Recital 28

A core aspect of the design and operation of online social networking services and of video-sharing platform services is the manner in which information is prioritised and presented on the service’s online interface, which may significantly influence minors’ access to, engagement with and exposure to information. To ensure that minors are effectively protected online, providers of online social networking services and of video-sharing platform services that use recommender systems should design their recommender systems in such a way that they ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security of minors. To that end, providers should use evaluation metrics that capture quality, safety and mental-health outcomes for minors, such as metrics measuring whether the recommender system selects and prioritises content appropriate for a minor's age and developmental stage, assessing the system's effectiveness in preventing exposure to illegal, harmful or unsafe material, and capturing indicators of psychological well-being to assess the impact on minors' mental health. Those metrics should inform the optimisation considerations underlying the design of recommendation objectives of online platforms. To ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security of minors, providers of online social networking services and of video-sharing platform services should give priority and primary weight to explicit user-provided preferences when recommending content, such as user feedback and interactions that indicate users’ explicit preferences, both positive and negative, including the stated and deliberate selection of topics of interest, surveys, reporting, and other quality-based signals. Furthermore, to ensure minors are provided with more agency over information being suggested to them, providers of online social networking services and of video-sharing platform services should disable by default the recommendation of information suggested by the recommender system based on implicit engagement-based signals from minors’ behaviour online. Implicit engagement-based signals should be understood as signals and data that infer user preferences from their activities (browsing behaviour on a platform), such as time spent viewing content and click-through rates. Providers of online social networking services and of video-sharing platform services should ensure that recommender systems do not rely on the collection of any personal data captured from outside the service. Providers of online social networking services and of video-sharing platform services should also ensure that minors are not exposed to content that is harmful when encountered repeatedly, which should be understood as covering the so called “rabbit holes” or “filter bubbles” of content that may pose a risk to their safety and security. The “rabbit hole” effect relate to the progressive amplification of similar recommendations of content, leading recipients of the service to endless content pathways which could potentially be extreme and harmful to minors. The “filter bubble" effect refers to the progressive amplification of content whereby a minor is predominantly exposed to content or information reducing the minors’ exposure to diverse content or information. Minors should also be given agency over their recommender systems and be able to control the content recommended through dedicated tools. Minors should be offered an easy way to reset their recommender systems by deleting all previous identified preferences and, be able to choose one option that is not based on profiling irrespective of whether they are registered or not, as provided for in Article 38 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, regardless of whether or not the provider concerned is a provider of a very large online platform in accordance with Article 33 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065. To ensure the effectiveness of such measure, those providers should regularly remind minors of the option to reset their feeds and ensure that that option is not designed in a manner to entice minors into choosing the option based on profiling.