TikTok's Infinite Scroll: Why the EU Calls It Illegal

Opening

Hello, dear subscriber.

On February 6, 2026, the European Commission issued a preliminary finding against TikTok. The charge is worded in an unusually clinical way: “addictive design” in violation of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA)¹. This ties directly back to an ADHD newsletter I wrote earlier.

This is the first time in EU history that an app’s algorithm and UX design—not its content—have become the direct target of legal sanction. This isn’t about what’s being posted. It’s about the structural architecture of the experience itself: infinite scroll, autoplay, and hyper-personalized recommendation algorithms.

But a question surfaces here. “YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels work exactly the same way—so why TikTok specifically?” And beyond that: what ripple effects will this regulation have on AI personalization services as a whole?

The Day the Slot Machine Moved Into Our Phones

Infinite scroll first appeared in 2006. It was invented by Aza Raskin, Twitter’s former UX designer, who later publicly called it “one of the mistakes I’ve made.”

Why the regret? Because of a behaviorist principle B.F. Skinner discovered in the 1950s: variable ratio reinforcement. In experiments with rats, Skinner found that unpredictable rewards sustain behavior far more powerfully and for far longer than predictable ones. Slot machines are engineered around exactly this principle. Every pull feels like something might come out—but the uncertainty of when is what keeps your hand from stopping.

Scrolling down a social media feed is structurally identical to pulling a slot machine lever. When you find something interesting, dopamine gets released, and you start anticipating the next hit. Even when that anticipation goes unmet, your finger is already moving.

Here’s where TikTok’s distinction emerges. YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels technically hit a point where content runs dry. TikTok, by contrast, reconstructs its playlist endlessly in real time, learning from user reactions as they happen. There’s always a “next video” waiting in the wings. The European Commission described this design as switching the user’s brain into “autopilot mode.”

The Data the EU Brought to the Table

The European Commission’s preliminary finding isn’t a mere political statement—it’s the product of a 14-month deep investigation. The formal probe, launched in February 2024, drew on TikTok’s internal risk assessment reports, internal data, and interviews with experts in behavioral addiction.

The Commission specifically flagged the following:

• Infinite scroll: a structure with no natural stopping point for content consumption
• Autoplay: transitions to the next video without active user choice
• Late-night push notifications: alert designs that keep pulling users back into the app during sleep hours
• Hyper-personalized recommendation systems: real-time content optimization through user profiling²

The Commission paid particular attention to teen data. A significant share of 13-to-15-year-olds in the EU spend 3 to 5 hours a day on TikTok, and TikTok ranks first among most-used apps during late-night hours (after 10 PM)—both cited as key evidence. A 2024 survey by the U.S. Pew Research Center similarly found that about 60% of teens use TikTok daily, and 16% say they’re on it “almost constantly.”

The Commission concluded that TikTok deliberately omitted these overuse indicators—late-night access frequency, app-launch counts, compulsive usage patterns—from its risk assessment reports. It also pointed out that existing screen-time management tools and parental controls fail to meaningfully reduce this structural risk. But is there really any IT product or service today that doesn’t do all four of these things?

TikTok pushed back immediately, calling the findings “baseless distortions” and formally contesting them—though at this stage, it’s still exercising its right to respond to the Commission’s claims.

The Return of “Tobacco Company Liability”

There’s a comparison that’s proven especially useful for understanding this case—one that major European opinion outlets have converged on independently: the history of tobacco regulation.

In the early 1950s and ’60s, the harms of smoking were framed³ as a matter of personal willpower. The logic went: “If you can’t quit smoking, that’s your own lack of willpower.” But at some point, the regulatory framing shifted. Responsibility moved to tobacco companies, who knew about nicotine’s addictiveness yet built it into their product design anyway. Mandatory warning images on cigarette packs, advertising restrictions, and public smoking bans all came after that shift.

The EU’s TikTok ruling is attempting the same shift for social media—a paradigm change that says: “This isn’t a matter of user willpower. It’s the responsibility of platform UX design.”

Indeed, European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen put it this way: “The Digital Services Act makes platforms accountable for the impact they have on their users. In Europe, we enforce the law to protect children and citizens online.”

It’s also worth noting that this isn’t a recommendation—it’s an enforceable rule. Under the DSA, if a final finding of non-compliance is issued, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance could face fines of up to 6% of its global annual revenue. Given ByteDance’s projected 2025 revenue targets, that could translate into several billion dollars.

Oz’s Lens

Honestly, I hold two contradictory reactions to this ruling at once: “of course this is right” and “this feels like it’s gone too far.”

Dark patterns⁴, variable-reward design, and late-night notifications—these absolutely should be regulated. A design that force-feeds the next piece of content even at the exact moment a user has decided “I’m done for now” comes close to violating their right to self-determination.

But there’s something history and precedent keep teaching us: regulation always produces a balloon effect. Squeeze one side, and another side inevitably bulges out. That’s what happened with Korea’s gaming shutdown law, and with the mandatory closure days for large supermarkets. When analysts later pointed out that forcing big-box stores to close on certain days had simply funneled more business to Coupang, I can only imagine the expressions on the faces of the people who designed that original policy. Regulatory intent and regulatory outcome don’t always line up.

There’s a deeper concern underneath this. If “hyper-personalized algorithms” and “user profiling” themselves become targets of regulation, where exactly does that line stop? From a data professional’s perspective, this design principle isn’t unique to social media. The core value we expect from an AI personal assistant is precisely “hyper-personalized recommendations that know me best.” Whether it’s ChatGPT or Claude, the value proposition ultimately comes down to “remembering my context and giving me answers optimized for me.” Setting a precedent that this kind of structure is regulable could shape design principles across the entire AI industry.

The door the EU pried open this time doesn’t look like it’s TikTok’s alone.

Closing

Here’s how I’d summarize this whole situation.

For the first time, the EU has placed responsibility for experience design—not just content—onto a formal regulatory framework, and it did so through TikTok. This is only a preliminary finding, so procedures remain before a final conclusion, but Facebook, Instagram, and the fashion platform Shein are already under investigation on the same charges. Australia has implemented a total ban on social media for users under 16, and Spain, France, Denmark, and Norway are reviewing similar legislation.

Regulatory debates that originate in Europe tend to ripple outward to the U.S. and Asia. This moment might well be the inflection point where the ethics of digital platform design undergo a paradigm shift.

I’d like to leave you with a question. Among the apps you use every day, is there one you wanted to quit but couldn’t? Was that a matter of your willpower — or a matter of design?

References & Further Reading

• European Commission, “Commission preliminarily finds TikTok’s addictive design in breach of the Digital Services Act”, EC Press Release, February 6, 2026. — The core primary source for this issue. Read the Commission’s full official position here.
• Caroline Gorman, “Just One More Video…: Down the (Legal) Rabbit Hole of TikTok’s Addictive Design”, Verfassungsblog, March 2026. — The clearest legal analysis of the DSA’s legal framework and the interpretation of Articles 28 and 35.
• “How Have Platforms Addressed Addictive Design Under DSA”, TechPolicy.Press, February 2026. — An in-depth report comparing the DSA risk assessment reports of TikTok and two other platforms.
• On B.F. Skinner’s variable ratio reinforcement principle and its relationship to social media design: Aza Raskin, “Infinite Scroll: The Web’s Slot Machine”, Center for Humane Technology. — A confession of regret from the person who designed infinite scroll himself. The most candid account of why this structure is a problem.
• Natasha Dow Schüll, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, Princeton University Press, 2012. — A classic study of the psychology behind slot machine design. Essential background for understanding its connection to social media UX.
• Pew Research Center, “Teens, Social Media and Technology 2024”, December 2024. — The most reliable data on the state of social media use among American teenagers.

The author, Kwangseob Ahn, is a professor of business administration at Sejong University and lead consultant at OBF (Oswarld Boutique Consulting Firm). He teaches statistics and data analysis — business data management and business analytics — while leading GTM and AI strategy consulting in the field, designing the seam between technology and business. He has published academic research on a memory architecture for AI dialogue systems (HEMA) and runs Daily Arxiv, a daily curation of global AI papers. He holds a master’s from Korea University’s Graduate School of Technology Management and a KMBA. He is the author of Homo Brainless: The People Who Outsource Their Thinking.

Footnotes

1. DSA (Digital Services Act): A regulatory law for online platforms that the EU implemented in 2023. It imposes strict requirements—risk assessment obligations, content regulation, advertising transparency, and more—on large platforms above a certain user threshold. ↩

2. User Profiling: A technology that collects and analyzes user behavioral data (search terms, watch time, click patterns, etc.) to predict individual interests and psychological patterns. It forms the core foundation of recommendation algorithms. ↩

3. Framing: The phenomenon where understanding and judgment of the same issue shift depending on the perspective and language used to view it. Just as “smoking is a matter of personal willpower” shifted to “smoking is engineered addiction,” framing refers to a reframing that relocates where responsibility itself is understood to lie. ↩

4. Dark Pattern: UI/UX techniques intentionally designed to steer users toward actions they wouldn’t otherwise choose. Common examples include button placements that make it difficult to cancel a subscription, or setting auto-renewal consent as the default option. ↩