1. Introduction
The 2025 Reuters Digital News Report found that news consumption via social media and video platforms is increasing, especially with younger audiences. Young people rely on YouTube and other online (social) media websites not only for entertainment, but also as the main channels of viewing and sharing news information. To illustrate the problem of predominantly consuming news media on video platforms, I refer to Adam Kovacs’s personal account on the matter. Known online as “Adam Something”, he is a YouTube video producer from Hungary, based in Germany. In 2021 he uploaded a video in which he reflects on how he escaped the so-called “alt-right”, a network of (mostly) online figures associated with Neo-Nazi, white supremacist and other anti-egalitarian movements, mostly in the USA, UK and Canada. They portrayed themselves as an alternative to the established conservative and right-wing parties in their countries. Similar online communities also exist in Sweden, Germany, Greece, and Finland. In his video, Adam explains that he escaped this sphere by stumbling upon two response videos debunking a number of their typical talking points. In other words, he was exposed to alternative viewpoints on the same subject-matter and reconsidered his worldview. However, not everyone will see such alternative viewpoints due to the features of YouTube and other platforms. These features include the findings that YouTube’s algorithms for search and recommender systems in particular commonly tends to amplify extremist and fringe content as well as intensify political polarisation and reinforce exposure to homogenous political opinions. By contrast, exposure to different positions is one mechanism which influences peoples’ beliefs and attitudes change. Although the claim is contested, studies show that the role of exposure to different political positions has at least an indirect effect on attitude changes. In other words, seeing different positions is necessary to counter these features that undermine the value of representative democracy. This is precisely the purpose of media pluralism with exposure diversity. However, in this blogpost I claim that the entry into force of Article 20 of the European Media Freedom Act (‘EMFA’) on the right to customise media offerings would not oppose, but only reinforce these problems. This is societally relevant for all democratic polities around the world – a case study in how not to regulate video platforms.
2. Understanding Media Pluralism, Exposure Diversity and the Right to Customise Media Offerings
While there are multiple contested definitions and schools of thought around the concept, media pluralism can be understood as an ideal state in society in which people have the individual freedom of expression in a democratic system with open deliberation to report and comment (‘media’) on issues of public interest with a diversity of viewpoints existing in parallel (‘pluralism’). Within this discourse, exposure diversity “refers to a focus on the content and sources consumed by media users, as opposed to the traditional emphasis on the diversity of sources and content available to media users.” The European Union acknowledges media pluralism as two of the main pillars of democracy in Recital 2 of EMFA, which contains more specific rules to the broad principle of media pluralism found in Article 11(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The EMFA also recognises the business model of platforms tends to amplify polarising content and disinformation (Recital 4 EMFA). However, neither the EMFA, nor the Digital Services Act, the principal platform regulatory instrument, address these concerns with reference to exposure diversity directly or by implication.
Among the rules governing media consumption on platforms, Article 20 EMFA is particularly problematic. It prescribes the platform user’s right to customise the media offerings. The core norm is found in paragraph 1, which states: Users shall have a right to easily change the configuration, including default settings, of any device or user interface controlling or managing access to and the use of media services providing programmes in order to customise the media offering in accordance with their interests or preferences […]. In other words, users on YouTube and other platforms will soon have the legal right to adjust the default settings that govern the available news media videos they prioritise and de-prioritise. This provision only becomes applicable on 8 May 2027 (Article 29(d) EMFA) and the European Media Board is currently drafting harmonised standards further specifying how this right should be further developed. The draft standard is expected in September 2026. Nevertheless, even without the final text, it is very likely to backfire and harm media pluralism by exposure diversity. This argument is further explained below. It is supported by the academic research on default rules from the behavioral sciencific analysis of law.
3. The Effects of Default Rules and Individual Customisation
Behavioural analysis of law takes the findings of individual rational decision-making as well as the irrational cognitive biases of human action from the disciplines of economics and psychology and applies it to a legal context. Within behavioural studies, default rules refers to legal norms which apply absent deviations by the parties and fill gaps in incomplete contracts. They are particularly common in private law. A key characteristic is that these rules are sticky: they persist through time and are used frequently even by sophisticated commercial actors because many people choose not to choose as choosing to choose is cognitively burdensome. For example, in the context of organ donation, the default rule for automatic presumption of consent to donate, unless stated otherwise (the ‘opt-out rule’), is one important factor in increasing the availability of suitable organ transplants for those in need. By analogy, default rules in contact law function very similarly to the platforms’ general terms, conditions, and default settings (for example, YouTube’s Terms of Service 2023). The way in which the platform’s user interface and its default settings are set could easily harm users by exploiting their cognitive biases, because choosing not to exploit consumers as such is not rewarded by the goal of profit maximisation. In other words, the way in which the EU rules and platform default settings interact has major consequences for the media content that users will be exposed to and choose to view.
Taking these things into consideration, I contend that empowering users to customise their interfaces on YouTube and other platforms would likely lead to decreased exposure diversity and thus harm media pluralism and democratic deliberation as users would most likely choose their existing political media preferences and consume relatively homogenous political content, further reinforcing the existing concerns for algorithmic amplification and polarisation. I see four possible scenarios for how the rules could be formulated and how users would react to them.
Scenario 1: Status quo
First, the law maintains that the platform’s existing algorithms are the default setting and some users may merely adjust them along various dimensions. This maintains the status quo and resolves none of the problems described above.
Scenario 2: Forced choice to homogeneity
Second, the law would prescribe that the platform provides a new popup window forcing users to choose media offerings with an offer users a list of common popular media services as a selection of default choices. Due to the common confirmation bias in political media consumption, users would most likely chose media services in light of homogenous political preferences. The problems remain.
Scenario 3: The ignorable notification
Third, the law maintains the platform’s default settings and merely notifies users that they can now customise their media offerings if they go into the settings, like the typical advertisement personalisation notifications. Given the typical tendency for people choosing not to choose, most likely very few users would adjust the platform’s default settings. Once more, the problems remain.
Scenario 4: Users with diversity preferences
Fourth, regardless of the default settings, some users customise their media to include broad aspects of the political spectrum, thus setting up exposure diversity for themselves. However, most likely these would be the same people who already consume diverse media before these rules enter into force. Thus, the problems persist and the mitigation is minor at best.
4. Conclusion
In relation to my main argument, I expect that the entry into force of Article 20 EMFA would most likely harm media pluralism by decreasing exposure diversity, as few users would choose to either intentionally filter out content that does not align with their existing political beliefs or to merely choose not to choose and maintain the status quo by default. The added value of this blogpost contribution it to share some behavioural science insights from academic scholarship and apply them to the context of human rights in the digital sphere. Other jurisdictions can learn from the mistakes of the European Union when regulating political media on online platforms.
Bio
Vladimir Krastev Belev is a doctoral candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam, School of Law. His research focuses on European Union law and media pluralism on video-sharing online platforms. He also teaches European Union internal market law at the bachelor level and supervises bachelor and master theses. He is supervised by Professor Fabian Amtenbrink and Assistant Professor Dr. Monika Glavina.