Is regulation of “addictive” social media design accidentally creating a bigger Meta monopoly?

I’m testing a conspiracy theory and I want people to poke holes in it.

The basic idea is this:

Regulators are increasingly going after things like infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, highly personalized recommendation algorithms, youth engagement features, and other “addictive design” elements on social media.

On paper, these rules apply to companies like Meta and TikTok equally.

But economically, do they actually affect them equally?

Meta could probably survive pretty comfortably even if Instagram/Facebook became less algorithmically addictive. Meta still has:

- existing friend/follower networks

- messaging

- WhatsApp

- groups

- Marketplace

- established creators

- huge advertiser relationships

- Facebook + Instagram cross-platform network effects

TikTok seems much more dependent on one core product advantage:

an insanely effective personalized For You feed that keeps people watching short-form video.

If regulators significantly weaken personalized recommendation, infinite scroll, autoplay, etc., TikTok technically still exists, but the product that made TikTok competitive with Meta is severely weakened.

So you could get this outcome:

Regulate Meta and TikTok under the same rules → Meta takes some damage → TikTok loses much more of its competitive advantage → creators/advertisers/users shift toward Instagram → Meta becomes even more dominant.

Which leads to the conspiracy-theory version:

Could some of the current push against “addictive social media design” ultimately function as an indirect way of neutralizing TikTok while appearing to be regulation aimed broadly at the entire social-media industry, including Meta?

I’m not claiming there is proof of coordination or intent. The weaker version of the theory is simply that supposedly platform-neutral regulation could have extremely non-neutral competitive consequences.

What am I missing?

In particular, I’d be interested in arguments for why TikTok would remain strongly competitive if highly personalized recommendation and frictionless endless consumption were substantially restricted.

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sholiboli•about 2 hours ago•1

Which governments are even trying to regulate infinite scroll, autoplay and others listed? I haven’t seen anyone trying to do that because it’s impossible to regulate the “product” of social networks.

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