Dutch MP proposes law to ban addictive design on platforms

The Dutch Labour Party's Barbara Kathmann wants endless scrolling, autoplay videos and luring notifications classified as unfair commercial practices, with parliamentarians in seven other countries on board. Brussels has warned that diverging national rules risk fragmenting the single market.

PvdA MP Barbara Kathmann, of the PvdA, the Dutch Labour Party, has put forward a plan to stop platforms from keeping users hooked through the design of their apps. Barbara Kathmann, of the PvdA, introduced a legislative proposal on 2 November 2026 to ban harmful, addictive algorithms on digital platforms. Under the bill, manipulative design tricks such as endless scrolling and luring users into unplanned purchases would count as banned "unfair commercial practices".

On 17 September 2026, the European Commission issued the EU KIDS Act proposal, a draft set of rules on minors' access to online platforms. The Commission has warned that diverging national draft legislations on minors' access risk fragmenting the single market, reducing legal certainty and increasing compliance costs with uneven protection.

The proposal reaches beyond social media. Kathmann's bill also covers games, dating apps and chatbots, the three other sectors she names alongside the platforms that dominate daily use. Her stated aim, she told NOS, is to remove manipulation tricks that addict people and push them into spending time and money online. Consumers, she said, deserve better protection. The practices she wants banned through legislation include endless scrolling, videos that autoplay, and notifications that lure users towards payment systems. All are examples, Kathmann said, of addictive design.

Kathmann would rather see harmful algorithms tackled at European level, but told NOS that route takes too long. She hopes the Dutch proposal will prompt Brussels to act. As a precedent she points to France's minimum age proposal for social media. That path had setbacks of its own. In September 2026, ORF, Austria's public broadcaster, reported that the Commission had earlier rejected France's first version, because it named specific online services it wanted banned.

Parliamentarians in seven countries

Kathmann is not working alone. She is collaborating with parliamentarians in Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy and Portugal who also want to regulate this by law, so it can no longer be lobbied away in Brussels. Member states should not hesitate to lead the way, she said. Her proposal sets out a three-step escalation for companies that break the rules: first a warning, then a hefty fine, and on a repeat offence the platform would simply be switched off.

The Commission has already set out its own position. In July 2026, Henna Virkkunen, the EU's technology chief, said that protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans must be a priority for social media platforms. She added that the Digital Services Act, the EU's rules for online platforms, offers a clear framework to hold platforms responsible for addictive design. The Commission, she said, is fully committed to enforcing European law.

The Commission has already accused the major platforms of addictive design. In February 2026, it preliminarily found TikTok in breach of the Digital Services Act over addictive design, pointing to infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and the platform's highly personalised recommender system. Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, rejected the July 2026 preliminary findings that its platforms were built to be addictive, saying: "We disagree with these preliminary findings, which don't accurately take into account the significant steps we've taken to protect teens," and pointed to Teen Accounts.

The Commission against TikTok

The Commission first moved against TikTok in 2024, taking aim at its reward-based engagement features. In February 2026 it issued preliminary findings against the platform over its overall addictive design, and by then Meta had become the second major platform to face the charge. The same charge reached Meta in July 2026, when the Commission accused it of building Facebook and Instagram to be addictive, with a possible fine of up to 6% of global annual revenue.

The Digital Fairness Act is expected to be proposed on 11 November 2026 and will be negotiated in parallel to the EU KIDS Act proposal, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals, a professional association for privacy specialists. The Guardian reported in July 2026 that Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, had said in May, at an AI safety conference, that the EU must even consider a delay to social media. In February 2026, a senior Commission official told Politico that it is the first time any regulator has attempted to set a legal standard for the addictiveness of platform design.