On May 5, 2026, Coimisiún na Meán — Ireland's Digital Services Coordinator and the regulator with primary EU-level authority over Meta's European operations — opened two formal investigations into Facebook and Instagram. The probes will examine whether Meta deploys 'dark patterns' to steer users away from a recommender feed that does not rely on behavioural profiling, in possible breach of Articles 25.1 and 27.3 of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). Meta now faces potential fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover and, more consequentially for the broader sector, the first regulatory adjudication of what actually counts as a 'dark pattern' under EU law.
What is alleged
The investigations follow a complaint filed on April 15, 2025 by Bits of Freedom, European Digital Rights (EDRi), the Society for Civil Rights (GFF) and Convocation Research + Design, on behalf of an Irish Facebook and Instagram user. The complainants argue that Meta's interface buries the non-profiling feed option, fails to make the user's selection persistent across sessions, and uses surrounding visual cues to nudge people back toward the profiling-driven feed. The same fact pattern was already tested in a Dutch civil court, where in October 2025 a judge ruled in Bits of Freedom v. Meta that requiring users to re-select a non-profiling feed every session was incompatible with the DSA.
Coimisiún na Meán's Digital Services Commissioner John Evans framed the Irish probe in stark terms, saying it is 'unacceptable for platforms to prevent people from using their rights under the law, or to try to manipulate people away from making empowered choices.' Meta responded that it disagrees with any suggestion of breach and has 'introduced substantial changes to our processes and systems to meet our regulatory obligations,' though it did not specify what those changes are.
The strongest case for intervention
The regulator's case is not trivial, and it deserves to be taken on its strongest terms before being criticised. Article 27.3 of the DSA is explicit: very large online platforms — those with more than 45 million EU monthly users — must offer 'at least one option for each of their recommender systems which is not based on profiling,' and that option must be 'directly and easily accessible.' If users genuinely cannot find the option, or are repeatedly defaulted back into profiling without active consent, the right exists only on paper. The DSA's drafters explicitly wanted a real, visible lever — one of the few mechanisms in the regulation that gives individuals a way to push back against engagement-optimised content. A platform that complies in letter but not in spirit hollows out the law's animating policy.
There is also a structural argument. Civil-society complainants cannot run controlled UX experiments at the scale Meta can. If a regulator never tests interface choices against the manipulation prohibition in Article 25.1, the asymmetry of design power between platforms and users becomes permanent. Some adjudication is needed for the right to mean anything.
The proportionality problem
The regulatory question, then, is not whether dark patterns can exist. They obviously can. It is whether Article 25.1 — which prohibits interfaces that 'deceive or manipulate' or 'materially distort or impair' user choices — gives enforcers a workable, predictable standard. The text is broad enough to cover everything from a fake 'close' button on a pop-up to the default ordering of items in a settings menu. The European Commission's own DSA explainer describes prohibited dark patterns as anything from 'aggressive pop-ups' to 'confusing and misleading consent buttons,' which is wide enough that almost any defensible UX decision will look manipulative to someone.
In practice, the line between persuasive design and prohibited manipulation will turn on whether a regulator believes the user 'really' wanted a particular outcome. That is a deeply normative question dressed up as a factual one. Default settings, copy, button placement and friction are the substance of product design — not a separable layer over it. A doctrine that treats defaults as presumptively deceptive imports a strong paternalist premise: that personalised feeds, which users overwhelmingly choose to keep on competing platforms, must be considered against the user's interest unless they actively opt back in.
There is a proportionate version of this enforcement available. Insist that the non-profiling option be discoverable through a normal settings menu, that it persist across sessions (as the Dutch court already required), and that it not be paired with misleading copy. That is the spirit of Article 27.3 and can be enforced through narrow design remedies rather than headline turnover fines.
Why this case matters beyond Meta
This is not the first DSA probe — the European Commission already has preliminary findings against X and TikTok — but it is one of the first to interrogate ordinary UX choices on a mainstream consumer surface. The Irish regulator now has multiple live DSA investigations and is assisting several Commission-led cases, in cooperation with Digital Services Coordinators across the bloc. Whatever standard Coimisiún na Meán adopts for what 'easily accessible' means will be picked up by every national regulator in Europe, and by litigants in the wave of private DSA suits the Dutch ruling has already triggered.
A proportionate ruling — one that prescribes clear, narrow design requirements and avoids policing every persuasive flourish — would strengthen the DSA's credibility and give product teams a target they can build to. A maximalist reading, especially one paired with multi-billion-euro fines for ambiguous UX choices, would chill the iterative product design the European tech sector cannot afford to lose. 'Easily accessible' should mean genuinely findable, not government-designed.