on this thread who were born after algorithmic feeds became ubiquitous and they seem to have turned out fine. The moral panic over feed ranking models will seem to history as quaint as the moral panic over the telegraph and the train. If your new technology isn't attracting a swarm of moral gnats buzzing about it corrupting the youth, are you even making something impactful?
    - hnuser123456 1y ago
      Okay, but that doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and say "guess chronological sorting is too much to ask for." I flip between the homepage of HN, the /newest section, and the /active section, and frequently find interesting content at the top of each that is missing from (or buried in) the other views. Similar with facebook. The default feed to find bigger posts that might be a few days or a week old, and the recent feed for what's happening right now. How does it hurt you by requiring social media to offer a working chronological sort? I think even casual users understand the appeal of having both options and wouldn't want to lose it, assuming they discover it. I agree with the judge. We are not obligated to suffer the degeneracy of the hyper-optimized algorithm with no alternative. Just because you have never experienced the utility of working chronological sort doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
nhinck2 1y ago
I wish I could make youtube default to the subscriber behaviour.
- stickfigure 1y ago
  Subscribe?
- laweijfmvo 1y ago
  1. Subscribe to what you want to see 2. Bookmark the “your subscriptions” page; don’t visit the home page 2a. Although if you disable watch history, youtube tries to punish you by blanking out the “home” page. I consider that a good thing. 3. Use an ad blocker to hide the comments and side bar (recommended videos) That’s pretty much what I do. Discoverability happens off-site, which might be a hindrance for you, but I don’t necessarily want more stuff to watch for the sake of more stuff to watch.
  - green_beans_25 1y ago
    Blocking elements with ad block works well, but for convenience I use the extension Unhook. It can redirect the home feed to subscriptions, hide end screen cards, end screen feed, live chat, auto generated mixes, notifications, shorts, etc. I also use a tampermonkey script to auto set theater mode and resolution (necessary for incognito mode). It would be nice if youtube could include some of these handy features in the settings, but it is not something they want to do it seems.
- skrebbel 1y ago
  I use an extension called Unhook which has, as one of its many great options, a mode that disables the algorithmic youtube feed and auto-redirects the homepage to your subscriptions page (which is just reverse-chronological) (it also lets you disable Shorts and suggestions and so on, pretty fantastic actually)
Workaccount2 1y ago
They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which is used to target you with high value ads. Which covers the cost of your continued usage. If you don't like it, don't use instagram. If you really don't like it, lobby for the law to make it illegal, but get your credit card ready for another monthly subscription.
- hypercube33 1y ago
  There was a time I'd sub to YouTube. however they ditched the sub for that and force YouTube music as well with all of its enshitified user experience I want none of it.
- odux 1y ago
  Exactly. The very existence of these apps and websites is based on such “user hostile” behavior. Same with the cat and mouse game between YouTube ads and ad blockers and third party YouTube apps. If the side wanting to completely stop Youtube ads becomes successful, YouTube will cease to exist (as a free app). I am not arguing for this model, my feed is getting more useless every day, but the only other model is subscription based like you say. And for Facebook, Meta and the like, I don’t think the subscription revenue will be anywhere close due to economies of scale on the free model.
  - ilovetux 1y ago
    YouTube offers an ad-free subscription called YouTube premium. It's reasonably priced and includes access to YouTube Music. I like the hybrid approach of being able to be ad-supported or paid with no ads. I would like to see more of it. What I don't like is a paid service like Amazon Prime that also includes ads. They include ads in their search results and they include tons of ads in their video library. FWIW: Hulu offers paid access to content with ads but offers an upgrade to get rid of most of the ads, so there seems to be a whole lot of testing what works in this area going on right now, which I see as a good thing, I just hope that once everything settles the predominant model will be fair and respect user privacy.
whalesalad 1y ago
This is government overreach. These are novelty/fun apps. They are not critical infrastructure or needed in any way. This would be like a court ordering a local bar to serve more than just beer and wine, to accomodate people who like sake and soju. You have free choice to use the social platforms that you want to use. Really don't understand this kind of action tbh.
- suddenlybananas 1y ago
  Bars are heavily, heavily regulated actually. You could have chosen a better example.
  - richwater 1y ago
    They're heavily regulated but not regarding what liqueur and beer they have to offer...which is exactly what OP was comparing it to.
    - suddenlybananas 1y ago
      Actually, in many places there are regulations on these things. For example, in France, they are legally obligated to serve several non-alcoholic drinks if they serve beer and wine.
    - troupo 1y ago
      > but not regarding what liqueur and beer they have to offer Try selling moonshine you brewed under the counter, and you'll quickly learn how much regulation there is.
      - vanviegen 1y ago
        > moonshine you brewed under the counter That sounds like as good a metaphor for addictive and unhealthy social media feeds as any! :-)
    - advisedwang 1y ago
      Many jurisdictions do in fact include what drinks are available as license conditions. E.g. A license for beer and wine can be easier to get than a license for liquor. Or brewery (beer only) get a special category with less restrictions (e.g. they aren't required to provide food) etc etc
yujzgzc 1y ago
I've switched to email and chat for social connection, works a lot better for me than I think any ranked feed ever will, no matter how many court decisions try to shape it.
moi2388 1y ago
I would like them (or actually the EU) to go one step further: All people should see the same information, in the same order, with the same metadata such as likes and comments. Example: I go to Reddit. I see a list of only the subreddits I subscribed to. This is fine. But within this subreddit, I should see the same information as other users do. Currently, you don’t even see the same comments and same replies, likes, dislikes on topics. This puts people in bubbles, and makes it impossible to enforce fair reporting, illegal content or manipulation.
gnramires 1y ago
Something I think is worth pointing out: this is happening in the Netherlands, i.e. their jurisdiction. I think most people here aren't from the Netherlands. I think they should be free to try out the legislation they want, and people elsewhere don't need to agree. It's good that different countries can try different things, and if that doesn't work it's a lesson for other places, and if it works that's even better. People on the internet tend to focus too much on uniformity and conformity, as if we lived everyone in the same place.
- f33d5173 1y ago
  It's the implementation of an eu wide law. Judges in other countries might rule differently, but this isn't really an example of the netherlands going its own way and experimenting.
ankit219 1y ago
The headline is provocative. The issue is simple: Meta has a recommended feed and another feed which is reverse chronological. The option is hidden and not default, and all the NL judge is asking is for that option to be preserved and not be reset everytime user opens the app/website. Instagram never had this option, this does not say whether they have to implement it too. I would be curious if the order stands as for curation as well. Someone could have 1000s of friends, and you cant show posts from everyone in a reverse chronological order for a good ux.
- arccy 1y ago
  on the Instagram mobile app: long press their logo to switch from the recommended feed to your following feed, in reverse chronological order
toofy 1y ago
/me claps. in my not so humble and often overly verbose opinion, we desperately need to get back to a place where we have more control over what our own inputs. a handful of people are now in control of the overwhelming majority of what we see. whether that’s the few websites most people visit or the wildly merging media ecosystem which is now also overwhelmingly controlled by a tiny few with even more mergers on the immediate horizon. to the corporate live event space. it’s insane that weve allowed such a tiny few to control nearly everything our people ingest. anything which counters this stranglehold on our inputs is a good thing, no matter how small.

327 points by mattashii 1y ago

Judgement (dutch): https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/20251002-vonnis-kort-geding.pdf https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025... The judgement requires Meta to change their platforms within 2 weeks so that the user's choice is persistent. If not implemented in 2 weeks, there is a daily penalty of €100'000, up to a maximum of €5 million.

jacooper 1y ago
Lol 5 million is pocket change for meta, wtf are these courts doing?
- tantalor 1y ago
  Maybe it's per user?
  - hsuduebc2 1y ago
    I believe that is kind of a warning. The major fines based on the global revenue is issued usually by some european institution.
  - diggan 1y ago
    Doesn't seem like it: > 5.3. orders Meta Ireland to pay BoE a penalty of €100,000.00 for each day or part thereof that it does not, or does not fully, comply with the orders under 5.1 and/or 5.2, up to a maximum total of €5,000,000.00. Original: > 5.3. veroordeelt Meta Ierland om aan BoE een dangsom te betalen van € 100.000.00 oor iedere dag of gedeelte daarvan dat zij niet of niet volledig aan de beelen onder 5.1 en/of 5.2 oldoet. tot een maximum an in totaal € 5.000.000.00 is bereikt. It seems like usually they start with smaller fines, and if the offense is repeated, they ramp it up. Kind of makes sense.
  - markus92 1y ago
    Na, but under the Dutch legal you can go back to the court if they pay the 5 million without changing anything and ask if they can increase it cus it clearly wasn’t enough. They’ll just keep tacking zeroes on.
    - jeroenhd 1y ago
      Yes and no. The judge can choose to tack on zeroes to make Meta comply, but they may also find that monetary fines are not sufficient and take other measures. This is not just a money printing machine you can keep coming back to. If Meta can provide a reasonable time frame for compliance, the judge may also choose to let the existing limit on reparations stand rather than increase it, despite them not complying the day they hit the 5 million euro mark. It's all up to what the judge deems reasonable to make Meta comply with the court's orders.
      - markus92 1y ago
        Exactly, they can’t just pay the 5 million and call it a day.
- maccard 1y ago
  The goal isn’t to penalize, it’s to get them to comply.
  - throwaw12 1y ago
    for 5 million? I am willing to pay 0.01$ out of my pocket to not comply with some regulations in my country. I can even pay annually
    - maccard 1y ago
      Yes, for 5 million. It’s an intentional slap on the wrist because they don’t actually want to fine them, they just want them to change their behaviour. The general MO of European courts is to get people to comply, not to punish non compliance. There’s a subtle difference. If Meta change their tact in the next two weeks then they got what they wanted. If they don’t, fine increases and they’ll escalate responses.
      - Twirrim 1y ago
        Failure to comply will also increasingly prejudice later legal cases and judgments down the road.
      - niek_pas 1y ago
        Some useful context here is that the Netherlands is holding a general election on 29 October, which is why the deadline of two weeks was imposed. If Meta does not comply with the two weeks deadline and instead pays the (tiny) $5 million fine, that could have serious consequences for the democratic process in the Netherlands. Escalating after two weeks might be too little, too late.
        maccard 1y ago
        That’s actually really interesting to know. I don’t think it would have serious implications if they chose to pay, but I do think it will be catastrophic if meta refuse to change and NL don’t escalate to the point of forcing compliance.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  This is 5 million for this particular court case. Nothing is preventing others from filing their own, very similar cases. If Meta ignores the court's decision, a second lawsuit may end much worse for them. Though, practically speaking, America has been threatening to make the trade war they started much worse for the EU if it tried to enforce things like DSA and GDPR fines. We'll have to see how enforceable these laws really are.
  - gman83 1y ago
    The US wouldn't be doing this if these American tech companies weren't lobbying the government hard to kill the DSA & GDPR. It seems like all regulatory enforcement is out of the window with this administration, so if they can kill the European regulations, they're free to do as they like. The scoping of the trade war as the US having a deficit with all countries by not counting services is ridiculous, it's the most important sector of the economy, and the US has a massive surplus in services.
    - deaux 1y ago
      Ding ding ding! If the EU had even the tiniest of balls, they would've accepted the US tariffs with open arms while applying equivalent ones on services at the same time. Glazing Trump during the announcement about how great of an idea it is to institute these things, how much fairer they make it.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  Fines in general aren't effective. Perhaps this case doesn't warrant it, but generally speaking I'd like to see allocating jailtime across the top shareholders as an option. If my dog bites somebody, I'm on the hook, it should be no different with a company.
  - DoktorDelta 1y ago
    "I'll Believe That Corporations Are People When Texas Executes One" ~Robert Reich
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > but generally speaking I'd like to see allocating jailtime across the top shareholders as an option. Shareholders don’t control day to day operations of a company. Top shareholders rarely have enough shares by themselves to control anything about the company. Remember the VW emissions cheating scandal where people were jailed? It would be completely unreasonable to jail top shareholders because some manager somewhere concocted a scheme to cheat on emissions. Jailing top shareholders for decisions made by the company would be a weird misdirected use of the justice system. If someone is to be jailed, it should be people responsible for the decision. That said, I can’t believe anyone would be watching the news about the current U.S. administration threatening companies with spurious and often nonsensical demands and think that we should be normalizing the process of letting the government jail individuals if the company does something the government doesn’t like that would have previously been a small fine. You can’t think of any way this power might be abused by elected officials?
    - __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
      The only sense in which punishment of any kind is reasonable is when it works to disincentivise harmful behavior. If higher risks for shareholders convince them to take a more active role in ensuring that their investment isn't causing harm to the rest of us, then they're at least as reasonable than any other sort of punishment. If the cheating had gone unnoticed, the shareholders would've been rewarded, so they should bear some risk whether or not they sold after the crime was committed. As it is, we've got incentives set up to encourage investment in bad behavior so long as you get out before your people get caught. As for the government abusing the justice system... What rules would create justice is sort of orthogonal to the circumstances under which the rules are broken.
- RobotToaster 1y ago
  It also means that after 50 days there's basically no incentive to comply.
pettertb 1y ago
Fines up to 5 million Euros against meta Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- N70Phone 1y ago
  > Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a! That is the implication. The point of the first fine isn't to actually hurt Meta. It's to signal that there will be consequences, that the excuse of "but we thought it was legal" is gone now and give them one final chance to get their act together. It's to pre-emptively clear away any possibility for Meta to appeal to either higher courts or the court of public opinion that they're being treated unfairly. Which they would do if you immediately hit them with a say, €5 billion fine.
mrtksn 1y ago
That how you build up a case for transferring control. First its "lol, 5m is a pocket change" and it becomes argument of politicians for tighter control over Meta. Then Zuck says they are trying to make the world a better place but it doesn't stick, people side with the politician who is building a career by sticking it to Meta. So not entirely useless.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  I'm not sure if you're arguing for more or less control being transferred from Meta towards the state, but I agree with your observation.
dmd 1y ago
The judge: five .... MEEEIIILLIONNNN ... euros! Meta: lol
belter 1y ago
One less principal engineer signing bonus ...:-)
mglazebrook 1y ago
I doubt they will meet the deadline or care over 5mill. It just is pennies to them.
- inetknght 1y ago
  The thing about ignoring courts' orders is... well, courts don't exactly look favorably on people who ignore them. Looking forward to court's round 2, then.
  - randomtoast 1y ago
    Yes, but it buys you some time. Also, Meta could appeal it.
  - lucianbr 1y ago
    They are not going to ignore it. They are going to appeal it with a hundred lawyers and a truckload of documents with arguments, and somehow get it watered down. This is what it looks like from my pov anyway. I think courts are generally swayed by many lawyer-hours and many legal-sounding-documents, because the judges are law professionals too, and naturally they think the profession is admirable, and so is doing so much legal analysis. Maybe the judges in NL are better than that, what do I know.
lucumo 1y ago
Note that the penalty for non-compliance will be forfeited to Bits of Freedom. It's not like a traffic fine that has to be paid to the government. In Dutch this is called a "last onder dwangsom": an injuctive order enforced by a conditional fine.
- lucumo 1y ago
  As an addition, 5 million is a lot for BoF. At the end of 2024 their balance was a little over 1.8 million EUR. Even a single day's worth of coercive fine (100k EUR) would be meaningful to them. Their annual report is online at https://2024.bitsoffreedom.nl/en/ https://2024.bitsoffreedom.nl/en/ for people who want to learn more.
FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago
I’m almost hoping Facebook is going to refuse to change, a couple million to BoF would a very nice gift to them.

AdriaanvRossum 1y ago

Lekker bezig.

sborsje 1y ago
For non-Dutchies: Lekker busy.

lofaszvanitt 1y ago

English https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2025/10/02/judge-in-the-bits-of-freedom-vs-meta-lawsuit-meta-must-respect-users-choice/ https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2025/10/02/judge-in-the-bits-of...

hsuduebc2 1y ago

As a European, I’m glad that the influence of big, potentially dangerous companies is being kept in check. From the start of October, Meta is completely switching off political ads and now I can look forward to my feed stopping with tabloids, politics and Russian propaganda and going back to technical curiosities and capybaras.

eru 1y ago
Why don't you just stop using Facebook, if you don't like it?
- astonex 1y ago
  It's about making the right choices for society as a whole
  - eru 1y ago
    Not using Facebook might be the right choice.
    - hiccuphippo 1y ago
      Because the alternatives are not going to try exploit us when they grow big enough?
      - snoman 1y ago
        Not if there’s enough of them.
    - nathan_compton 1y ago
      It probably is the right choice. But that hardly means that we can't also regulate Facebook.
- rosseitsa 1y ago
  There is a level of investment we put in the platforms we use. This comment is akin to asking farmers cut off from repairing their equipment "why don't you buy tractors from a different company instead of fighting to fix your existing ones?" The investment in the case of social media is the network you've built. In my country most local events are announced primarily on facebook for example.

55555 1y ago

Please for the love of god make it a legal requirement that messaging must be made available as a separate app without addictive feeds. Or make it such that users can disable the feed in settings. We need to be able to message our friends without seeing a feed without having to convert all of our friends to a new platform.

School-Cotton 1y ago
Messenger is already a separate app.
- moolcool 1y ago
  Instagram Messenger is not
  - sigzero 1y ago
    Isn't it free? You're asking a lot for something that is "free".
    - darkwater 1y ago
      You can actually pay for Instagram, if you don't want ads. You still have messages tied with the feed. Now, one must also say that Instagram wasn't the incumbent messaging platform in any place in the world. It's just that newer generations always cannot tolerate to do things like their parents did, so if their parents primarily used Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger (oh, wait, all of them owned by Meta!) to communicate, they ought to find a new platform to get locked in.
pimlottc 1y ago
Completely. I'm not normally on Instagram but I recently made meet some new friends that use it for messaging. The number of times I've open the app to message someone and gotten distracted by the feed...
Aurornis 1y ago

spacecadet 1y ago

Should be a fixed % tax that is permanent and on all prior and future revenue.

quotemstr 1y ago

This is over the "most recent" mode? Absolutely moronic decision. It punishes companies for giving users any choice at all.

hnuser123456 1y ago
Yes, the issue is forced algorithm-based feeds, where Meta is free to profile as deeply as they want and exploit what should be private knowledge about you. A "most recent" feed (of things you already chose to subscribe to/follow) should be a standard option on any social media app, and the app shouldn't switch back to their toxic algorithm automatically anytime you look away. This behavior itself shows how much Meta wants to control what you see and is extra impetus to require a simple chronological feed option that is selectable as default, and that the user's choice is respected. IIRC, around 2008-2009, "most recent" was the only kind of feed, and within the span of a couple years, they added their "personalized" feed but would let you switch between the two freely (and the setting would persist), and not much later, the setting would no longer persist.
- quotemstr 1y ago
  There are probably people on this thread who were born after algorithmic feeds became ubiquitous and they seem to have turned out fine. The moral panic over feed ranking models will seem to history as quaint as the moral panic over the telegraph and the train. If your new technology isn't attracting a swarm of moral gnats buzzing about it corrupting the youth, are you even making something impactful?
  - hnuser123456 1y ago
    Okay, but that doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and say "guess chronological sorting is too much to ask for." I flip between the homepage of HN, the /newest section, and the /active section, and frequently find interesting content at the top of each that is missing from (or buried in) the other views. Similar with facebook. The default feed to find bigger posts that might be a few days or a week old, and the recent feed for what's happening right now. How does it hurt you by requiring social media to offer a working chronological sort? I think even casual users understand the appeal of having both options and wouldn't want to lose it, assuming they discover it. I agree with the judge. We are not obligated to suffer the degeneracy of the hyper-optimized algorithm with no alternative. Just because you have never experienced the utility of working chronological sort doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

nhinck2 1y ago

I wish I could make youtube default to the subscriber behaviour.

stickfigure 1y ago
Subscribe?
laweijfmvo 1y ago
1. Subscribe to what you want to see 2. Bookmark the “your subscriptions” page; don’t visit the home page 2a. Although if you disable watch history, youtube tries to punish you by blanking out the “home” page. I consider that a good thing. 3. Use an ad blocker to hide the comments and side bar (recommended videos) That’s pretty much what I do. Discoverability happens off-site, which might be a hindrance for you, but I don’t necessarily want more stuff to watch for the sake of more stuff to watch.
- green_beans_25 1y ago
  Blocking elements with ad block works well, but for convenience I use the extension Unhook. It can redirect the home feed to subscriptions, hide end screen cards, end screen feed, live chat, auto generated mixes, notifications, shorts, etc. I also use a tampermonkey script to auto set theater mode and resolution (necessary for incognito mode). It would be nice if youtube could include some of these handy features in the settings, but it is not something they want to do it seems.
skrebbel 1y ago
I use an extension called Unhook which has, as one of its many great options, a mode that disables the algorithmic youtube feed and auto-redirects the homepage to your subscriptions page (which is just reverse-chronological) (it also lets you disable Shorts and suggestions and so on, pretty fantastic actually)

Workaccount2 1y ago

They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which is used to target you with high value ads. Which covers the cost of your continued usage. If you don't like it, don't use instagram. If you really don't like it, lobby for the law to make it illegal, but get your credit card ready for another monthly subscription.

hypercube33 1y ago
There was a time I'd sub to YouTube. however they ditched the sub for that and force YouTube music as well with all of its enshitified user experience I want none of it.
odux 1y ago
Exactly. The very existence of these apps and websites is based on such “user hostile” behavior. Same with the cat and mouse game between YouTube ads and ad blockers and third party YouTube apps. If the side wanting to completely stop Youtube ads becomes successful, YouTube will cease to exist (as a free app). I am not arguing for this model, my feed is getting more useless every day, but the only other model is subscription based like you say. And for Facebook, Meta and the like, I don’t think the subscription revenue will be anywhere close due to economies of scale on the free model.
- ilovetux 1y ago
  YouTube offers an ad-free subscription called YouTube premium. It's reasonably priced and includes access to YouTube Music. I like the hybrid approach of being able to be ad-supported or paid with no ads. I would like to see more of it. What I don't like is a paid service like Amazon Prime that also includes ads. They include ads in their search results and they include tons of ads in their video library. FWIW: Hulu offers paid access to content with ads but offers an upgrade to get rid of most of the ads, so there seems to be a whole lot of testing what works in this area going on right now, which I see as a good thing, I just hope that once everything settles the predominant model will be fair and respect user privacy.

whalesalad 1y ago

This is government overreach. These are novelty/fun apps. They are not critical infrastructure or needed in any way. This would be like a court ordering a local bar to serve more than just beer and wine, to accomodate people who like sake and soju. You have free choice to use the social platforms that you want to use. Really don't understand this kind of action tbh.

suddenlybananas 1y ago
Bars are heavily, heavily regulated actually. You could have chosen a better example.
- richwater 1y ago
  They're heavily regulated but not regarding what liqueur and beer they have to offer...which is exactly what OP was comparing it to.
  - suddenlybananas 1y ago
    Actually, in many places there are regulations on these things. For example, in France, they are legally obligated to serve several non-alcoholic drinks if they serve beer and wine.
  - troupo 1y ago
    > but not regarding what liqueur and beer they have to offer Try selling moonshine you brewed under the counter, and you'll quickly learn how much regulation there is.
    - vanviegen 1y ago
      > moonshine you brewed under the counter That sounds like as good a metaphor for addictive and unhealthy social media feeds as any! :-)
  - advisedwang 1y ago
    Many jurisdictions do in fact include what drinks are available as license conditions. E.g. A license for beer and wine can be easier to get than a license for liquor. Or brewery (beer only) get a special category with less restrictions (e.g. they aren't required to provide food) etc etc

yujzgzc 1y ago

I've switched to email and chat for social connection, works a lot better for me than I think any ranked feed ever will, no matter how many court decisions try to shape it.

moi2388 1y ago

I would like them (or actually the EU) to go one step further: All people should see the same information, in the same order, with the same metadata such as likes and comments. Example: I go to Reddit. I see a list of only the subreddits I subscribed to. This is fine. But within this subreddit, I should see the same information as other users do. Currently, you don’t even see the same comments and same replies, likes, dislikes on topics. This puts people in bubbles, and makes it impossible to enforce fair reporting, illegal content or manipulation.

gnramires 1y ago

Something I think is worth pointing out: this is happening in the Netherlands, i.e. their jurisdiction. I think most people here aren't from the Netherlands. I think they should be free to try out the legislation they want, and people elsewhere don't need to agree. It's good that different countries can try different things, and if that doesn't work it's a lesson for other places, and if it works that's even better. People on the internet tend to focus too much on uniformity and conformity, as if we lived everyone in the same place.

f33d5173 1y ago
It's the implementation of an eu wide law. Judges in other countries might rule differently, but this isn't really an example of the netherlands going its own way and experimenting.

ankit219 1y ago

The headline is provocative. The issue is simple: Meta has a recommended feed and another feed which is reverse chronological. The option is hidden and not default, and all the NL judge is asking is for that option to be preserved and not be reset everytime user opens the app/website. Instagram never had this option, this does not say whether they have to implement it too. I would be curious if the order stands as for curation as well. Someone could have 1000s of friends, and you cant show posts from everyone in a reverse chronological order for a good ux.

arccy 1y ago
on the Instagram mobile app: long press their logo to switch from the recommended feed to your following feed, in reverse chronological order

toofy 1y ago

/me claps. in my not so humble and often overly verbose opinion, we desperately need to get back to a place where we have more control over what our own inputs. a handful of people are now in control of the overwhelming majority of what we see. whether that’s the few websites most people visit or the wildly merging media ecosystem which is now also overwhelmingly controlled by a tiny few with even more mergers on the immediate horizon. to the corporate live event space. it’s insane that weve allowed such a tiny few to control nearly everything our people ingest. anything which counters this stranglehold on our inputs is a good thing, no matter how small.