The news: Personalized algorithms are the new focus of youth social media bans—but major social leaders are pushing back.
- Meta, Google, and TikTok are suing to block a California law that would ban “addictive-feautures” for users under 16. These features include algorithmically recommended content and autoplay videos that lead to infinite scrolling.
- The bill was signed into law in September and is set to take effect on January 1, 2027.
- The companies argue that the law infringes on publishers’ First Amendment rights to exercise editorial discretion and conflicts with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms’ decisions about how to present user-generated content.
The news comes shortly after Australia announced plans to crack down on personalized algorithms, following its introduction of the first major global youth social media ban.
But unlike Australia’s proposal, this law doesn’t simply allow young users to choose whether to opt into personalized algorithms—it bans the feature entirely.
Why it matters: Should the three companies lose, marketers will lose one of the most effective pathways to delivering relevant ads to younger users.
- Algorithms are an important part of getting users to trust product recommendations. Nearly 70% of US social media users overall trust product recommendations surfaced by algorithms to some degree, according to EMARKETER and Viral Nation data.
- 12.4% trust algorithmic recommendations completely, above those who completely trust recommendations from paid or sponsored ads (11.1%) and anonymous online community discussions (9.2%).