New Delhi, July 10 -- BRUSSELS - A decade after platforms turned the compulsive scroll into a deliberate architecture choice, the European Commission announced Friday that Meta violated the Digital Services Act by designing Facebook and Instagram to keep users engaged through mechanisms that functionally override volition, and gave the company a deadline to dismantle them.

infinite scroll, autoplay video, push notifications, the Reels recommendation algorithm, and the Stories format. Each of these, the Commission stated, "fuels the user's urge to keep scrolling" and shifts users into "autopilot mode" by bypassing the conscious decision to continue using the application. The finding applies to users generally but emphasizes harm to minors...