Social media giants fail to block California prohibition of addictive feeds for minors

The companies failed to persuade a judge that their reliance on algorithms amounted to “expressive” activity meriting First Amendment protection. (CN) — A federal judge rejected on Thursday a bid by Meta, Google and TikTok to block provisions of California’s Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act that prohibits them from sending minors personalized — or addictive — feeds. Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, denied the social media behemoths’ request for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the statute’s provisions, which bar them from sending minor users personalized feeds based on their prior interactions with their platforms. The Barack Obama appointee said the three companies weren’t likely to succeed with their First Amendment challenge to the state law because the personalized feeds aren’t “expressive,” but the product of predictive algorithms that incorporate a user’s past watch history and other data to suggest content that the algorithms anticipate will be engaging or interesting to this user. “Plaintiffs are not making any decisions about what content will be ‘interesting,’ because they are merely relying on predictive modeling to assess what users’ characteristics and history on the platform suggest will keep these same users engaged,” Davila said.
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