The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-meta-facebook-instagram-brussels-kill-infinite-scrolling/

by danso • 5 months ago

785 850 5 months ago

politico.eu

peterisza2• 5 months ago

They should move to kill the cookie popup

ben_w3• 5 months ago

Just so long as that means killing all the tracking, not just going back to hiding it.

mcny• 5 months ago

You don't have to have a cookie popup if you don't do stupid stuff. Don't use anything other than strictly necessary cookies and you are good to go.

Disclaimer: I anal and this is not legal advice.

rpdillon7• 5 months ago

Having worked at multiple companies and talked to multiple legal teams about this, they tend to be very conservative. So the guidance I've gotten is that if we store any information at all on the person's computer, even to know whether they've visited the site before, we still need a cookie banner.

Basically, the law created enough fear among the lawyers that software developers are being advised to include the cookie banner in cases where it isn't strictly needed.

dathinab2• 5 months ago

if you don't track users you don't need GDPR consent dialogs

I think in the past you still needed some info box in the corner with a link to the data policy. But I think that isn't needed anymore (to be clear not a consent dialog, a informational only thing). Also you can without additional consent store a same site/domain cookie remembering you dismissing or clicking on it and not showing it again (btw. same for opting out of being tracked).

But there are some old pre-GDPR laws in some countries (not EU wide AFIK) which do require actual cookie banners (in difference to GDPR consent dialogs or informational things). EU want them removed, but politic moves slow AF so not sure what the sate of this is.

So yes without checking if all the older misguided laws have been dismissed, you probably should have a small banner at the bottom telling people "we don't track you but for ... reasons .. [link] [ok]" even if you don't track people :(. But also if they haven't gotten dismissed they should be dismissed very soon.

Still such a banner is non obnoxious, little annoying (on PC, Tablet, a bit more annoying on Phone). And isn't that harass people to allow you to spy on them nonsense we have everywhere.

nozzlegear2• 5 months ago

Don't several of the EU's own government information websites use cookie popups?

tikkabhuna• 5 months ago

Yep. GitHub wrote a blog post on removing their cookie banner years ago.

https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/no-cookie-for...

mattlutze4• 5 months ago

You only start to need the popups if you specifically put cookies on a visitor's browser to build a personal profile of them.

This can be for e.g. sales acquisition or marketing engagement, but also includes cookies to simplify login, so not everything is "stupid stuff." A cookie that stores "was here, skip the splash page" may already fall afowl, if you put any session metadata in it.

Saline95155• 5 months ago

It is just bad UI. It could have been better implemented, such as with a browser-side opt out setting, for instance. Similar to what we have for permissions, for instance.

grumbel2• 5 months ago

All the legal uncertainty problems the cookie law produces aside, the core problem with the law is that it's fundamentally stupid. Cookies are a client side feature: You store the cookie, not the server. If you don't want to store the cookie, complain to your browser, that's the software responsible here. But instead of fixing the issue in the one place actually responsible, we make laws that force millions of websites to adopt.

prmoustache• 5 months ago

It is up to the websites to do that, and to the users to boycott those websites showing cookie popups.

idle_zealot2• 5 months ago

The regulatory body could clarify that a DO NOT TRACK header should be interpreted as a "functional/necessary cookies only" request, so sites may not interrupt visitors with a popup modal/banner if it's set.

kuerbel2• 5 months ago

Kill cookie pop up dark patterns*

saithir• 5 months ago

But that would require directing the anger at specific companies (and their 2137 ad partners) rather than at an easy target of the banana-regulating evil authority.

Sadly whenever this kind of discussion pops up it's usually a very unpopular take.

bubblewand• 5 months ago

Simply banning most forms of advertising would be extremely welcome and might largely solve the cookie-popup issue, too.

Saline95155• 5 months ago

Who will fund the content you read on websites then?

peterisza2• 5 months ago

and then the inventor should go to prison along with the guys who design the UI of microwave ovens (joke)

gib4442• 5 months ago

Well then where would be the incentive to download apps/not clear your cookies...? :-)

dathinab2• 5 months ago

ahhhh, every time the same discussion

1. GDPR consent dialogs are not cookie popups, most things you see are GDPR consent dialogs

2. GDPR consent dialogs are only required if you share data, i.e. spy on the user

3. GDPR had from the get to go a bunch of exceptions, e.g. you don't need permission to store a same site cookie indicating that you opted out of tracking _iff_ you don't use it for tracking. Same for a lot of other things where the data is needed for operation as long as the data is only used with that thing and not given away. (E.g. DDOS protection, bot detection, etc.)

4. You still had to inform the user but this doesn't need any user interacting, accepting anything nor does it need to be a popup blocking the view. A small information in the corner of the screen with a link to the data policy is good enough. But only if all what you do falls under 3. or non personal information. Furthermore I think they recently have updated it to not even require that, just having a privacy policy in a well know place is good enough but I have to double check. (And to be clear this is for data you don't need permission to collect, but like any data you collect it's strictly use case bound and you still have to list how its used, how long stored etc. even if you don't need permissions). Also to be clear if you accept the base premise of GDPR it's pretty intuitive to judge if it's an exception or not.

5. in some countries, there are highly misguided "cookie popup" laws predating GDPR (they are actually about cookies, not data collection in general). This are national laws and such the EU would prefer to have removed. Work on it is in process but takes way to long. I'm also not fully sure about the sate of that. So in that context, yes they should and want to kill "cookie popups". That just doesn't mean what most people think it does (as it has nothing to do with GDPR).

gunapologist995• 5 months ago

"Share data" !=== "spy on the user"

Oauth, for example.

DarkUranium• 5 months ago

Note that, back when it started (pre-GDPR cookie banners), this was pure malicious compliance in 90% of cases.

Most sites didn't need a banner. Even post-GDPR, many use-cases don't need one.

warmedcookie2• 5 months ago

I like the cookie banners since it is an immediate indication to me that I should leave the site. It's an innate reflex at this point.

seydor5• 5 months ago

Let me guess, you use the app instead

r33b332• 5 months ago

you can simply choose not to use it

mattlutze4• 5 months ago

Use one of the cookie popup managers to automatically assert your personal identity sharing choices.

seydor5• 5 months ago

those are not addictive

graemep• 5 months ago

Its addictive design in general, but only for Tik-tok. If it works and is applied to others it will be the best thing the EU has ever done.

PlatoIsADisease2• 5 months ago

I have a proud European coworker trying to get their H1B...

They talk about how great Europe is, how they like their 1-2 hour coffee/smoke breaks... These kind of moves give me that same vibe.

But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? Why isn't the opposite happening?

My hypothesis is that these kind of popular policies are short sighted. They are super popular, they use intuition and feeling. But maybe there is something missing. The unadulterated freedom has led people to enjoy these platforms. Obviously it affects the economy. So much so, even the US military has moved from Europe to Asia.

I don't typically like fiction, but it seems "I, Robot" was spot on about Europe. (Maybe mistaking new Africa for Asia)

rendx4• 5 months ago

But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? Why isn't the opposite happening?

Citation needed.

I took some minutes to try and find statistics, and also ChatGPT claims that the EU simply doesn't collect or publish that kind of data, so I'm wondering how you think you know.

manuelmoreale3• 5 months ago

But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US?

All I see in my circle is people refusing to even go on vacation in the US, let alone move there.

kuerbel2• 5 months ago

Well, your freeeeedooooms include having to pay taxes when living outside of the US. I'd say that's a pretty big factor in deciding if it's worth it to leave the country.

buzzerbetrayed2• 5 months ago

Jobs in the EU don’t even pay enough to require paying taxes in the US lol. Nice try though.

askonomm• 5 months ago

Why are so many Americans trying to move to the EU? Turns out people have different wants and needs in life, and so they move to where they like best. I for one would never set foot in USA in fear of being shot, kidnapped by ICE (or shot by ICE), fear of being bankrupt by the healthcare options there if something happens to me, fear of the poison you call food, and the absolutely ignorant populace that seems to roam the streets there. I swear half the times I can't even tell if USA is a real place or some really bizarre reality TV show.

danny_codes2• 5 months ago

They aren’t trying to move to the US? At least in western/Northern Europe.

Curious where you got your statistics?

If anything it’s probably the opposite, with more Americans wanting to move to Europe than the reverse.

arximboldi• 5 months ago

As a counter-data point: I have been asked a few times to move to the US by American companies, but no money in the world would make me move there permanently. Also, sticking again to pure anecdote, most people I know that moved there eventually came back; but in the other direction this seems to be way more rare, I know lots of people of Americans that settled over here. Last example is a friend from the US that after 8 years in Germany moved back to the US last year for career reasons, and she is already fed up with the life style and is planning her return...

Don't get me wrong; I've spent months in the US and there are things I love about it. The almost naive way in which everyone believes their own bullshit is energizing. The way individuality and risk taking is celebrated allows for the interesting and novel (but also sometimes the worst) to happen. It is invigorating. But soon it all drains you, the grind, the lack of depth in relationships... The lack of social security net, the dystopian levels of inequality, the egotism, the fetichization of violence. It's all crystalized now in the goverment. No, thank you.

dgellow2• 5 months ago

You might want to travel the world a bit and see how things are elsewhere instead of basing your judgement off sci-fi and online commentary…

corford• 5 months ago

I live in Europe and my city has had a large, very noticeable uptick of American expats arriving over the last two years. Conversely, I have never known my European friends and acquaintances to be as bearish on the US as they are right now (no one I speak to has the slightest interest in moving stateside and two friends who both emigrated to the US years ago are seriously considering moving themselves and their families back to Europe)

poncho_romero• 5 months ago

I hope this goes through. Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive. It isn't a fair fight and the existence of infinite feeds is bad both for people and democracy. Regulating consumer products that cause harm to millions is nothing new.

tokyobreakfast6• 5 months ago

Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive.

Or you could just shut the phone off and/or not install the app. It's a simple solution, really, and one that is available at your disposal today at no cost.

kelseyfrog• 5 months ago

Drug stores should stock morphine available without age restriction and if you don't want it, just don't buy it.

ahhhhnoooo4• 5 months ago

Just stop using heroin. Just stop eating fast food. Just stop going to the casino. Just don't smoke anymore.

We know plenty of things are quite bad for us, and yet we find them difficult to stop. Somewhat famously difficult to stop.

I think telling people, "just don't..." trivializes how difficult that is.

happytoexplain6• 5 months ago

"Just" is the all time champion weight lifter of the English language.

baq2• 5 months ago

Engineering addiction should be a punishable offense. It already is if you’re a chemist.

manuelmoreale3• 5 months ago

You could say that about literally every single type of addictive behavior present on the face of the planet. You could just stop smoking and/or not buying cigarettes. You could just stop drinking and/or stop buying alcohol. It's a completely pointless observation. There's a reason why these are addictions.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 5 months ago

Or the people can decide how their society functions.

This learned (or lobbied) helplessness of never changing any laws and we are just stuck with this way of life is silly.

sensanaty3• 5 months ago

The whole point is that these companies are spending a lot of cash making sure that their products are as addicting as possible to as many people as possible, so "just" shutting the phone off isn't a viable strategy.

It's as idiotic a statement as saying "Just stop smoking" around the time when big tobacco was lobbying politicians and bribing scientists and doctors to straight up lie about the deleterious effects of tobacco. It's engineered in such a way as to make it basically impossible for a large swathe of the population to "just not use" the apps.

camillomiller• 5 months ago

Honestly, at this point, just ** OFF to all the useful idiots that just relentlessly block any possible solution to the overbearing power of social media companies with this crooked vision of individual responsibility.

They are trying to block a harmless mechanism, that has proven to be addictive, and that companies have willfully exploited for this very reason, proceeding to wreak havoc to various facets of society while concentrating never before seen levels of wealth in the process.

Wealth that in many case makes them more powerful than the government that should regulate them, which in many cases drank the kool-aid of self-policing these companies have gleefully distributed and lobbied for for years. So, enough with this fine principled arguments about slippery slope that don't exist. What is your comment good for, if not for maintaining a status quo that makes these companies even reacher at the expense of everyone?

Findecanor2• 5 months ago

People start using these apps and sites to stay in touch with friends and with current events — and those things are real needs. People should not be exploited for them.

stodor89• 5 months ago

"If you're homeless, just buy a house" ahh statement

Aerbil3135• 5 months ago

Found the guy who won the genetic lottery AND the healthy childhood lottery!

Dude, in case you don't know, you are the anomaly. Most people don't have the amount of free will as you do. They can't "just put down the phone". You can. They can't.

neop1x2• 5 months ago

It started with apps pre-installed on many phones. No one cared. People can easily waste unlimited amount of time watching content from unknown creators which they don't even follow.

erxam• 5 months ago

I do so too. Dark patterns should never be acceptable.

The amount of paid shills opposing this is a good indicator that it's the right move.

jameson2• 5 months ago

As a person working at social media I support this as well. I'm a hypocrite. I admit, but the pay is too good to find alternative.

Terms like "DAU" or "engagement" is common in our field and the primary objective is how to make users spend more time on our platform. We don't take safety or mental health seriously internally but only externally for PR reasons.

CEOs won't change that because the more time user spends on the platform, the more ad revenue it brings.

Only way is to regulate it.

deaux2• 5 months ago

. I'm a hypocrite. I admit

Great, admission is the first step.

but the pay is too good to find alternative.

Yet then you immediately undo it!

Try "I'm too greedy". You're the actor with the free will here. The subject of the sentencd shouldn't be "the pay". That is just an amount, a sum, that exists - neither too high nor too low. That is all in the eye of the beholder.

gsk22• 5 months ago

This is so sad to read. Knowing that the people actively making every aspect of life more monetized and addictive are acutely aware of the harm they create, yet are motivated by such base selfishness that they can ignore all that for the paycheck.

Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe3• 5 months ago

the pay is too good to find alternative.

You don't sound psychopathic so I'm genuinely curious what you do with your money to keep your conscious clean.

Bevause I think your salary is practically blood money at this point.

Blood of the additional instagram girls with anorexia.

The additional children with severe myopia.

The additional people murdered by persons radicalized by media that had to polarize news to survive the loss in readership or by the false advertising of quality control on hate speech.

The list goes on and on.

Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe3• 5 months ago

I have yet to find examples of high pay where the pay is not actually to compensate for an immoral job, one way or another.

If you had to choose between two identical jobs and salary at a company but at big tobacco vs a hospital, which would you choose? I think most people would pick the hospital. Hence the only reason people work at big tobacco is either because of a genuine interest in their product (rare IMHO) OR because the pay is higher.

This applies to big tech too.

I am very curious if people here agree with my reasoning.

grishka• 5 months ago

I worked at Russia's largest social media company as the founding Android developer. I quit as soon as I realized it was only going to get worse from now on after an acquisition and a very noticeable shift in user treatment. But that job was never about the money for me. The salary was just a nice yet optional bonus.

s_dev2• 5 months ago

I installed a Firefox plugin that makes YouTube shorts display as normal videos. I was genuinely shocked how much of a difference it made to my habits.

reycharles• 5 months ago

Would you mind sharing the name of that plugin? Thanks!

KolibriFly5• 5 months ago

The tricky part is defining harm without sliding into paternalism

tokyobreakfast6• 5 months ago

I see some synergy between this and the "iOS keyboard sucks" thread. Maybe they can regulate that next.

I'm curious how they plan to pretend to enforce this. Will you need a loisence to implement infinite scroll?

ARandomerDude• 5 months ago

Watch what governments do, not what they say.

This isn’t about addiction, it’s about censorship. If you limit the amount of time someone can spend getting information, and make it inconvenient with UI changes, it’s much harder to have embarrassing information spread to the masses.

Amazingly, the public will generally nod along anyway when they read governmental press releases and say “yes, yes, it’s for my safety.”

cbg0• 5 months ago

Scrolling through an infinity of AI slop videos can't really be classified as "getting information". If you want to read the news and stay up to date with the "embarrassing information" there's plenty of news websites out there.

slopusila• 5 months ago

another cookie warning disaster incoming

hopefully AI will wake them up and save us from all this nonsense

badpun• 5 months ago

Would it affect HackerNews? The list of topics on the main page is a form of infinite scroll.

asib• 5 months ago

No it's not? It's paged.

OGEnthusiast• 5 months ago

Given how badly scrolling has cooked the brain of the average American, seems like a smart thing for the EU to ban.

manuelmoreale3• 5 months ago

And based on some of the replies in this thread we better act fast before it's too late.

breezykoi4• 5 months ago

Reading some comments I don’t know whether some use fallacious arguments deliberately or are simply incapable of logical reasoning.

KolibriFly5• 5 months ago

I get the frustration behind that sentiment, but I'm not convinced it's as simple as "scrolling cooked brains"

ZoomZoomZoom• 5 months ago

Dunno about using legislative moves, but yes please. The stupidest solution to a problem no one had. Moving layouts, unreachable footers, no or unsatisfactory indication of one's position.

All just to remove navigation clicks no one minded and reduce server loads, in exchange for users suffering laggy lazy loading (or, what a hate-inducing pattern!) inability to preload, print, search or link.

jjcm• 5 months ago

Here's the actual statement from the European Comission: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...

It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling, but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it. The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do.

My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent, but after thinking on it more I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". Everything I thought of would have some way or workaround that could be found, and equally would have terrible consequences on situations where this is actually quite valuable. IE if you disallow infinite scrolling, what page sizes are allowed? Can I just have a page of 10,000 elements that lazy load?

Regardless of your take around whether this is EU overreach, I'm glad they're not implementing strict laws around what you can/can't do - there are valuable situations for these UI patterns, even if in combination they can create addictive experiences. Still, I do think that overregulation here will lead to services being fractured. I was writing about this earlier this morning (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005367), but the regulated friction of major platforms (ie discord w/ ID laws) is on a collision course with the ease of vibe coding up your own. When that happens, these comissions are going to need to think long and hard around having a few large companies to watch over is better than millions of small micro-niche ones.

spwa4• 5 months ago

I wouldn't worry about that. You're ignoring politics, and what this actually is. If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago. They do not intend, not even remotely, to sabotage the profit machines that those companies are, they just want political weapons against the companies. The intention here is not to cure addiction, destroy profits, the intention is to use economic power to achieve political ends. The EU is built on this, it just didn't use to involve that many private companies.

Like most famous EU laws, this is not a law for people. Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies and certainly not against EU states, who have repeatedly shown willingness to use AI against individuals, including face recognition (which gets a lot of negative attention and strict rules in the AI act, and EU member states get to ignore both directly, and they get to allow companies to ignore the rules), violate GPDR against their own citizens (e.g. use medical data in divorce cases, or even tax debt collection, and they let private companies ignore the rules for government purposes (e.g. hospitals can be forced report if you paid for treatment rather than pay alimony, rather than pay your back taxes)). The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google.

These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies. Here's how the process works: someone "files a complaint", which is an email to the EU commission (not a complaint in the legal sense, no involvement of prosecutors, or judges, or any part of the justice system of any member state at all). Then an EU commissioner starts a negotiation process and rules on the case, usually imposing billions of euros in fines or providing publicly-backed loans (in the case of banks). The vast, vast, vast majority of these complaints are ignored or "settled in love" (French legal term: the idea is that some commission bureaucrat contacts the company and "arranges things", never involving any kind of enforcement mechanism). Then they become chairman of Goldman Sachs (oops, that just happened once, giving Goldman Sachs it's first communist chairman, yes really. In case you're wondering: Barrosso), or join Uber's and Salesforce's executive teams, paid through Panama paper companies.

In other words: these laws are not at all about addictive design, and saving you from it, they're about going after specific companies for political means. Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, ...

Ironically the EU is doing exactly what Trump did with tariffs. It's just that Trump is using a sawed-off shotgun where the EU commission is using a scalpel.

Aarchive• 5 months ago

Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies

Of course the GDPR gives individuals rights, counter example:

The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google.

wasabi991011• 5 months ago

If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago.

Addictive designs and social media have changed a lot in the last 10 years, for one. But more importantly, there's no statute of limitation on making laws.

foldr• 5 months ago

These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies.

In the UK at least, the GDPR was incorporated into UK law (where it remains, essentially unmodified, even after Brexit). So it is certainly not necessary to get the EU commission involved to enforce the law. In the UK, the ICO is the relevant regulator. There are other national regulators that enforce the GDPR, such as the French CNIL.

jamestest2e4p6x• 5 months ago

One of the best replies on hackernews in years. Hear. Hear.

The EU realized they can extort the US big tech. The EU will now just focus on laws and taxing (the war in Ukraine isn't their problem). And frankly, we should just ignore EU laws in the US.

tehjoker• 5 months ago

You are in all likelihood correct, it's the more realpolitik reading of it. One other more charitable interpretation would be that the EU was under the US's thumb so they never took action, but now that there is some more separation, they are willing to act against these design patterns. It's probably some combination of both elements, weighting each according to how cynical you are, and high cynicism is justified.

ginko• 5 months ago

Is it really so hard for you people to imagine that MAYBE, there's politicians that see what social media look like these days and think they might want to do something against that?

The fact that all of these companies aren't European certainly doesn't help, but if you think this and GDPR, DMA etc. are purely schemes to milk foreign companies then you've been drinking way too much cynicism juice.

JoshTriplett• 5 months ago

They do not intend, not even remotely, to sabotage the profit machines that those companies are

I think you are projecting values on entities that don't share those values. I don't think they'd have any problem destroying a pile of companies and not enabling replacements; they are not pro-business, and they have not shown a history of regulating in a fashion that's particularly designed to enable home-grown EU businesses. Predictability and consistency of enforcement are not their values, either. They don't seem to have any problem saying "act in what we think the spirit of the law is, and if you think you can just understand and follow the letter of it we'll hurt you until you stop".

lukan2• 5 months ago

Assuming it was "just" about banning infinite scrolling. Not saying it is a good idea, but right now I cannot think of a legitimate use case where you would need it, unless your goal is engagement.

Yiin• 5 months ago

I like to scroll my logs w/o pagination

rolph2• 5 months ago

a webgame or a document browser, e.g. side scrollers, topdown/bottom up scroller, continuous page view.

saidinesh52• 5 months ago

Or just help you avoid clicking next next while searching for something you want.

Although there is a special place in hell for those who put a website options for customer care at the bottom of an infinite scrolling page...

Springtime• 5 months ago

I've seen it used in non-addictive ways for search results (both specialized[1] and generic global search engines) and portfolios (for showcasing work progressively not merely constantly appending content to the end of singularly viewed work like say news sites do now), off the top of my head.

[1] Eg: printables.com (for open source, 3D print files)

asdfman123• 5 months ago

My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent

These laws are harsh... but, as much as I hate to say it, the impact social media has had on the world has been worse.

Llamamoe• 5 months ago

I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?".

Only allowing algorithmic feeds/recommendations on dedicated subpages to which the user has to navigate, and which are not allowed to integrate viewing the content would be an excellent start IMO.

trhway• 5 months ago

to me it isn't about addictive design, it is about infinite scrolling jerking/straining my eyes (and thanks to that strain, it brings me back to reality, and i immediately disconnect from the content thus avoiding whatever addiction it could have sucked me in).

That actually makes me think that any page containing addictive design elements should, similar to cigarette warning, carry a blinking, geocities style, header or footer with "WARNING: Ophthalmologist General and Narcologist General warn about dangers of addictive elements on this page".

coffeemug• 5 months ago

I thought about it for only a few seconds, but here is one way to do it. Have users self-report an "addiction factor", then fine the company based on the aggregate score using a progressive scale.

There is obviously a lot of detail to work out here-- which specific question do you ask users, who administers the survey, what function do you use scale the fines, etc. But this would force the companies to pay for the addiction externality without prescribing any specific feature changes they'd need to make.

vanviegen• 5 months ago

And what about games that are actually just great fun? That would be easy to confuse with addictive, right?

zestyping2• 5 months ago

I like this approach.

Specifying the requirement in terms of measured impact is a good strategy because it motivates the app companies to do the research and find effective ways to address addiction, not just replace specific addictive UI patterns with different addictive UI patterns.

Building measurement into the law also produces a metric for how well the law is working and helps inform improvements to the law.

sincerely2• 5 months ago

The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes"

This is not such an unusual thing in law, as much as us stem-brained people want legal systems to work like code. The most famous example is determining art vs pornography - "I know it when I see it" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)

idiotsecant2• 5 months ago

Which is of course the only way it makes sense to write laws, since code can't model infinite reality.

Not, at least, until our machine overlords arrive.

loeg2• 5 months ago

"I know it when I see it" notoriously does not work in law, either. Instead, we have the Miller test.

rambambram• 5 months ago

This exactly. The post you reply to implies they have discovered something very novel, which they did not. I don't remember which ancient king it was, but they already tried thousands of years ago to make codes of law with every situation described in it. They failed. Just leave the final interpretation to the judge, and let the politicians make broad laws (in good faith, I hope).

as much as us stem-brained people want legal systems to work like code

I see this a lot on HN, and it makes sense to think like this if you're a programmer. It's also a sign these programmers should open up their world view a bit more.

randomNumber75• 5 months ago

Life is complex and beautiful and trying to regulate every possible outcome beforehand just makes it boring and depressing.

andybak2• 5 months ago

But how do you stop the boring and depressing - and abusive and manipulative parts?

I'm not saying legislation is a good solution but you seem to be making a poetic plea that benefits the abusers.

torlok• 5 months ago

We should just let people with overwhelming amounts of money research and fund new ways to trick people's lizard brains into giving them even more money.

ApolloFortyNine• 5 months ago

What it does is allow for selective enforcement, making it possible to go after any company at will.

When rules are vague enough you can pretty much always find a rule someone is 'breaking' depending on how you argue it.

It's why countries don't just have a single law that says "don't be evil".

Unai• 5 months ago

Laws should protect what's beautiful about life. And life is less beautiful when trillion dollar companies abuse the human nature to extract value, damaging society and individuals for the benefit of the very few.

samrus8• 5 months ago

Yeah. I would have liked to have fun with all that asbestos in my walls

Funes-3• 5 months ago

"well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?"

Hear me out: banning advertising on the Internet. It's the only way. It's the primordial domino tile. You knock that one over, every other tile follows suit. It's the mother of chain reactions. There would be no social media, no Internet as we know it. Imagine having TikTok, YouTube or X trying to survive on subscriptions alone in their current iterations. Impossible. They'd need to change their top priority from "maximizing engagement by fostering addictive behavior" to "offering a product with enough quality for someone to pay a fee in order to be able to use it".

iamacyborg• 5 months ago

They already effectively banned the mechanism behind most online advertising with the GDPR, it’s just been really, really poorly enforced.

thesmtsolver2• 5 months ago

How will you ban that without infringing on free speech. That is a thing in the US and a lot of countries outside the EU.

yallpendantools2• 5 months ago

Ads per se are not evil. The motherfucker we'd want to shoot, however, is targeted advertising and especially those that rely on harvested user data.

In a sense, I'm just agreeing with a fellow comment in the vicinity of this thread that said GDPR is already the EU's shot at banning (targeted) ads---it's just implemented piss-poorly. Personally formulated, my sentiment is that GDPR as it stands today is a step in the right direction towards scaling back advertisement overreach but we have a long way to go still.

Ofc it's impossible to blanket ban targeted ads because at best you end up in a philosophical argument about what counts as "targeting", at worse you either (a) indiscriminately kill a whole industry with a lot of collateral casualties or (b) just make internet advertising even worse for all of us.

My position here is that ads can be fine if they

1. are even somewhat relevant to me.

2. didn't harvest user data to target me.

3. are not annoyingly placed.

4. are not malware vectors/do not hijack your experience with dark patterns when you do click them.

To be super clear on the kind of guy talking from his soapbox here: I only browse YT on a browser with ad blockers but I don't mind sponsor segments in the videos I watch. They're a small annoyance but IMO trying to skip them is already a bigger annoyance hence why I don't even bother at all. That said, I've never converted from eyeball to even customer from sponsor segments.

I'd call this the "pre-algorithmic" advertising approach. It's how your eyeballs crossed ads in the 90s and IMO if we can impose this approach/model in the internet, then we can strike a good balance of having corporations make money off the internet and keeping the internet healthy.

almostdeadguy• 5 months ago

Can I get an amen.

gchamonlive10• 5 months ago

Infrastructure costs money. There's no way around it. I'm all up for banning ads. But there should be another viable business model to replace it.

xvector• 5 months ago

Perfect idea, the internet should only be for rich people. After all, who cares about the 50% of the planet that can barely afford a coffee? Or the millions of small businesses that are only able to survive because of targeted ads? Fuck 'em all, because people can't be trusted to use their own devices properly!

mrtksn5• 5 months ago

Then X will become the only social media as Musk can keep it free unlike any competition and use it to push politics he likes or finds it beneficial for his other companies. In fact, according to reports X is already not making much ad money so it’s already there.

burnto• 5 months ago

That’s a thought-provoking suggestion. Most services would go out of business, and there would be a cascade of change. I wonder what would remain?

kaycey2022• 5 months ago

If you want to ban something, then ban free social media. There has to be a minimum charge like 100$ or something a month (keep it tax free for all I care), to access any social media service with more than a 1000 members.

matthewsinclair• 5 months ago

I agree [0]. Well, taxed rather than banned. But we’re in the same postcode.

[0] https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver...

qsera• 5 months ago

Banning ads is not possible.

But we can build a culture that knows how to avoid ads and the technology to enable it.

allan_s• 5 months ago

Thats too vague and drastic, every "show HN" is an ads, for notoriety at least. I would prefer we draw the line at "content pushed by a third party against payment must be displaid only with regard to where it is displaid and must not use information about to whom it is displaid" .

I.e displaying an ads about Sentry on a ads technica page, find . Displaying an ads about hiking equipment on ars techbica because i made a google search abd it is estimated I like that -> not fine. It would kill all the incentive to overtrack the ROI will no more justify the cost.

normie3000• 5 months ago

How would you ban advertising? Would astroturfing be banned? Would LLM-assisted astroturfing be banned?

Using an ad-blocker gets rid of most visible ads online, but there's still paid content in various forms which may be more effective than straight adverts anyway.

dehrmann• 5 months ago

Maybe this would be the nudge people need, but there are a handful of well-researched, reputable newspapers out there that you can subscribe to and support quality journalism. For the most part, people don't. They'd rather have entertainment news for free with ads than quality journalism they pay for.

fooker5• 5 months ago

What counts as an advertisement? What about a testimonial?

If you try to regulate this, everything will be an ad in disguise.

In my opinion, that's the direction we are heading towards with AI anyway.

I'm surprised we haven't seen an instance of 'pay to increase bias towards my product in training' yet.

noosphr• 5 months ago

There has never been a mass information medium to survive on subscriptions. This includes everything since news papers in the 18th century.

phyzix57613• 5 months ago

If these companies fail because their quality isn't good enough to support paid subscribers isn't that effectively the same thing as people choosing to not use their platform?

Those of us who dislike these practices already have a choice. We can simply not use the service. So why remove that choice from others who don't mind ads and are willing to use the free version?

Also, forcing a paid only model raises the barrier to entry. Most of the world lives on less than $10 a day, so a subscription would effectively limit access to relatively wealthy people by global standards.

nine_k• 5 months ago

I think this would have an opposite effect. An addicted customer is a customer willing to pay. Think about gambling or tobacco. BTW OnlyFans somehow lives off subscriptions.

OTOH I gladly pay for YouTube Premium.

derektank• 5 months ago

You don’t even have to move towards a full ban. Instead, simply tax companies that offer ads in proportion to how long users spend on their site. This will naturally encourage websites to get users in, experience whatever content it is that they’re offering ads against, and then GTFO.

bruce5112• 5 months ago

Define "advertising". I feel this might be hard to do.

For example is my blog talking about Windows considered as Advertising? What about my blog discussing products we make? What about the web site for my local restaurant?

If I add my restaurant location to Google maps, is that advertising? Are review sites?

If I'm an aggregator (like booking.com) and I display the results for a search is that advertising?

I assume though you meant advertising as in 3rd party advertising. So no Google ad words, no YouTube ads etc. Ok, let's explore that...take say YouTube...

Can creators still embed "sponsored by" scenes? Can they do product placement?

Your suggestion is, unfortunately, not implementable. Leaving aside the merit for a moment, there's just no way that any politician can make it happen. Google and Facebook are too big, with too much cash to lobby with. And that's before you tell everyone that the free internet is no more, now you gotta pay subscriptions.

And, here's the kicker, even if you did force users to pay for Facebook and Google, it's still in their interest to maximize engagement...

raw_anon_111126• 5 months ago

So for the people who couldn’t afford it? Let them eat cake?

Are you going to put up a “Great Firewall of America” to keep non US sites advertising sites from being seen by US citizens? Are you going to stop podcasts from advertising?

alsetmusic• 5 months ago

I agree with you. Advertising corrupts companies. It’s also annoying and I hate it.

I don’t know how we’d ban advertising without impinging on free speech laws in the USA, where a lot of huge companies reside.

How would you do it?

Aloha• 5 months ago

I have said for years - Micropayents, something like the traffic settlement system for termination charges in the NANPA PSTN, and when I say micropayments I mean 1000ths of a cent. Then the content that does cost money (news, social media, whatever can be monetized and the users are paying for consumption.

jama2113• 5 months ago

lol good luck with that

virgildotcodes• 5 months ago

I’ll probably be crucified for this but I think the free w/advertising model is not fundamentally evil, and gives poor people access to lots of shit that they otherwise wouldn’t have, keeps the rest of us from death by 1,000 monthly subscriptions.

thfuran3• 5 months ago

Not just the internet. Ban third-party advertising everywhere.

rsolva• 5 months ago

Ban personalized advertising!

hirenj• 5 months ago

Even better, don’t ban it, but require companies to do age verification (above a certain age?) before displaying advertising. You get two wins in one: make the child market less attractive for algorithmic feeds, and you also can get a better product (no algorithmic feeds) without ads if you don’t age verify. Win-win situation!

samrus8• 5 months ago

Positively luddian proposal. I kinda like it

fsflover7• 5 months ago

banning advertising on the Internet

This. Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269

thaumasiotes• 5 months ago

They'd need to change their top priority from "maximizing engagement by fostering addictive behavior" to "offering a product with enough quality for someone to pay a fee in order to be able to use it".

You know, we used to have Flash games that were free to play and ad supported.

With the iPhone, those died, and now we have mobile games that support themselves with microtransactions.

The method of collecting fees on the games was to lower their quality, not to raise it.

amelius3• 5 months ago

Yes, and advertising drives mass overconsumption. So banning it will solve problems in that area too.

gloosx• 5 months ago

This is a brilliant idea, really, but unfotunately it is not a fit for the society we have constructed so far. There are little to no governments around which would willingly hit the brakes on Consumerism — it is having a hypnotic effect on the people they herd as well as being very profitable for them

permo-w7• 5 months ago

The major loss would be Youtube. Youtube is possibly the greatest educational tool the world has ever seen. Yeah there's some bad stuff, but you want to know how to do almost anything from tying your shoelaces to building a mega laser first-hand from an expert, and watch it be done? It's on Youtube, for free. Remove advertising and it dies and all of that goes with it. Even if the EU, say, buy it off Google and take it into public ownership, which the US government very probably wouldn't allow and also isn't really part of the EU's philosophy, you're still going to have to continuously pay creators for their work and hosting costs, forever. Otherwise I think it's a great idea. Maybe just carve out an exception for educational content

cyanydeez• 5 months ago

Wpuldnt it be better just to create a .noad ICANN domain and let see if that gets any traction?

mmonaghan• 5 months ago

I don't think this changes the dynamic one bit. Every subscription product still optimizes for engagement. Then there's the free speech aspect - sure it's easy to say "we don't want to see cigarette ads"- what about your local mom n pop restaurant buying ads to try and get more people to eat in?

The primordial domino tile is human nature, which you're not going to knock over. The solution is probably closer to what China does - punish companies that don't prioritize/train algos to prioritize the values we hold dear. Basically, just keep beating meta and bytedance until they decide to get their timelines out of the politics game and into the education game, for example, or the democracy game, or whatever your country's main issues are.

I think there's definitely room to regulate "divisiveness" though, and that's a little clearer than "addictive design".

1vuio0pswjnm74• 5 months ago

Thankfully that absurd comment about "vibes" dropped from the top spot

"It's the primordial domino tile."

FWIW, I believe this is correct

However when using the term "banning" this needs to be placed in context; advertising might be "banned" only in certain circumstances.. Mind you, advertising has been banned whole cloth from computer networks in the past. It is still banned on many computer networks.^1 Before the internet (an interconnected network of computer networks) opened to the public there was a rule, i.e., policy, against advertising

A better term than "banning" might be simply "regulating". Online advertising is not regulated in the same way that advertising is regulated on billboards, in print publications, radio or television. For example, regulating the time (electoral campaigns), place (billboards), subject matter (cigarettes)

Whenever this topic comes up on HN, it draws inane replies about people being unable to distinguish advertising from anything else

But there is zero evidence to support this theory in practice. Everyone knows what advertising is, and how to identify it. That's why and how people are capable of complaining about it

Even this forum, Hacker News, places limits on advertising. YC may promote its participating companies but others are generally not permitted to advertise. Submissions that are deemed to be ads are killed. If advertising was undefinable, then how is HN able to define it

If advertising was impossible to define then how could anyone design a so-called "ad blocker"

1. If advertising were undefinable then why would any computer network have a "Network Use Policy" that prohibited using the network for disseminting advertising

The suggestion that advertising is undefinable, that either everything is advertising or nothing is advertising, is pure nonsense

It's only when the subject of tampering with the sole "business model" of the so-called "tech" company having nothing else to sell, or the means of substinence for the low quality website operator republishing public information in pages crammed full of ads and tracking, that HN commenters try to argue that advertising is beyond definition

A large percentage of internet users, perhaps a majority, have never experienced the internet without ads. Hence it may be difficult for these people to understand the place of advertising on a computer network. Let's be clear, originally, there was _no place for it_

Some people alive today did experience the internet without ads. Sadly, many of them are now engaged in providing internet advertising services for financial gain. Others are not. I'm in the later category

Some of the loudest voices defending internet advertising will be people in the former category. They have cashed in at every internet user's expense

jaredklewis• 5 months ago

I’m sympathetic, but I think this idea seems pretty clearly a political non-starter.

“Good news voters! You now have to pay for your email, search engines, and social media accounts.” Privacy and healthy digital habits are issues dear to my heart and issues that I think are gaining some modest traction, but they just can’t compete with a core pocketbook issues like making everything cost more. In the US, we just elected a guy that campaigned on, among other things, ending democracy, because (at least according to some political pundits) egg prices went up under Biden.

“But you pay that cost now, it’s just hidden!” I know, I know. But that doesn’t strike me as a politically winning argument. It’s like trying to explain to people that inflation is ok as long as if in adjusted terms wages outpace it; technically correct, but a political loser.

I would be happy to be wrong of course.

1vuio0pswjnm74• 5 months ago

"The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes"."

   Wikitionary (2026)
   Noun
   vibe (plural vibes)
    1. (informal, originally New Age jargon, often in the plural) An atmosphere or aura felt to belong to a person, place or thing. [c. 1960s]

1vuio0pswjnm74• 5 months ago

s/Wikit/Wikt

kawera• 5 months ago

having a few large companies to watch over is better than millions of small micro-niche ones

Not necessarily. The consequences of a few bad micro-niche ones would be, well, micro.

johannes1234321• 5 months ago

The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do.

The issue is: If you do a precise wording of what you don't want a lawyer will go through it wird by word and the company finds a way to build something which violated the spirit, but not the exact wording. By being more generic in the wording they can reach such cases and future development with very little oversight for later corrections and courts can interpret the intention and current state of art.

There are areas where law has to be precise (calculation of tax, criteria for criminal offenses, permissions for authorities, ...), but in many cases good laws are just as precise as needed and as flexible as possible.

piva00• 5 months ago

I think it's a general misunderstanding of Americans about other law systems, the American way of codifying laws leaves a lot of loopholes (intentionally or unintentionally) due to it being a game to be played, the spirit of the law is second to the letter of the law. They expect precise and well-defined constraints in the letter of the law.

Most European countries, and the EU as a legislative body, work with the premise of the spirit of the law. It is less precise and requires real world judgment to determine its boundaries but it can be much harder to side-step with technicalities and "gotchas" using loopholes in the letter of the law.

It's just a different system, in my opinion it's less exploitable even though it's riskier. I prefer the spirit of the law to be defended instead of a whole system of gaming technicalities, really don't like the whole vibe of playing Munchkin the USA has in its legal system. Makes some good legal drama though.

SllX• 5 months ago

It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling, but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it.

If the EU passes a law that seems general but start giving out specific examples ahead of time, they’re outlawing those specific examples. That’s how they work, even if you read the law closely and comply with the letter of the law. And they’ll take a percentage of your global revenue while people shout “malicious compliance” in the virtual streets if they don’t get their way.

sophrosyne422• 5 months ago

No, this is far worse. This is just a license for bureaucrats to selectively choose winners or losers in social media. Once regulatory capture happens it merely turns into a special privilehe for pre-established businesses or a vehicle for one business to destroy another without outcompeting it

ArchieScrivener• 5 months ago

In the USA at least, we need a nation specific intranet where everyone on it is verified citizens and businesses where the government cant buy your data but instead is tasked with protecting it, first and foremost, from itself.

No more for profit nets. Time for civil digital infrastructure.

paulddraper3• 5 months ago

This is everything terrible about laws.

Laws are supposed to be just that — predictable, enforceable, and obeyable rules, like the laws of physics or biology.

Bad laws are vague and subjective. It may be impossible to remove all ambiguity, but lawmakers should strive to create clear and consistent laws for their citizens.

Else it is not a nation of laws, but a domain of dictators.

sriku• 5 months ago

"what specific laws ...?"

If a company chooses a design and it can be proved through a subpoena of their communications that the design was intended and chosen for its addictive traits, even if there has been no evidence collected for the addictiveness, then the company (or person) can be deemed to have created a design in bad faith to society and penalized for it.

(Well that's my attempt. I tried to apply "innocent until proven guilty" here.)

johnnyanmac5• 5 months ago

My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent, but after thinking on it more I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?".

I'd make the algorithms transparent, then attack clearly unethical methods on a case by case basis. The big thing about facebook in the 2010's was how we weren't aware of how deep its tracking was. When revealed and delved into, it lead to GDRP.

I feel that's the only precision method of keeping thins ethical.

hinkley• 5 months ago

I’m trying to think of what use I’d make of infinite scroll that would specifically not be for addictive purposes. Maybe ticket backlogs?

akersten• 5 months ago

I'm also trying to think of what use I'd make of sugar that would specifically not be for addictive purposes. Maybe keeping down medicine?

Point being, the internet is the clutchable pearl de jour for easy political points. There's far more proven addictions and harm elsewhere, but those problems are boring and trodden and don't give a dopamine hit to regulate quite like the rancor that proposals like this drum up. Hey, aren't dopamine hits what they're trying to mediate in the first place?

paulcole• 5 months ago

Laws should be strict!

Waterluvian• 5 months ago

The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do.

“You know it when you see it.”

dakolli• 5 months ago

fracture all the services, idc.

3 hrs a day on your phone is equivalent to 15 years of your life (accounting for a 16 hour waking day). I know people that do a solid 6... That's 30 years of their life scrolling, getting their brains completely fried by social media, and soon the infinite jest machine that is generative AI.

Sorry, we don't let people fry their brains with drugs, well we at least try to introduce some societal friction in between users and the act of obtaining said drug.

roenxi• 5 months ago

My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent, but after thinking on it more I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". Everything I thought of would have some way or workaround that could be found...

This doesn't solve the problem though - the enforcers still have to come up with a standard that they will enforce. A line has to be drawn, letting people move the line around based on how they feel today doesn't help. Making the standard uncertain just creates opportunities for corruption and unfairness. I haven't read the actual EU stance on the matter but what you are describing is a reliable way to end up in a soup of bad policy. There needs to be specific rulings on what people can and can't do.

If you can't identify the problem, then you aren't in a position to solve it. Applies to most things. Regulation by vibe-checks is a great way to kill off growth and change - which the EU might think is clever, but the experience over the last few centuries has been that growth and change generally make things better.

And what they actually seem to be doing here is demanding that sites spy on their users and understand their browsing habits which does seem like a terrible approach. I don't see how their demands in that statement align with the idea of the EU promoting digital privacy.

seydor5• 5 months ago

The wording is vague enough so they canm milk american/chinese companies for fines in a few months. EU being sad again

deaux2• 5 months ago

Those companies are incredibly welcome to stop doing business in the EU.

Or abide by the laws, which truly isn't that difficult.

The fact that no one at Meta lets their own children use their platforms on its own justifies these laws a hundred times over.

enaaem• 5 months ago

America forced the sale of Tiktok and China doesn't even allow American social media companies. I would argue the EU is late to the game.

KPGv2• 5 months ago

In the US we often use a "reasonable person" standard to get around trying to write super precise descriptions of things. "don't do X where a reasonable person would think Y."

iamflimflam1• 5 months ago

This is a classic play book by anyone who is anti regulation. Present it as something that appears to be ludicrous - eg “they are banning infinite scroll!” and rely on the fact that very few people will actually dig any deeper as you’ve already satisfied their need for a bit of rage.

grumbel2• 5 months ago

"well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?"

Expand the GDPR "Right to data portability" to publicly published content for third parties, i.e. open up the protocols so you can have third party clients that themselves can decide how they want to present the data. And add a realtime requirement, since at the moment companies still circumvent the original rule with a "only once every 30 days" limit.

Also add an <advertisment> HTML tag and HTTP header and force companies to declare all their ads in a proper machine readable way.

The core problem with addictive design isn't the addictive design itself, but that it's often the only way to even access the data. And when it comes to communication services that benefit from network effects, that should simply not be allowed.

shevy-java2• 5 months ago

but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it

I still don't like that explanation at all. They imply that infinite scrolling is a sign of addictive design. How do they reach this conclusion? I can think of other ways that don't necessitate an addictive design. Some art form for instance. It may not be your cup of tea but that is art in general. I just don't see the logical connection.

Not that I am against taxing these greedy and evil US corporations. But that argument by the EU is simply not sound.

Regardless of your take around whether this is EU overreach, I'm glad they're not implementing strict laws around what you can/can't do - there are valuable situations for these UI patterns, even if in combination they can create addictive experiences.

But why would you be in favour then? Does this make sense?

but the regulated friction of major platforms (ie discord w/ ID laws) is on a collision course

This will happen anyway. Trump and his TechBros leverage the US corporations for their wars. You only need to listen to Vance, or Rubio doing his latest dance. Sadly the european politicians are also too weak to do anything other than talk big.

Someone2• 5 months ago

They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do.

The EU, in general, phrases laws and regulations more in terms of what they want to accomplish with them than in terms of what you can’t do.

In contrast, common law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law), over time, more or less collects a list of all things you may not do.

svara• 5 months ago

The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes".

A very common tension in law everywhere.

In the US you now have a 'major questions doctrine'. What the hell is a major question?

hyperman1• 5 months ago

Isn't this the standard EU way? First, they publish a statement, declaring what they want to see. 'Deal with addictive design', in this case. We've had 'Deal with the zillion different connectors on cell phones' in the past. It is now up to the industry to do this, in whatever way they see fit. If this happens, no law will be written. However, if the industry doesn't deal with it adequately, Laws will Follow, and the industry will not like them.

European companies know this pattern, and tend to get the hint. US companies tend to try and maximize what they can get while claiming there is no law against it, then go very pikachu-faced when the consequences hit them.

paulddraper3• 5 months ago

claiming there is no law against it

Is there a law against it?

bojan• 5 months ago

For Discord the regulation is just an excuse to gather as much personal information as possible: https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/oh-good-discords-...

atoav3• 5 months ago

I am betting people would quickly ignore the spitit of the law and make it about "inginite scroll verboten" like with the GDPR where some people quickly moved to make it mean "you have to have a cookie banner!"

No you don't have to have a cookie banner. The law means you need to ask for informed consent for each purpose where you collect and or transfer personal data from your users. So (1) if you don't collect the data, you don't have to ask for consent at all and (2) it doesn't matter too much if cookies are involved (or you use some other client side storage for tracking) and (3) you need to have their informed consent, meaning just having them click OK somewhere is absolutely useless unless you explained which data you collect for what purpose. Good luck doing that for your 300+ "partners".

The ad industry and self-declared SEO experts have displayed an astounding inability to read the text of the law and follow its spirit. One could argue, probably on purpose. The same will happen here. This is clearly about giving users an way to sue against addictive designs and giving the EU a lever to protrct consumers from particularily bad actors. Now anybody who still profits from using these dark patterns will try to make it about one thing "infinite scroll verboten" and then proceed to violate the spirit of the law.

henrikschroder• 5 months ago

I remember the GDPRpocalypse which had a lot of Americans up in arms because of the wildly different approach to lawmaking that the EU has. Everyone on the US side was screaming for a checklist they could implement, and assumed they would get maximum penalties if they didn't cross every t and dot every i. But it just doesn't work like that, EU laws are generally not very procedural, they are a lot more about intent.

These findings are very much in line with that, they bring up a feature, a checkbox, a specific thing TikTok did to pay lip-service to protect minors, and then they're simply saying that it doesn't appear to work. So it doesn't matter that TikTok checked the box and crossed the t.

anomaly_• 5 months ago

GDPR is in the process of being unwound by the EU as it has been an unmitigated disaster.

astrobe_• 5 months ago

France is considering a ban on certain social media for minors, and parental consent on all social media for minors under 15, pretty much like Australia. They had work around EU laws that prevented them to force service providers to do things, the trick they used is to make it illegal for those services to let minors register on the platform, because EU law acknowledge that local laws on forbidden content apply.

If this law passes and they "blacklist" some of these design-for-addiction (sorry, "engagement") platforms, I believe it should send a strong signal for adults as well. Most adults are pretty much aware that these platforms are bad for everyone; according to some polls, the public opinion is unambiguously in favor of these laws.

bjackman• 5 months ago

The thing is, I doubt anyone at TikTok ever says "this design choice is good because it's addictive". Almost certainly, their leadership gives them metrics to target, like watch time, and they just hypyothesise and experiment on changes with those metrics in mind. Almost certainly the design of TikTok is almost entirely emergent. Just like the scientific method is "revealing" truth I think TikTok is just "revealing" the design that maximises its target metrics.

So what we have is a machine designed to optimise for something adjacent to addictiveness, and then some rules saying "you can't design for addictiveness"...

What happens when an underspecified vibe rule clashes with a billion dollar optimisation machine? Surely the machine wins every time? The machine is already defeating every ruleset that it's ever come up against.

Feels like the only way regulation could achieve anything is if it said "you can't build a billion dollar optimisation machine at all".

danpalmer• 5 months ago

This is the EU digital strategy for legislation: vague but reasonable, so that you have to comply with the spirit of the law not the letter of it.

They haven't nailed it every time, but on the whole it's a good approach. It's hard on companies, but rightly so.

direwolf207• 5 months ago

It seems like most EU tech rules are about vibes. Like the well–known GDPR, which doesn't say thou shalt have a cookie popup, but says users shalt notify users and gain their consent for all unnecessary processing of personal data. Websites were the ones that chose to spitefully use cookie popups.

InsideOutSanta• 5 months ago

Many laws work like that. They don't have very precise definitions of things, but instead depend on what an average, reasonable person would think.

An example of this is contract law. There is no clear definition of what a legal contract must look like. Instead, a contract's validity can depend on whether an average, prudent person would have entered into it in similar circumstances.

RamblingCTO• 5 months ago

Breaking infinite scrolling on these apps is one good step, but for me it's something else that would be more important.

I'm recovering from a surgery and can't do much besides existing. So I'd like to scroll to keep me occupied and numb the pain in my face. But instagram tries to shove content down my throat that I don't want to see. It's always only a matter of time until I see THOT/incel content. No matter how often I click "not interested", they try again and again. If it's not playing genders out against each other, it's politics. It's brain rot. I don't wanna see that. I have interests and they know what they are. But no, they show me this garbage. The algorithms need to be the second thing we need to regulate imho

StopDisinfo910• 5 months ago

The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes".

That's not really accurate. The EU actually legislated in a way which is very typical of how countries regulate things which are now to carry hard to characterized and varied risks.

Companies have to carry out a risk assessment and take appropriate preventive actions when they find something. The EU audits the assessment. That's how finance has been regulated for ages.

It's all fairly standard I fear.

luplex• 5 months ago

What will probably happen is that someone will develop an industry standard for "non-addictive design" and go around certifying products or product development practices. Like for example, they might disallow optimizing time spent, or they might require more transparency or customizability for your recommendation algorithm.

braiamp• 5 months ago

"well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?"

You can't. You don't need to specify how to comply with the law, just that generally a goal must be met. That's good lawmaking there, since it's flexible enough to catch all future potential creatives way to break it. I remember someone comment about how working at MSFT as a compliance officer, dude was going around saying that it's not the letter of the law that must be followed, but the spirit of thereof. They rolled over him and released the product nonetheless. Almost immediately came the EU investigation and that crap had to be reversed an put in accordance to what the stated goal of the law is.

KolibriFly5• 5 months ago

The Commission seems to be saying: not without guardrails

Valakas_2• 5 months ago

Dude, if you have a page with 10 000 elements, it's practically as if it was infinite. Obviously addiction is a spectrum, but we can and should have some boundary that is 'good enough'. If a computer screen is usually 20-40cm, it can simply be defined on allowing max 2-4 screens for laptops and 2-4 screens for mobile phones. Of course the problem in the future might be proving whether something is addictive. But that's another story, I think the intention is good.

causalmodels• 5 months ago

Does this only apply to companies the commission doesn't like or will it apply to the hn app I use, my email clients, shopping sites, etc? Because it seems like the actual concern how good the algorithms are and not the UI.

idle_zealot2• 5 months ago

This is a finding of a violation of the DSA, which only applies to services (not local reader apps), and only if they have a lot of users.

Like, a significant fraction of the country level of usage. You don't need to worry about the EU coming and taking away your HN client APK. You do need to be worried about Google doing that, though.

gib4442• 5 months ago

I don't know how the EU has time for this kind of thing right now. Honestly

amelius3• 5 months ago

Yes they should be banning the political propaganda instead.

avaer• 5 months ago

I admire the EU's attempts at things like the cookie law, age verification, and tackling the addictiveness of infinite scrolling, but the implementation is pure theater.

Trackers have much more effective techniques than "cookies", kids trivially bypass verification, and designers will make a joke of tell me you have infinite scrolling without telling me you have infinite scrolling. When you are facing trillions of dollars of competition to your law, what do you think is going to happen?

Maybe if there was an independent commission that had the authority to rapidly investigate and punish (i.e. within weeks) big tech for attempting engagement engineering practices it might actually have some effect. But trying to mandate end user interfaces is wasting everyone's time putting lipstick on a pig.

puppycodes• 5 months ago

Facinating that they landed on infinite scrolling as the problem to spend time and energy on instead of all the other things happening online that have an impact on society.

Genuinely curious about the actual data on this.

Does anyone have a link to a reputable, sizable study?

somewhereoutth• 5 months ago

Infinite scrolling combined with the algorithmic feed is the real nasty.

Feeds should be heavily regulated, effectively they are a (personalized!) broadcast, and maybe the same strictures should apply. Definitely they should be transparent (e.g. chronological from subscribed topics), and things like veering more extreme in order to drive engagement should be outlawed.

pedroma• 5 months ago

Looks like the EU can just get a feature flag to use pagination or a "Load More" button? Doesn't seem as big of a deal as enforcing USB-C.

Though if it applies to the YouTube, seems annoying when trying to find a video to watch. I usually trigger a few infinite scrolling loads to look for videos.

And I assume they'd have to specify a maximum number of items per page, or else devs could just load a huge number of items up front which would technically not be infinite scrolling but enough content to keep someone occupied for a long time.

dheera2• 5 months ago

We value your privacy
We use cookies and other technologies to store and access personal data on your device

Evidently you don't value privacy.

Funes-3• 5 months ago

From another article:

"Social media app TikTok has been accused of purposefully designing its app to be “addictive” by the European Commission, citing its infinite scroll, autoplay, push notification, and recommendation features."

All of these have immediate and easy replacements or workarounds. Nothing will substantially change (for the better; maybe it does for the worse, even).

Moreover, "purposefully designing something to be addictive" (and cheap to make) is the fundamental basis of late stage capitalism.

yencabulator• 5 months ago

Moreover, "purposefully designing something to be addictive" (and cheap to make) is the fundamental basis of late stage capitalism.

I'm fine with EU resisting late stage capitalism.

tartoran• 5 months ago

This was long overdue. I hope killing other dark patterns that feast on attention or hunt on flaws in human psychology follow. However, my only concern is how this will be taken care of. I hope they learned something from the GDPR fiasco.

observationist• 5 months ago

How many days before the only legal social media in the EU is the official government run platform?

Nemo_bis2• 5 months ago

They can't even agree to leave XTwitter for official EU accounts...

lemoncookiechip• 5 months ago

This comes from the same EU that's wholeheartedly embracing gambling across their member states, gambling mind you that children can just as easily jump into with their phones and some will, but devastating for grown-ups just as much.

They're not alone in this by any means, America has also opened their doors for all forms of gambling like Kalshi which now even sponsors news networks of all things.

The EU has this disconnect with the things they push, which makes sense considering their size and the speed at which it moves. One example that comes to mind is how they're both pushing for more privacy online while also pushing for things such as chat control which is antithetical to privacy.

Does social media need regulating? Yeah. Is infinite scrolling where they should be focusing? Probably not, there's more important aspects that should be tackled and are seemingly ignored.

retired• 5 months ago

In Spain I can’t even have a meal at a restaurant, get groceries or go to IKEA without someone trying to sell me lottery tickets. They really need to regulate that.

MBCook7• 5 months ago

Is your country allowed to ban it even if the EU in general allows it?

Saline95155• 5 months ago

I remember scratch cards being sold next to the credit card terminal in grocery store, in Lithuania.

If you have a gambling addiction, it's basically impossible to avoid the trigger since you have to buy food anyway. Truly an evil dark pattern.

Findecanor2• 5 months ago

Every member state has its own laws for it, and AFAIK all of them now regulate (or ban) online gambling more or less.

There were many startups here in Sweden in the early '00s, and I believe they had taken advantage of a legal loophole which has since been plugged. Regulation has tightened. Players have to be 18 y/o, use digital ID and not be registered as a gambling addict. But I still find the industry to be depraved, to be honest.

nicman235• 5 months ago

my man stop trying to validate a addiction with a whataboutisms of another addiction.

my money (lol) is on that EU will move to complete ban advertising of gambling in the next 2-3 years

randomNumber75• 5 months ago

Next: Gaming company sued because a game is fun to play.

econ• 5 months ago

Early on in the internet age it somewhat bothered me that every page on the www either acts like it is the first thing one reads on a topic or assumes great knowledge of the subject. With nothing in between.

Wondering about a technical solution I couldn't find anything besides fold out explanations and links to explain jargon. Neither would really bridge the gap.

One obvious theory was to keep track of what the user knows and hide things they don't need or unhide things they do. This is of course was not acceptable from a privacy perspective.

Today however you could forge a curriculum for countless topics and [artificially] promote a great diversity of entry level videos. If the user is into something they can be made to watch more entry level videos until they are ready for slightly more advanced things. You can reward creators for filling gaps between novice and expert level regardless of view count.

Almost like Khan academy but much slower, more playful and less linear.

Imagine programming videos that assume the reader knows everything about each and every tool involved. The algorithm could seek out the missing parts and feed them directly into your addiction or put bounties on the scope.

GaryBluto• 5 months ago

The EU's mission statement seems to be to make the internet as difficult to legally utilize as possible.

I'm interested to see what measures people will use to get around the increasingly bizarre restrictions. Perhaps an official browser extension for each platform that reimplements bureaucrat-banned features?

nicman235• 5 months ago

i mean res did that for reddit before reddit got its new ui or app

Lorin• 5 months ago

As long as this doesn't create yet another cookie popup UX nonsense we've ended up with...

relaxing3• 5 months ago

Good. Infinite scrolling is a scourge. Give me back my time ordered feed that if I navigate away stays on the page where I left off.

mh22662• 5 months ago

What does ranking vs. chronological having to do with infinite scrolling?

You can have a ranked paginated UI. You can also have an "infinite" (until you run out of items, but this is not different for ranked) chronological UI.

relaxing3• 5 months ago

Moving away from chronological allows them to feed you more addicting content, as does the infinite feed. They involved together because they work together synergistically.

It’s of no value to point out both can technically be implemented independently. That isn’t what happened, and even if it did it would still be user hostile.

tsoukase• 5 months ago

The hunt has started: EU burocracy vs TK. In the past EU has rarely directly attacked a single company with so specific points. But anytime they remained consistent and dedicaded to their target and usually won. It just took a long time (from a few years till decades). The only time they lost a policy was at stopping summer-time switch which was cancelled when Covid started.

They avoid to mention the rest of social media platforms, which happen to be US based. It seems they choose a single quick and easy China-based target more like an experiment to decide for the rest. The key point is when: either the current kids will experience it or those that are not yet born.

nicman235• 5 months ago

even disregarding the fact that this affects multiple US based platforms that are larger than tiktok, have they tried to moderate their platform to not be unfettered brain rot?

coldtea18• 5 months ago

Oh, no, this will kill all slop innovation!

phendrenad2• 5 months ago

Technically this is about Tiktok's "addictive design", and their examples include "infinite scroll over time". It's totally unclear what they mean by that, or what Tiktok would have to change it to in order to be in compliance. The whole thing seems like it was written by a boomer bureaucrat who has never used Tiktok, let alone a computer.

booleandilemma• 5 months ago

Here here. Nothing is infinite except for God, I say.

Retr0id• 5 months ago

The implication that the scrolling mechanic itself is causal in the harm feels like a bit of a leap to me.

sashank_1509• 5 months ago

I’m mixed on this. I do at times waste a lot of time doom scrolling, and would like regulation to prevent me from doing so. But also some times you just want to doomscroll to escape your day to day life. Do we want this decision to be made by the govt?

I guess we don’t let people have hard drugs even if sometimes they just need to escape their painful life. And maybe this could fall under that logic. But we do let people drink themselves, which serves the same purpose. And if I had to choose, I think doomscrolling is more at the level of Drinking, and less at the level of Heroin. So I would actually be fine with an age limit for doomscrolling after which, you have a hands off approach.

jeandejean2• 5 months ago

That sounds reasonable

esprehn• 5 months ago

I wish they would go after the fake spinning wheel discount pattern and the "app exclusive" or "better in the app" pattern. That's all a way to get people to install apps that will then bombard folks with notifications or slurp data off the device.

thr0waway001• 5 months ago

Even c0rnhub doesn't have infinite scrolling. It knows to stop after the first 10-20 thumbs.... according to my friend.

isametry• 5 months ago

This isn’t heavily censored social media, you can say Pornhub.

deadbabe• 5 months ago

What if we implement something like "pay per scroll"?

Frannky• 5 months ago

It's interesting how there may be an implicit assumption that imposing more rules on tech will lead to positive outcomes. From my perspective, technology is like reality itself: very difficult to control, with countless ways to achieve the desired result while circumventing the rules. And what's the actual result? Just look at the market capitalization of European companies compared to US companies... Or maybe it just feels good to add new rules and engage in virtue-signaling contests. Or maybe it's just a way to make everything illegal—'find me the person, and I'll find you the crime' type of control. Maybe a combination of all those. Who knows? From my experience, the farther you get from the influence of bureaucrats, the happier life becomes...

pyrale• 5 months ago

Just look at the market capitalization of European companies compared to US companies...

Counterexample: just look at the state of EU tech companies compared to Chinese tech companies.

I’m not saying China is an attractive example, but chalking up Europe’s tech issues to a regulation problem fails to address europe’s digital woes.

simongray2• 5 months ago

And what's the actual result? Just look at the market capitalization of European companies compared to US companies..

Europe is actually doing quite well at the moment. The European stock markets have over-performed quite decently vs. the US ever since Trump became president, despite the various curveballs thrown at Europe in recent years. Market capitalisation in the US is held up primarily by the Magnificent 7 who are great outliers in the American stock market.

Saline95155• 5 months ago

There is a recency bias here. The Sp500 has outperformed the Stoxx600 every year for the last 5 years, except 2022.

Cumulative returns are around 100% for the american index, vs 60% for the EU one.

jeandejean2• 5 months ago

Aren't you happy that when you buy food, it doesn't contain cocaine? Regulations are totally necessary and addictive online social media is a well documented plague in our youths especially.

This very US lobbyists narrative that Europe regulate while missing out on the economy is used and abused anytime something look like contrary to US interests in MAGA land.

mzhaase• 5 months ago

Instead of market capitalization, have you looked at comparisons for happiness?

nullderef• 5 months ago

Or even lifespan… It’s crazy that USA is so ahead in tech yet life expectancy is 78 versus 81 in Germany or 84 in Spain

Nemo_bis2• 5 months ago

Indeed the cat and mouse game is tedious... There's a case to be made that you should just act on the root cause of all these issues with a neutral policy tool. The best tested of all regulatory tools is taxation. Reduce the profit motive slightly and many of these aberrations nobody likes will go away.

mattlutze4• 5 months ago

The regulatory frameworks in the EU are intentionally not designed like the US, to maximize company profits over e.g. human rights and health.

It is thoroughly documented that social media and the modern web are designed to be addictive, by psychologists who specialize in this. We regulate access to other addictive things, because addictive things break humans' normal control systems.

"the farther you get from the influence of bureaucrats, the happier life becomes"

only when things are "normal" and if you're a default power-holder in a community. For everyone else, really no.

Tade0• 5 months ago

Just look at the market capitalization of European companies compared to US companies...

A huge portion of that market cap exists only because the companies in question are allowed to act unethically. Aside from that, all this wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small minority.

Ultimately the economy exists to serve us, not the other way around. What good all that market cap does for the average American?

jama2113• 5 months ago

Not sure this is likely to be a successful angle but I understand the motivation behind it

bluescrn• 5 months ago

There is no infinite scrolling.

There’s a finite (albeit vast) amount of content to serve up.

tefkah• 5 months ago

shut up man you know what they mean

shevy-java2• 5 months ago

Personally I don't like infinite scrolling - but the EU also needs to stop wasting time and energy on trying to micro-manage everything. We already had that disaster where pop-ups fly out "do you want to accept those cookies". That is just a usability nightmare. People are forced into extensions, just to stop wasting their time here.

Also, while I dislike infinite scrolling, why should the EU regulate the design of a website? I don't like this idea as a principle. This clearly comes from overpaid bureaucrats. I am not at all saying the EU should not become stronger, in the face of a very hostile and abusive USA - but the focus by these bureaucrats is wrong. Those micro-regulations will not get rid of US dominance in the software sector.

seszett• 5 months ago

why should the EU regulate the design of a website?

There are laws regulating many things that could be considered "design", for example misleading packaging, mandatory information on some categories of ads, cigarette packaging, container sizes, accessibility requirements, etc.

I would say regulating against addictive design (infinite scrolling is not banned per se, it just makes for a catchy headline) is well within what laws are meant for.

sbszllr• 5 months ago

We already had that disaster where pop-ups fly out "do you want to accept those cookies". That is just a usability nightmare. People are forced into extensions, just to stop wasting their time here.

You’re perpetuating a gross misunderstanding of the cookie law. What it states is different from how the advertisers implement malicious compliance to bias people, like yourself.

Websites that implement basic functional cookies do not need to display any popups. They’re permitted to do so. Any cookies that are essential to the functioning of the website within reason are permitted. In fact at no point a website should serve you a cookie popup unless you seek it out because analytics and advertising cookies are supposed to be opt in.

So many websites do two things, serve you a popup that has everything enabled which is a clear violation; or a popup that has only functional cookies selected but the biggest highlighted button allows all of them.

The law is fine. Malicious compliance is to blame. The EU has been slow to rectify it.

mdavid626• 5 months ago

Because the average person’s brain is fried by looking at infinite scrolling apps 6 hours a day.

oompydoompy744• 5 months ago

The government (EU in this case) passes a law and a finger goes down on the monkeys paw. This will always be the case. If everything is illegal then nothing is.

nicman235• 5 months ago

just install i still dont care about cookies and let them cry

apexalpha• 5 months ago

Many potentially addictive things or addictive properties of things are regulated.

Try selling something containing Nicotine and you will find the EU has an opinion on that, too.

mattlutze4• 5 months ago

"People are forced into extensions, just to stop wasting their time here."

Except, what actually has happened is that the annoying pop-ups became ubiquitous, and then relatively standardized, so that now an extension like Consent-o-Matic (because the browser companies don't want to upset their advertisers) can automate away your actual choices.

If you want to allow websites to track you, tell the extension to make those choices. If you don't, then tell the extension that. It does a great job almost instantly clearing the popups, and you have more control over your digital identity.

Ylpertnodi• 5 months ago

Those micro-regulations will not get rid of US dominance in the software sector.

Probably not. But the dominance will be regulated.

KolibriFly5• 5 months ago

The Commission isn't (at least from what's published) saying "pagination must look like X" or "buttons must be Y pixels tall." They're saying platforms have to mitigate systemic risks tied to their design choices. That's more like regulating outcomes and incentives than dictating UI details

neop1x2• 5 months ago

The cookie policy should have been mandated to be implemented in the browsers. One click to not give consent to anyone. Done.

Valakas_2• 5 months ago

Do you consider all the laws against air pollution micro management too? Or food preservatives, health and safety hazards, (...)?

I say great this is a great initiative from the EU.

vasco• 5 months ago

What about TV, how come the channels are always playing?? They should shut off after 30mins and I shouldn't be able to press down button to do zapping all night long.

What about video games? We need session limits of 30mins, kids get too addicted to it.

In fact we're going to put a timer in every bedroom so that if you have sex with your wife for too long we'll fine you because it can turn into a real addiction.

rurban• 5 months ago

They must rule against chess also then. It's clearly addictive design, harming the minds of innocent kids. Absurd

breezykoi4• 5 months ago

Chess is healthy you get to go outside and meet people to play with, engage in your local club. Some online platforms make the thing addictive.

seydor5• 5 months ago

most people play online tho

throw_m239339• 5 months ago

The only absurd thing here is you linking chess to billion dollar US corporation social media dark patterns.

geysersam• 5 months ago

I feel we can't make laws against the subject of moral panic every generation. People have felt the same way about the activities of youths since forever. But ultimately it often turns out fine. Change can bring new problems, but it also brings positives that are hard to understand and even formulate, that's culture. Trying to be the arbiter of that is foolish.

Is ticktock addictive because of it's design, or is it addictive because it brings thousands of people and experiences and emotions right to you? Probably both, but it's hard to separate one from the other. Apps are not opium, it's not as clear cut.

Instead of micromanaging technology and culture they should make sure that society is kind, that there is slack in the system, that people don't have reason to want to flee their real lives, that those hurt by new technology get support.

Of course truly malicious dark patterns and fraud should be punished. But that feels like a different category.

dgellow2• 5 months ago

Is ticktock addictive because of it's design

We have clear answers here. Yes it’s by design

Aerbil3135• 5 months ago

And social media is objectively and measurably harming children, see: https://jonathanhaidt.com/essays/

sharperguy• 5 months ago

Tiktok will never have any competitors after this law comes into force. They will have the resources the implement the require changes, and the customer base will remain with them. Anyone starting a new service will have a tough time building something that jumps through all the hoops required by the EU, on top of the usual problems with network effects.

piekvorst2• 5 months ago

Censorship comes

breezykoi4• 5 months ago

I don't see censorship here could you enlighten me? It doesn't seem like they are trying to censor specific topics is it?

piekvorst2• 5 months ago

I didn’t want to say that a ban on infinite scrolling is a literal censorship. Sorry if I made that impression.

I thought that if one thinks that it’s right to violate property rights, the form of the violation is only a matter of time. Today infinite scrolling, tomorrow unpopular opinions.

swiftcoder• 5 months ago

I will 100% take this approach over the current EU tack of banning kids from accessing the internet. The problem wasn't ever the kids - it is the tech executives trying to profit from making the kids addicted to an advertising platform.

betteryet• 5 months ago

This stuff is important and can only happen at this level through legislation.

If you don't do it this way to apply for everyone, then any good actor products will be crushed by profitmaxxing competitors. Or any good actor executives and workers will be pushed out by profitmaxxing shareholders.

Legislators need to be careful to keep requirements tight and manageable, but it's better to limit negative externalities than outright ban something. Banning infinite scroll or any particular pattern is nonsense, but restricting addictive design (e.g. TikTok) and algorithm weaponization (e.g. TikTok) is very sensible.

pnt12• 5 months ago

then any good actor products will be crushed by profitmaxxing competitors

This is what I always say, and defended by many economists: The free market needs legislation and enforcement! Especially public companies, which are especially adamant to maximize shareholder profits at any cost.

Fee market only reacts in a positive way by default in matters that are clear to customers, eg pricing. But when the user isn't the customer, and the defects are not immediately sensed, winners will never do the good thing on their accord.

xg156• 5 months ago

The first part sounded good, the "every platform is different, we have to decide everything case-by-case" and the specific focus on TikTok less so IMO.

Keep in mind that in Europe, TikTok is still run by the original owners with China connections - unlike the new "American TikTok" after the owner change in the US.

The US legislature only seemed to discover its concern about addictive behavior when foreign actors or pro-palestinian content were involved, but had no problem with YouTube or Facebook doing the same stuff.

I seriously hope it's different in the EU but wouldn't bet on it.

0dayz• 5 months ago

Why wouldn't you?

The DSA for instance has only been used against to western companies so far (doesn't mean Chinese companies are immune).

arter453• 5 months ago

The DSA list includes Chinese companies like Alibaba and TikTok Technology Limited (Bytedance's European subsidiary). Proceedings have been opened against both US and Chinese companies.

You can check all of this here: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-desig...

creatonez2• 5 months ago

Banning personalized recommendation algorithms altogether would do so much good. Feeds should be the same for everyone who has the same filters and subscriptions configured.

gunapologist995• 5 months ago

How would that do any good? And what good exactly would it do?

I like my feed being personalized to who I am. I am unique. I'm not like anyone else.

creatonez2• 5 months ago

Then you can personalize it... manually, using deterministic filters. Ideally, the algorithm just wouldn't be black box anymore.

degun• 5 months ago

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

lpcvoid• 5 months ago

Common EU win. Anything which curbs addiction to harmful social media services is a good thing.

Havoc• 5 months ago

Not a terrible idea but to me this feels like it misses the point somewhat. The mechanics of the scrolling isn't what corners people psychologically

gunapologist995• 5 months ago

Swiping is addictive, but touching a button for the next page is not.

One is arbitrarily banned by unelected bureaucrats. The other is fine.

We blame social companies for failing to raise our children the way we think they should.

kvdveer• 5 months ago

Infinitief scrolling is only mentioned in the title. The actual legislation focuses on addictive patterns of which infinite scroll is just one. The exact formulation will of course matter a lot, but it will not simply be banning infinite scroll, as that would be trivial to circumvent.

gunapologist995• 5 months ago

Fair point, but such regulatory ambiguity in the U.S. would likely be unconstitutionally vague:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness_doctrine#Unconstitut...

The article reads as if the EC chose one or a few apps that they didn't like, and then wrote a regulation based on that app's key features.

CrzyLngPwd• 5 months ago

Did they do Meta services yet?

oompydoompy744• 5 months ago

What happened to… personal responsibility? I hate dark patterns as much as the next person, but this will likely be as effective as the EU’s existing hand wringing (not).

MiddleEndian• 5 months ago

They hate infinite scrolling because it's addictive. I hate infinite scrolling because it's annoying lol. The worst is when you scroll to the bottom of a news article and it just loads another and your scrollbar and your URL/browser history get fucked up.

KolibriFly5• 5 months ago

Infinite scroll itself isn't inherently harmful, it's a pagination mechanism. The harm comes from recommender systems tuned for engagement over wellbeing

Aerbil3135• 5 months ago

This is the best piece of news I've seen in years. Jonathan Haidt's and others work is finally bearing fruit, assuming our society is not collectively too addicticed to get rid of these palm-sized slot machines.

the_black_hand• 5 months ago

European politicians got a big imagination lol. arent there real actual problems over their they should be fixing?

The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

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