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New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

169 points by moltensodium 7y ago

throwaway743 7y ago
Would this set a legal precedent for regulating code or is there already a precedent? If this does set a new legal precedent, the future looks messy
tantalor 7y ago
“If I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the wine, you won’t know when to stop drinking” That's not how drinking works. That's not how anything works.
- tlibert 7y ago
  He utterly mangled it, but there is an experiment which proves the underlying concept (which I'm guessing was his intent, live testimony is hard): Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake Objective: Using self‐refilling soup bowls, this study examined whether visual cues related to portion size can influence intake volume without altering either estimated intake or satiation. Research Methods and Procedures: Fifty‐four participants (BMI, 17.3 to 36.0 kg/m2; 18 to 46 years of age) were recruited to participate in a study involving soup. The experiment was a between‐subject design with two visibility levels: 1) an accurate visual cue of a food portion (normal bowl) vs. 2) a biased visual cue (self‐refilling bowl). The soup apparatus was housed in a modified restaurant‐style table in which two of four bowls slowly and imperceptibly refilled as their contents were consumed. Outcomes included intake volume, intake estimation, consumption monitoring, and satiety. Results: Participants who were unknowingly eating from self‐refilling bowls ate more soup [14.7 ± 8.4 vs. 8.5 ± 6.1 oz; F(1,52) = 8.99; p < 0.01] than those eating from normal soup bowls. However, despite consuming 73% more, they did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated than those eating from normal bowls. This was unaffected by BMI. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12
  - diminoten 7y ago
    A much better analogy, however I still think the generalization of "videos" as a single body of liquid is an overstep. It's not like the plot of a YouTube video just extends forever, you are aware you're starting a new video each time.
    - Forbo 7y ago
      Much the same way that you're aware of each spoonful scooped up.
  - jwilk 7y ago
    There are reasons to be skeptical about the results of this study: https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/feb/16/mindless-eating-brian-wansink-is-there-something-rotten-behind-the-research https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/feb/1...
    - mattkrause 7y ago
      That's polite! I would say that I doubt nearly everything that's come out of that lab…
- celticmusic 7y ago
  including analogies.
- ryandvm 7y ago
  It is a dumb analogy to be sure, but I think the point is valid. As intensely social creatures, humans are not particularly well adapted to handle the never-ending waterfall of synthetic social interactions you get from the likes of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc. In the past, getting as much social information as possible about your tribe was a huge reproductive advantage, but now that modern social network products have boosted the populations of our "tribes" into the thousands, trying to consume all that information has downsides that far outweigh the positive. Facebook is basically the psychological equivalent of high fructose corn syrup.
- FabHK 7y ago
  EDIT: see caveat from K-Wall below. Can't trust anything these days :-/ </edit> That's exactly how it works, to an extent. In a study [1], people with self-refilling soup bowls ate 73% more soup (p < 0.01) than those eating from normal soup bowls. Similar with popcorn [2]. I first read about this either in Nudge or in Mindless Eating. [1] Wansink, B., Painter, J.E., & North, J. (2005). Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake Obesity Research, 13 (1), 93-100 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12 [2] http://projectputthatcookiedownnow.com/2011/bottomless-bowls-of-soup-and-stale-popcorn-can-all-lead-to-mindless-eating/ http://projectputthatcookiedownnow.com/2011/bottomless-bowls...
  - K-Wall 7y ago
    I wouldn't cite Wansink... the guy had 15 retractions in the past year for making shit up.
    - FabHK 7y ago
      Oh, good to know. Are you aware of more details? Replications or critiques of those studies? (As I said, I came across them in pop-sci books.)
      - K-Wall 7y ago
        The unit I'm affiliated with was tasked by the university to run replications and ultimately assist with the retractions. This was all done by my colleagues but I heard about it quite often. Past that I am going to refrain on commenting more as I'm unqualified to do so. Two published replication studies (used for retractions) can be found here: https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php?IDTITLE=2796 https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php... https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php?IDTITLE=2797 https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php...
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    How replicated has the study been? Even a fully credible researcher should not be trusted when their research has not been replicated due to just how prevalent replication issues are in psychology.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  Bottomless margaritas have led to many a poor decision. (They remain legal, though.)
- ChristianBundy 7y ago
  I imagined this as a glass attached to a table with a false bottom that constantly refills the glass. When you drink some of the liquid (presumably with a straw?) the glass is instantly refilled, which makes it hard to tell how much you've drank. In other words: I agree, this really isn't a great example.
- azinman2 7y ago
  We know that portion size matters, because people will eat/drink what’s in front of them.
- isodude 7y ago
  Like when my brother decided to keep my glass full all the time at the bar. I got soo wasted, didn't even realise.
fhood 7y ago
This seems like an extremely short sited, overly broad and unlikely to pass bill, and to make it all worse, based on the title, I thought that someone was attempting to ban videos that play automatically when you visit a website, which would have been a deeply noble cause.
RandomInteger4 7y ago
God this is so fucking stupid. Can we get the Government to focus on actual problems rather than this bullshit?
- moate 7y ago
  Porque no los dos?
  - RandomInteger4 7y ago
    That's like saying "Why not both?" to eating healthy and putting your balls in a vice grip. Eating healthy in this analogy is the government making laws regarding actual problems that require government intervention, while the balls in vice grip in this analogy is a pointless law concerning something that doesn't require government intervention just because people have a moral panic over technology allegedly ruining society.
    - moate 7y ago
      No, it's more like saying "why not fix both 'big' and 'small' problems at the same time", because whataboutism is a constant defense of problematic status quos. I don't know that this bill is a good or bad thing yet, I haven't dug deep into it yet. But the idea of making more designers eliminate dark patterns in software and make more features opt in instead of opt out is a good use of regulation in my mind. I get it, "regulation ruins innovation" or some other libertarian nonsense. The bottom line is that the software industry has some problematic behaviors that they have refused to self-correct, and this is what happens.
      - RandomInteger4 7y ago
        This is not a "whataboutism". This is a "The government doesn't need to tell me how long I'm allowed to have an erection-ism"; i.e. micromanaging bullshit is not in the purview of the federal government.
gok 7y ago
So fitting for The Verge to be reporting this.
Jazgot 7y ago
This sounds like complete joke. Next another bill will ban pagination?
- umvi 7y ago
  Another bill will mandate that websites display a banner if the user has been there for too long (to protect internet addicts from being sedentary for too long). Pretty soon only big corps will be able to make a website because there is a phonebook sized stack of regulations you have to comply with.
  - somebodythere 7y ago
    Seems intentional.
    - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
      It always is when it comes to regulation. If you find a regulation that seems to benefit the consumer more than the incumbent firms you don't understand that market well enough.
      - tomatotomato37 7y ago
        GDPR?
  - danShumway 7y ago
    > Another bill will mandate that websites display a banner if the user has been there for too long Why wait? From Ars's writeup of the same bill[0]: > As described in the text, social media companies would have to limit users to 30 minutes of use per day by default. Users would be allowed to choose their own time limits for daily and weekly use, but companies would have to reset that time limit to half an hour every single month, as well as providing "conspicuous pop-up" displays at least once every 30 minutes showing how much time you have spent using a service in the past day, across all devices. This is just political grandstanding. (I hope) nobody would ever actually vote for this. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/proposed-us-law-would-ban-infinite-scroll-autoplaying-video/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/proposed-us-law-...
magduf 7y ago
Banning autoplay videos, with extremely severe penalties for offenders, would be a great thing for the world.
Agustus 7y ago
If politicians could focus their efforts on actually solving problems instead of giving hand outs to their tort lawyer buddies, we might get a better system. The lawsuits would include: - autoplay of gifs vs web videos - does Pinterest count as an auto scroll ad - does an endless scroll populated with 50% real content count as non-ad? The law will just create more headaches for the producers and less innovation thanks to having to fight lawsuits. Example of the depths lawyers can class action: Godiva is being sued in court for putting “Godiva 1927” on the label; the lawyer is arguing that people believe that the chocolate was made in 1927. *edited the content away from ideas.
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  Outlawing X doesn't mean almost-X is completely fine. That said, none of your examples make much sense (to me). > - autoplay of gifs vs web videos Presumably the content is what matters, not the particular compression format. Does it show animated content continuously without being triggered by active user interaction? Yes, so it's an auto-playing video. > - does Pinterest count as an auto scroll ad It's primarily focused on a call to action, so yes, it's an ad. Would they show an equivalent popup for ordinary user-generated content that they have no stake in? > - does an endless scroll populated with 50% real content count as non-ad? Is there an ad that appears when the user scrolls? I don't even see what this example was supposed to demonstrate. > The law will just create more headaches for the producers and less innovation thanks to having to fight lawsuits. More headaches and less innovation in how to sell bullshit sounds like a very positive outcome to me.
  - Asooka 7y ago
    > Presumably the content is what matters, not the particular compression format. Does it show animated content continuously without being triggered by active user interaction? Yes, so it's an auto-playing video. By that logic a loading spinner is an auto-playing video. Does me logging in count as "active user interaction" for showing me a loading spinner? I didn't request the spinner, I requested access to my skype chats.
    - 7y ago
GhostVII 7y ago
Things like requiring accept and decline checkboxes to be the same font seem somewhat reasonable, even if I disagree with it, but banning autoplay videos and endless scrolling is insane. There are legitimate uses for autoplay videos (ex. Netflix playing next episode, YouTube playing next song when you are listening to music) which I personally use all the time and appreciate, and endless scrolling is great when you don't need to refer back to previous results, and don't want to keep clicking "next". I think people should have the freedom to consume content how they want, the government shouldn't compensate for their lack of self control.
- zbrozek 7y ago
  While I agree that it's hard to support legislation that's likely to have a lot of unintended consequences, it's also important to realize what's driving folks to introduce a bill like this. It's also worth pointing out that (in particular with Netflix) your example is its own counter-argument. You can't turn off autoplay, and that's the opposite of letting me make choices for myself. There's also plenty of other examples of government regulating or banning things which exploit human weakness. Ponzi schemes, meth, gambling, and more are all controlled. It's pretty clear that a lot of tech-company design is (intentionally or not) probably scratching a lot of the same itches. It's reasonable to expect regulation.
  - 12elephant 7y ago
    You turn off autoplay by exiting netflix.
    - dmcclurg 7y ago
      That makes it a zero sum game--all or nothing. Not good enough.
      - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
        Or you could just press the "back" button on the remote.
deleted 7y ago
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bigsassy 7y ago
An app I worked on had a similar feature to Snapstreaks, but it was used to help people quit smoking. This bill would have killed this feature that helped many people lead healthier lives.
- djrogers 7y ago
  This bill would only apply to social media sites, so unless your 'quit smoking' app was such, it woulnd't have affected it at all.
  - esoterica 7y ago
    I hope you enjoy paying your lawyers tens of millions to litigate the definition of a “social media site”.
  - geddy 7y ago
    Until a 74 year old politician expands "social media site". Come on, you know how this always goes. Slippery slopes and what-not.
digitalneal 7y ago
Auto-play is a tax on the poor with limited data plans.
- zazaraka 7y ago
  So true. Just like high definition video or images. This bill should also ban: large hero images, serving more than 500 KB of JavaScript, making more than 50 HTTP calls when loading a page, causing the fans to spin up when loading the page, unnecessarily using web fonts. Banning these things would make the web so much better.
  - tenebrisalietum 7y ago
    It'd be awesome to have an extremely lightweight protocol that lets you get the size or approximate size of a resource before download. Maybe a new HTTP method like SIZEOF. But how to make it truthful? Other than client cutting off download at the expressed limit. Would that be good enough? And how to express "fuzzy" sizes like "at least 1MB but might be a little more or less".
    - NateEag 7y ago
      I believe you want HTTP HEAD. It's defined to return the same response as a GET but without a body. You can therefore look at the Content-Length response header to see what actually issuing a GET will cost you. The server should not return fuzzy content lengths: your client should have soft limit ranges rather than a single hard limit. Of course, the server is not required to support HEAD, nor is it required to include Content-Length, which touches on your real complaint: Programmers get to write programs the way they want to, and most of them don't share your value of preserving bandwidth and using progressive enhancement. That is a relational and human problem. There is no technological solution to it.
nemonemo 7y ago
I have suspicion that these politicians know what they are doing and they are doing these stupid things with the fullest knowledge that the bill does not help the addicted people. Also probably they know these things don't even threaten the tech giants. Then why are they spending their precious time for such a meaningless bill? This makes me think of McConnell gaining support or lobbying from tobacco industry. Maybe this is a thinly veiled threat or request to the tech giants?
- la_barba 7y ago
  You don't seem to be familiar with this. They had a hearing in the Senate, which featured testimony of experts in this field. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-youre-being-manipulated-1835853810 https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-youre-being-manipulated-1835...
  - nemonemo 7y ago
    Do you think this is an important enough issue for a Senate hearing or a bill? I honestly do not.
    - la_barba 7y ago
      Well,.. the government is taking drug addiction seriously, so on principle I don't see why tech addiction should be a-priori excluded from discussion. I'm sure good people on both sides can disagree as to the measures that need to be taken..
csense 7y ago
If this is something people want, why does it need a legislative fix? Couldn't we just implement a technical solution and let people choose whether to use it? Like a browser plugin that stops videos from automatically playing?
- stri8ed 7y ago
  This could just as well be said about opiates. Human's are not very good at regulating ourselves, when we encounter artificial signals that would have meant success in an earlier time. Not to mention minors, who do not yet have the physical capacity to regulate themselves. Not to say I support this regulation, but there is something to be said for protecting us from our primal selves.
  - ttoinou 7y ago
    Human's are not very good at regulating ourselves Are they better at regulating others ?
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    I know you're not saying the government should fully regulate everything, but I see drugs used to demonstrate need for government intervention in people's choices despite drug policy being perhaps the most visible and painful failure of such paternalistic policymaking. Namely because it hasn't protected people from themselves, it hasn't treated anybody's addiction, it mainly just creates violent black markets and saddles nonviolent offenders with a permanent criminal record. Cynically, I think the real purpose of these laws always looks more like protecting entrenched interests rather than helping people who would get better if only they had some legislator making their life choices from a thousand miles away.
hedora 7y ago
This is textbook regulatory capture. Want to host your own website? Be sure to hire a specialized lawyer to audit and sign off on the user interface choices you made (and be sure to retain them indefinitely as your dependencies and the law evolve).
- torgoguys 7y ago
  > This is textbook regulatory capture. I do not think it means what you think it means. (Or maybe I don't! :-)
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    The suggestion is that only large established firms can navigate the regulatory requirements. I don't buy that.
    - krageon 7y ago
      Because it is nonsense. A lawyer isn't some sort of rocket or satellite, fundamentally they are accessible to anyone who is even remotely in the middle class.
- post_break 7y ago
  Based on the discussion about plastic earlier this week we should just tax websites that auto play videos.
andrewclunn 7y ago
So do I just stop using Facebook? Naw, let's PASS A LAW forcing my will on the whole internet! What stupid idiocy is this?
i_am_proteus 7y ago
It seems like a lot of the bill could run up against first amendment challenges. The only parts that seem "safe" are checkbox parts that deal with contracts; agreeing and disagreeing to terms. I am not a lawyer.
giorgioz 7y ago
You can disable Netflix auto-play following these steps: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102 I disabled Netflix autoplay for the reasons mentioned in this article.
cpursley 7y ago
Fantastic. Can we also ban scroll-jacking?
walterbell 7y ago
Are there comparable regulations for casino games, where some gamification techniques originated?
deleted 7y ago
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georgeecollins 7y ago
This seems silly of course, but you can't have companies such as Google and Facebook claim they are a carrier while they promote and curate content, even if they are only curating via AI (which turns out at to be really smart at connecting people to extreme content). It's like the phone company putting up an ad to suggest your child call a pedophile and then saying we're not responsible for the call, we're just the phone company.
- root_axis 7y ago
  > you can't have companies such as Google and Facebook claim they are a carrier while they promote and curate content Do you have any examples of google or facebook claiming to be a "carrier"?
  - georgeecollins 7y ago
    Certainly https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-platform-publisher-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-...
    - root_axis 7y ago
      The article does not support your position that Facebook claims to be a carrier. If you want to extract some specific sections of the article that you believe support your position I'm happy to discuss them, but I'm not seeing it.
tomatotomato37 7y ago
I hate web 3.0 features like this, more so for CPU than psychological reasons, but this is textbook useless government overreach; it's the web equivalent of those firearm bills than ban some auxiliary features that looks scary but are functionally irrelevant
draw_down 7y ago
Madness.
api 7y ago
Endless scroll has lots of legitimate uses, and there are a million more dark patterns where the dark use of endless scroll came from. Bills like this are not the answer.
bhouston 7y ago
China's anti-internet/video game addiction stuff isn't totally insane. The premise is actually noble.
rsweeney21 7y ago
I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about 100,000 or so. It was great because you didn't have to debate much about whether a new feature was a good idea or not, you just built it and tested it. If the feature didn't increase hours watched or retention in a statistically significant way, the feature was removed. Autoplay massively increased hours watched. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it was by far the biggest increase in the hours watched KPI of any feature we ever tested. There was some skepticism about whether the number was inflated by Netflix continuing to play when the user left the room. As part of the autoplay test, we tested how long the countdown should be between episodes. 5 seconds, 10 seconds or 15 seconds. 10 seconds caused the biggest increase in hours watched. We thought that it gave people time to digest what they had just watched, but wasn't too fast (5 seconds) where it became jarring. Interestingly, Netflix recently changed the countdown between episodes to 5 seconds. That means they tested it out and found that people watch more if with a shorter countdown. This didn't use to be the case. Netflix user have become conditioned to expect autoplay. So yes, Netflix wants you to spend more hours watching Netflix and the product team is scientifically engineering the product to make it more addictive. But...the product team at Doritos does the same thing.
- Shorel 7y ago
  The time in seconds should be also user definable. Too much of A/B testing is good only for people who never want to change defaults.
- digitalsushi 7y ago
  I've never been able to understand why netflix benefits from autoplaying - you're not selling anything, you're just delivering content - so why does autoplaying, which presumably has some measurable, additional cost for bandwidth, end up benefiting the company? Does the perceived value of netflix increase when autoplay is enabled? I really want to understand this, I've been strung up on this for a while.
ahallock 7y ago
The government has nothing better to do priority-wise than regulate UI/UX behaviors like video autoplay? This is not essential to the functioning of society; it's bureaucrats avoiding the real issues. Also, ironic coming from the party that is ostensibly for less government intrusion.
WhiteNoiz3 7y ago
I think it makes more sense to require apps to let people know how much time they spend using them (especially if more than a few hours per week), and encourage people to take breaks. Banning one type of UI is not going to change anything.
m-p-3 7y ago
> endless scrolling With how many poor implementations out there (looking at you new Reddit), I don't think a ban would fix that but I'd like to see it scaled down.
Fjolsvith 7y ago
I doubt this will happen. First Amendment free speech restriction will get batted down by the Supreme Court.
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  In theory yes, but there are enough cases where amendments were castrated by the SCOTUS so that one cannot predict what will happen with this one.
RustyBucket 7y ago
Umbrella bans are never a good thing - there are tons of legitimate and corner cases. Instead force companies to provide easy to find and to use option/toggle for those.
hackbinary 7y ago
I thought I was going insane with all these videos auto playing in Facebook and Twitter. It truly is annoying. I'm not sure if I am against endless scrolling, however. I would, though, accept the loss of endless scrolling if that would stop videos from auto playing.
Jsksks 7y ago
Don't know about others but i support this
root_axis 7y ago
I apologize for making a comment with regard to politics, but I can't help feeling frustrated by the narrative around curbing "addictive behavior" coming from the political party that consistently extols the virtues of "personal responsibility" and regularly characterizes the desire to regulate harmful behavior as the machinations of a "nanny state". I find it especially frustrating in this case because the specifics of this proposal seem to be pretty poorly reasoned from a technical perspective.
- jkingsbery 7y ago
  As someone who generally votes for Republicans, I agree 100% with you. It'll be interesting to see how much support it gets from other Republicans, but I'm not sure that it's good for the brand of "bias toward letting the market decide" to have a bill that will swoop in and decide for us. Based on his biography page (https://www.hawley.senate.gov/biography https://www.hawley.senate.gov/biography), this seems to be more about making life hard for tech companies. If anything though, it seems like it will make life harder mostly on new entrants. Also, it seems impractical to implement. As soon as those specific tactics are gone, others will be implemented that do something similar in spirit if not in letter.
- nichos 7y ago
  The Republican party is about personal responsibility as much as the Democrats are for ending wars. Both parties are essentially the same now, and have been for several years.
  - root_axis 7y ago
    > Both parties are essentially the same now, and have been for several years. This is very obviously and demonstrably false. I don't understand how anyone can believe this.
godshatter 7y ago
Even if we could all agree that autoplay videos and endless scrolling are terrible ideas, I still don't understand why we should get the government involved. Use a service that has them, or refuse to. Find another service that doesn't use them. "There should be a law..." is often the wrong response. At least in my opinion.
- la_barba 7y ago
  Its coming out of a social initiative that deals with the inability of parents to keep social media (and tech in general) addiction of their kids under control. Human beings have a lot of psychological vulnerabilities and, if you watched the senate hearing, you'd know how tech companies exploit some of our innate addictive personality traits to get people hooked on their product. Pick-up "artists" use this to get laid. Advertisers use it to sell their junk products, etc. Its easy to point out whats wrong, but nobody sticks their neck out and tells people how to fix the situation. Here, someone seems to be trying, and for that I give them some props..
- geddy 7y ago
  Absolutely agreed. There are plenty of things I want politicians removed from - but possibly getting fined over a website I design is absolutely ludicrous. It's like getting rid of deer coming on to your property and eating your flowers by planting landmines. Pretty sure there's something less extreme than making something illegal. Although these days, everything has to be either extreme this or extreme that, and common sense (like just not using those websites, or utilizing this thing called personal responsibility to recognize and curb your own addictions) has gone the way of the 8-track. Nope, we need the government to start fining people. This doesn't do anything except make instant-criminals out of people overnight, signed into law by politicians who aren't even remotely close to being experts at the subject matter.
neilv 7y ago
I'll be the first to say that dotcoms overall have become an industry of greedy and grossly irresponsible and sneaky backstabbing sociopaths, but... the idea of legislators trying to get into the fine details of practice, and keep up with it, doesn't immediately sound like it's likely to be effective. And that's even before we factor in the possibility of lobbyist influence. While you're banning infinite scrolling (which has legitimate applications, and people should be horrified that such basic neutral ideas of communication could become illegal), the dotcom bad actors are running circles around you -- with numerous other dark pattern tactics, and sometimes entire technology infrastructure architectures and platforms irrevocably designed around what could also be considered dark patterns. I'm reminded of some other abusive industries, with regulations that create waste, and barriers to entry for upstart competitors, while not doing nearly enough to reign in abuses. Bring on the regulations (and, hopefully, eventually, a culture of professionalism and responsibility will follow), but first figure out how to make the regulations wise and genuinely effective, not counterproductive distractions.
ilovetux 7y ago
I would like to see warnings on certain websites which use user retention tactics such as these to prominently display warnings like cigarette companies are required to do. Something like the following: "Facebook is known to be addictive and use deceptive practices in user interface design to influence you into spending an unhealthy amount time on their platform in order to maximize the number of advertisements you view."
- calais 7y ago
  That would be a much better law than the lawmakers'.
segmondy 7y ago
Tech needs to fight. There are tons of new regulations being pushed to regulate tech with politics. It's going to end very badly. This is not about caring for people, but controlling tech. People care about high hospital bills, expensive insurance and high college costs. Why are these same politicians not writing new bills to fix those? Why do they want to tame Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, Google, Amazon?
- scarface74 7y ago
  Because tech companies are run by the “liberal elite” and they don’t bribe enough congressmen. People in tech should be much more concerned than they are about the government encroaching on it. The government does not represent big states/big cities in proportion to the population once you consider the tiniest state has the same two senators as the largest.
phil248 7y ago
Banning things is obviously silly but I wouldn't mind regulations that force media outlets to give subscribers some simple options so we can choose exactly how we consume the media we pay for. That might wreck the holy grail of A/B testing that these companies live and die by, but it would be fantastic for the consumer.
deleted 7y ago
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macinjosh 7y ago
This is the last shreds of personal responsibility disappearing from the culture.
tlrobinson 7y ago
So why wasn't a ban necessary for the ultimate autoplaying video, television?
DannyB2 7y ago
From TFA... > Deceptive design played an enormous part in last week’s FTC settlement with Facebook, and Hawley’s bill would make it unlawful for tech companies to use dark patterns to manipulate users into opting into services. For example, “accept” and “decline” checkboxes would need to be the same font, format, and size to help users make better, more informed choices. So don't use color. Make the two choices equally clear. Example: Would you like to enroll in our craptacular offer which is free for 90 days and then costs $9.95 per month thereafter? Please check one of the following options: [_] No. Please DO NOT add me to the list of people to be excluded from being automatically enrolled in our special craptacular offer. [_] Yes. Please DO add me to the list of people ineligible to not be excluded from not being enrolled in our special craptacular offer. If you do not select one of the options, then default will automatically be selected for you. Thank you for enrolling in our craptacular special offer!
dingus 7y ago
Here's an idea, how about spending time and effort on something that's an actual priority.
BFatts 7y ago
Uh, TV is unending, constantly "scrolling" to new content meant to addict you as well, correct? How does this differ from having the TV on and just consuming what's on it versus Netflix autoplay feature? Is it possible to distinguish autoplay (auto-continuation) from just regular TV streaming over the airwaves or cable?
eridius 7y ago
I could support something like this if, instead of banning it, simply made these practices opt-in. Autoplay is great if you want it. It sucks if you don't. And Netflix makes it so dang hard to disable (you have to use a web browser and find an obscure preference). So instead of autoplay, it should require interaction the first time, with an option to autoplay for the rest of the session. Similarly for infinite scrolling, how about we don't infinitely scroll the first time, but have a footer you can click to load more, with an option to infinitely scroll for the rest of the session.
stunt 7y ago
I'm not sure if banning can fix anything. They will come up with different ideas. Every company is heavily focused to optimize digital products for business values now. Auto-play-video is probably very high on list of things that wasted so much time in human history.
aussieguy1234 7y ago
Infinite scrolling is just good UI. I've implemented it in Libr, the Tumblr replacement (https://librapp.com https://librapp.com)
Scoundreller 7y ago
Can we also replace “next”/“prev” buttons with “newer”/“older”? I always get confused by the 2nd page.
aitchnyu 7y ago
While we are at it, ads need to be marked in contrast colors and show business details of the ad buyer and if its an app, what kind of contract you are entering. My Android nags me "Enable anti-malware" and I don't know if it came from the OEM or from some originally minimal app that sold itself to a unscrupulous buyer. Elders's Androids (in India) have undismissable notifications many times taller than 2000s IE toolbars nagging them to install intrusive system tools.
CaptainSteve89 7y ago
They just want to prevent people from easily tabbing/scrolling away from ads.
CaptainSteve89 7y ago
Seems like a way to limit a users access to desirable content while ramping up paid placement advertising?
lunias 7y ago
Don't ban things. Educate the population as to why they should ban themselves from doing things; and whenever possible, offer people better alternatives.

169 points by moltensodium 7y ago

Would this set a legal precedent for regulating code or is there already a precedent? If this does set a new legal precedent, the future looks messy

tantalor 7y ago

“If I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the wine, you won’t know when to stop drinking” That's not how drinking works. That's not how anything works.

tlibert 7y ago
He utterly mangled it, but there is an experiment which proves the underlying concept (which I'm guessing was his intent, live testimony is hard): Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake Objective: Using self‐refilling soup bowls, this study examined whether visual cues related to portion size can influence intake volume without altering either estimated intake or satiation. Research Methods and Procedures: Fifty‐four participants (BMI, 17.3 to 36.0 kg/m2; 18 to 46 years of age) were recruited to participate in a study involving soup. The experiment was a between‐subject design with two visibility levels: 1) an accurate visual cue of a food portion (normal bowl) vs. 2) a biased visual cue (self‐refilling bowl). The soup apparatus was housed in a modified restaurant‐style table in which two of four bowls slowly and imperceptibly refilled as their contents were consumed. Outcomes included intake volume, intake estimation, consumption monitoring, and satiety. Results: Participants who were unknowingly eating from self‐refilling bowls ate more soup [14.7 ± 8.4 vs. 8.5 ± 6.1 oz; F(1,52) = 8.99; p < 0.01] than those eating from normal soup bowls. However, despite consuming 73% more, they did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated than those eating from normal bowls. This was unaffected by BMI. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12
- diminoten 7y ago
  A much better analogy, however I still think the generalization of "videos" as a single body of liquid is an overstep. It's not like the plot of a YouTube video just extends forever, you are aware you're starting a new video each time.
  - Forbo 7y ago
    Much the same way that you're aware of each spoonful scooped up.
- jwilk 7y ago
  There are reasons to be skeptical about the results of this study: https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/feb/16/mindless-eating-brian-wansink-is-there-something-rotten-behind-the-research https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/feb/1...
  - mattkrause 7y ago
    That's polite! I would say that I doubt nearly everything that's come out of that lab…
celticmusic 7y ago
including analogies.
ryandvm 7y ago
It is a dumb analogy to be sure, but I think the point is valid. As intensely social creatures, humans are not particularly well adapted to handle the never-ending waterfall of synthetic social interactions you get from the likes of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc. In the past, getting as much social information as possible about your tribe was a huge reproductive advantage, but now that modern social network products have boosted the populations of our "tribes" into the thousands, trying to consume all that information has downsides that far outweigh the positive. Facebook is basically the psychological equivalent of high fructose corn syrup.
FabHK 7y ago
EDIT: see caveat from K-Wall below. Can't trust anything these days :-/ </edit> That's exactly how it works, to an extent. In a study [1], people with self-refilling soup bowls ate 73% more soup (p < 0.01) than those eating from normal soup bowls. Similar with popcorn [2]. I first read about this either in Nudge or in Mindless Eating. [1] Wansink, B., Painter, J.E., & North, J. (2005). Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake Obesity Research, 13 (1), 93-100 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12 [2] http://projectputthatcookiedownnow.com/2011/bottomless-bowls-of-soup-and-stale-popcorn-can-all-lead-to-mindless-eating/ http://projectputthatcookiedownnow.com/2011/bottomless-bowls...
- K-Wall 7y ago
  I wouldn't cite Wansink... the guy had 15 retractions in the past year for making shit up.
  - FabHK 7y ago
    Oh, good to know. Are you aware of more details? Replications or critiques of those studies? (As I said, I came across them in pop-sci books.)
    - K-Wall 7y ago
      The unit I'm affiliated with was tasked by the university to run replications and ultimately assist with the retractions. This was all done by my colleagues but I heard about it quite often. Past that I am going to refrain on commenting more as I'm unqualified to do so. Two published replication studies (used for retractions) can be found here: https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php?IDTITLE=2796 https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php... https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php?IDTITLE=2797 https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php...
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  How replicated has the study been? Even a fully credible researcher should not be trusted when their research has not been replicated due to just how prevalent replication issues are in psychology.
nostrademons 7y ago
Bottomless margaritas have led to many a poor decision. (They remain legal, though.)
ChristianBundy 7y ago
I imagined this as a glass attached to a table with a false bottom that constantly refills the glass. When you drink some of the liquid (presumably with a straw?) the glass is instantly refilled, which makes it hard to tell how much you've drank. In other words: I agree, this really isn't a great example.
azinman2 7y ago
We know that portion size matters, because people will eat/drink what’s in front of them.
isodude 7y ago
Like when my brother decided to keep my glass full all the time at the bar. I got soo wasted, didn't even realise.

fhood 7y ago

This seems like an extremely short sited, overly broad and unlikely to pass bill, and to make it all worse, based on the title, I thought that someone was attempting to ban videos that play automatically when you visit a website, which would have been a deeply noble cause.

RandomInteger4 7y ago

God this is so fucking stupid. Can we get the Government to focus on actual problems rather than this bullshit?

moate 7y ago
Porque no los dos?
- RandomInteger4 7y ago
  That's like saying "Why not both?" to eating healthy and putting your balls in a vice grip. Eating healthy in this analogy is the government making laws regarding actual problems that require government intervention, while the balls in vice grip in this analogy is a pointless law concerning something that doesn't require government intervention just because people have a moral panic over technology allegedly ruining society.
  - moate 7y ago
    No, it's more like saying "why not fix both 'big' and 'small' problems at the same time", because whataboutism is a constant defense of problematic status quos. I don't know that this bill is a good or bad thing yet, I haven't dug deep into it yet. But the idea of making more designers eliminate dark patterns in software and make more features opt in instead of opt out is a good use of regulation in my mind. I get it, "regulation ruins innovation" or some other libertarian nonsense. The bottom line is that the software industry has some problematic behaviors that they have refused to self-correct, and this is what happens.
    - RandomInteger4 7y ago
      This is not a "whataboutism". This is a "The government doesn't need to tell me how long I'm allowed to have an erection-ism"; i.e. micromanaging bullshit is not in the purview of the federal government.

gok 7y ago

So fitting for The Verge to be reporting this.

Jazgot 7y ago

This sounds like complete joke. Next another bill will ban pagination?

umvi 7y ago
Another bill will mandate that websites display a banner if the user has been there for too long (to protect internet addicts from being sedentary for too long). Pretty soon only big corps will be able to make a website because there is a phonebook sized stack of regulations you have to comply with.
- somebodythere 7y ago
  Seems intentional.
  - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
    It always is when it comes to regulation. If you find a regulation that seems to benefit the consumer more than the incumbent firms you don't understand that market well enough.
    - tomatotomato37 7y ago
      GDPR?
- danShumway 7y ago
  > Another bill will mandate that websites display a banner if the user has been there for too long Why wait? From Ars's writeup of the same bill[0]: > As described in the text, social media companies would have to limit users to 30 minutes of use per day by default. Users would be allowed to choose their own time limits for daily and weekly use, but companies would have to reset that time limit to half an hour every single month, as well as providing "conspicuous pop-up" displays at least once every 30 minutes showing how much time you have spent using a service in the past day, across all devices. This is just political grandstanding. (I hope) nobody would ever actually vote for this. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/proposed-us-law-would-ban-infinite-scroll-autoplaying-video/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/proposed-us-law-...

magduf 7y ago

Banning autoplay videos, with extremely severe penalties for offenders, would be a great thing for the world.

Agustus 7y ago

If politicians could focus their efforts on actually solving problems instead of giving hand outs to their tort lawyer buddies, we might get a better system. The lawsuits would include: - autoplay of gifs vs web videos - does Pinterest count as an auto scroll ad - does an endless scroll populated with 50% real content count as non-ad? The law will just create more headaches for the producers and less innovation thanks to having to fight lawsuits. Example of the depths lawyers can class action: Godiva is being sued in court for putting “Godiva 1927” on the label; the lawyer is arguing that people believe that the chocolate was made in 1927. *edited the content away from ideas.

Nullabillity 7y ago
Outlawing X doesn't mean almost-X is completely fine. That said, none of your examples make much sense (to me). > - autoplay of gifs vs web videos Presumably the content is what matters, not the particular compression format. Does it show animated content continuously without being triggered by active user interaction? Yes, so it's an auto-playing video. > - does Pinterest count as an auto scroll ad It's primarily focused on a call to action, so yes, it's an ad. Would they show an equivalent popup for ordinary user-generated content that they have no stake in? > - does an endless scroll populated with 50% real content count as non-ad? Is there an ad that appears when the user scrolls? I don't even see what this example was supposed to demonstrate. > The law will just create more headaches for the producers and less innovation thanks to having to fight lawsuits. More headaches and less innovation in how to sell bullshit sounds like a very positive outcome to me.
- Asooka 7y ago
  > Presumably the content is what matters, not the particular compression format. Does it show animated content continuously without being triggered by active user interaction? Yes, so it's an auto-playing video. By that logic a loading spinner is an auto-playing video. Does me logging in count as "active user interaction" for showing me a loading spinner? I didn't request the spinner, I requested access to my skype chats.
  - 7y ago

GhostVII 7y ago

Things like requiring accept and decline checkboxes to be the same font seem somewhat reasonable, even if I disagree with it, but banning autoplay videos and endless scrolling is insane. There are legitimate uses for autoplay videos (ex. Netflix playing next episode, YouTube playing next song when you are listening to music) which I personally use all the time and appreciate, and endless scrolling is great when you don't need to refer back to previous results, and don't want to keep clicking "next". I think people should have the freedom to consume content how they want, the government shouldn't compensate for their lack of self control.

zbrozek 7y ago
While I agree that it's hard to support legislation that's likely to have a lot of unintended consequences, it's also important to realize what's driving folks to introduce a bill like this. It's also worth pointing out that (in particular with Netflix) your example is its own counter-argument. You can't turn off autoplay, and that's the opposite of letting me make choices for myself. There's also plenty of other examples of government regulating or banning things which exploit human weakness. Ponzi schemes, meth, gambling, and more are all controlled. It's pretty clear that a lot of tech-company design is (intentionally or not) probably scratching a lot of the same itches. It's reasonable to expect regulation.
- 12elephant 7y ago
  You turn off autoplay by exiting netflix.
  - dmcclurg 7y ago
    That makes it a zero sum game--all or nothing. Not good enough.
    - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
      Or you could just press the "back" button on the remote.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bigsassy 7y ago

An app I worked on had a similar feature to Snapstreaks, but it was used to help people quit smoking. This bill would have killed this feature that helped many people lead healthier lives.

djrogers 7y ago
This bill would only apply to social media sites, so unless your 'quit smoking' app was such, it woulnd't have affected it at all.
- esoterica 7y ago
  I hope you enjoy paying your lawyers tens of millions to litigate the definition of a “social media site”.
- geddy 7y ago
  Until a 74 year old politician expands "social media site". Come on, you know how this always goes. Slippery slopes and what-not.

digitalneal 7y ago

Auto-play is a tax on the poor with limited data plans.

zazaraka 7y ago
So true. Just like high definition video or images. This bill should also ban: large hero images, serving more than 500 KB of JavaScript, making more than 50 HTTP calls when loading a page, causing the fans to spin up when loading the page, unnecessarily using web fonts. Banning these things would make the web so much better.
- tenebrisalietum 7y ago
  It'd be awesome to have an extremely lightweight protocol that lets you get the size or approximate size of a resource before download. Maybe a new HTTP method like SIZEOF. But how to make it truthful? Other than client cutting off download at the expressed limit. Would that be good enough? And how to express "fuzzy" sizes like "at least 1MB but might be a little more or less".
  - NateEag 7y ago
    I believe you want HTTP HEAD. It's defined to return the same response as a GET but without a body. You can therefore look at the Content-Length response header to see what actually issuing a GET will cost you. The server should not return fuzzy content lengths: your client should have soft limit ranges rather than a single hard limit. Of course, the server is not required to support HEAD, nor is it required to include Content-Length, which touches on your real complaint: Programmers get to write programs the way they want to, and most of them don't share your value of preserving bandwidth and using progressive enhancement. That is a relational and human problem. There is no technological solution to it.

nemonemo 7y ago

I have suspicion that these politicians know what they are doing and they are doing these stupid things with the fullest knowledge that the bill does not help the addicted people. Also probably they know these things don't even threaten the tech giants. Then why are they spending their precious time for such a meaningless bill? This makes me think of McConnell gaining support or lobbying from tobacco industry. Maybe this is a thinly veiled threat or request to the tech giants?

la_barba 7y ago
You don't seem to be familiar with this. They had a hearing in the Senate, which featured testimony of experts in this field. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-youre-being-manipulated-1835853810 https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-youre-being-manipulated-1835...
- nemonemo 7y ago
  Do you think this is an important enough issue for a Senate hearing or a bill? I honestly do not.
  - la_barba 7y ago
    Well,.. the government is taking drug addiction seriously, so on principle I don't see why tech addiction should be a-priori excluded from discussion. I'm sure good people on both sides can disagree as to the measures that need to be taken..

csense 7y ago

If this is something people want, why does it need a legislative fix? Couldn't we just implement a technical solution and let people choose whether to use it? Like a browser plugin that stops videos from automatically playing?

stri8ed 7y ago
This could just as well be said about opiates. Human's are not very good at regulating ourselves, when we encounter artificial signals that would have meant success in an earlier time. Not to mention minors, who do not yet have the physical capacity to regulate themselves. Not to say I support this regulation, but there is something to be said for protecting us from our primal selves.
- ttoinou 7y ago
  Human's are not very good at regulating ourselves Are they better at regulating others ?
- homonculus1 7y ago
  I know you're not saying the government should fully regulate everything, but I see drugs used to demonstrate need for government intervention in people's choices despite drug policy being perhaps the most visible and painful failure of such paternalistic policymaking. Namely because it hasn't protected people from themselves, it hasn't treated anybody's addiction, it mainly just creates violent black markets and saddles nonviolent offenders with a permanent criminal record. Cynically, I think the real purpose of these laws always looks more like protecting entrenched interests rather than helping people who would get better if only they had some legislator making their life choices from a thousand miles away.

hedora 7y ago

This is textbook regulatory capture. Want to host your own website? Be sure to hire a specialized lawyer to audit and sign off on the user interface choices you made (and be sure to retain them indefinitely as your dependencies and the law evolve).

torgoguys 7y ago
> This is textbook regulatory capture. I do not think it means what you think it means. (Or maybe I don't! :-)
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  The suggestion is that only large established firms can navigate the regulatory requirements. I don't buy that.
  - krageon 7y ago
    Because it is nonsense. A lawyer isn't some sort of rocket or satellite, fundamentally they are accessible to anyone who is even remotely in the middle class.
post_break 7y ago
Based on the discussion about plastic earlier this week we should just tax websites that auto play videos.

andrewclunn 7y ago

So do I just stop using Facebook? Naw, let's PASS A LAW forcing my will on the whole internet! What stupid idiocy is this?

i_am_proteus 7y ago

It seems like a lot of the bill could run up against first amendment challenges. The only parts that seem "safe" are checkbox parts that deal with contracts; agreeing and disagreeing to terms. I am not a lawyer.

giorgioz 7y ago

You can disable Netflix auto-play following these steps: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102 I disabled Netflix autoplay for the reasons mentioned in this article.

cpursley 7y ago

Fantastic. Can we also ban scroll-jacking?

walterbell 7y ago

Are there comparable regulations for casino games, where some gamification techniques originated?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

georgeecollins 7y ago

This seems silly of course, but you can't have companies such as Google and Facebook claim they are a carrier while they promote and curate content, even if they are only curating via AI (which turns out at to be really smart at connecting people to extreme content). It's like the phone company putting up an ad to suggest your child call a pedophile and then saying we're not responsible for the call, we're just the phone company.

root_axis 7y ago
> you can't have companies such as Google and Facebook claim they are a carrier while they promote and curate content Do you have any examples of google or facebook claiming to be a "carrier"?
- georgeecollins 7y ago
  Certainly https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-platform-publisher-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-...
  - root_axis 7y ago
    The article does not support your position that Facebook claims to be a carrier. If you want to extract some specific sections of the article that you believe support your position I'm happy to discuss them, but I'm not seeing it.

tomatotomato37 7y ago

I hate web 3.0 features like this, more so for CPU than psychological reasons, but this is textbook useless government overreach; it's the web equivalent of those firearm bills than ban some auxiliary features that looks scary but are functionally irrelevant

draw_down 7y ago

Madness.

api 7y ago

Endless scroll has lots of legitimate uses, and there are a million more dark patterns where the dark use of endless scroll came from. Bills like this are not the answer.

bhouston 7y ago

China's anti-internet/video game addiction stuff isn't totally insane. The premise is actually noble.

rsweeney21 7y ago

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about 100,000 or so. It was great because you didn't have to debate much about whether a new feature was a good idea or not, you just built it and tested it. If the feature didn't increase hours watched or retention in a statistically significant way, the feature was removed. Autoplay massively increased hours watched. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it was by far the biggest increase in the hours watched KPI of any feature we ever tested. There was some skepticism about whether the number was inflated by Netflix continuing to play when the user left the room. As part of the autoplay test, we tested how long the countdown should be between episodes. 5 seconds, 10 seconds or 15 seconds. 10 seconds caused the biggest increase in hours watched. We thought that it gave people time to digest what they had just watched, but wasn't too fast (5 seconds) where it became jarring. Interestingly, Netflix recently changed the countdown between episodes to 5 seconds. That means they tested it out and found that people watch more if with a shorter countdown. This didn't use to be the case. Netflix user have become conditioned to expect autoplay. So yes, Netflix wants you to spend more hours watching Netflix and the product team is scientifically engineering the product to make it more addictive. But...the product team at Doritos does the same thing.

Shorel 7y ago
The time in seconds should be also user definable. Too much of A/B testing is good only for people who never want to change defaults.
digitalsushi 7y ago
I've never been able to understand why netflix benefits from autoplaying - you're not selling anything, you're just delivering content - so why does autoplaying, which presumably has some measurable, additional cost for bandwidth, end up benefiting the company? Does the perceived value of netflix increase when autoplay is enabled? I really want to understand this, I've been strung up on this for a while.

ahallock 7y ago

The government has nothing better to do priority-wise than regulate UI/UX behaviors like video autoplay? This is not essential to the functioning of society; it's bureaucrats avoiding the real issues. Also, ironic coming from the party that is ostensibly for less government intrusion.

WhiteNoiz3 7y ago

I think it makes more sense to require apps to let people know how much time they spend using them (especially if more than a few hours per week), and encourage people to take breaks. Banning one type of UI is not going to change anything.

m-p-3 7y ago

> endless scrolling With how many poor implementations out there (looking at you new Reddit), I don't think a ban would fix that but I'd like to see it scaled down.

Fjolsvith 7y ago

I doubt this will happen. First Amendment free speech restriction will get batted down by the Supreme Court.

AdrianB1 7y ago
In theory yes, but there are enough cases where amendments were castrated by the SCOTUS so that one cannot predict what will happen with this one.

RustyBucket 7y ago

Umbrella bans are never a good thing - there are tons of legitimate and corner cases. Instead force companies to provide easy to find and to use option/toggle for those.

hackbinary 7y ago

I thought I was going insane with all these videos auto playing in Facebook and Twitter. It truly is annoying. I'm not sure if I am against endless scrolling, however. I would, though, accept the loss of endless scrolling if that would stop videos from auto playing.

Jsksks 7y ago

Don't know about others but i support this

root_axis 7y ago

I apologize for making a comment with regard to politics, but I can't help feeling frustrated by the narrative around curbing "addictive behavior" coming from the political party that consistently extols the virtues of "personal responsibility" and regularly characterizes the desire to regulate harmful behavior as the machinations of a "nanny state". I find it especially frustrating in this case because the specifics of this proposal seem to be pretty poorly reasoned from a technical perspective.

jkingsbery 7y ago
As someone who generally votes for Republicans, I agree 100% with you. It'll be interesting to see how much support it gets from other Republicans, but I'm not sure that it's good for the brand of "bias toward letting the market decide" to have a bill that will swoop in and decide for us. Based on his biography page (https://www.hawley.senate.gov/biography https://www.hawley.senate.gov/biography), this seems to be more about making life hard for tech companies. If anything though, it seems like it will make life harder mostly on new entrants. Also, it seems impractical to implement. As soon as those specific tactics are gone, others will be implemented that do something similar in spirit if not in letter.
nichos 7y ago
The Republican party is about personal responsibility as much as the Democrats are for ending wars. Both parties are essentially the same now, and have been for several years.
- root_axis 7y ago
  > Both parties are essentially the same now, and have been for several years. This is very obviously and demonstrably false. I don't understand how anyone can believe this.

godshatter 7y ago

Even if we could all agree that autoplay videos and endless scrolling are terrible ideas, I still don't understand why we should get the government involved. Use a service that has them, or refuse to. Find another service that doesn't use them. "There should be a law..." is often the wrong response. At least in my opinion.

la_barba 7y ago
Its coming out of a social initiative that deals with the inability of parents to keep social media (and tech in general) addiction of their kids under control. Human beings have a lot of psychological vulnerabilities and, if you watched the senate hearing, you'd know how tech companies exploit some of our innate addictive personality traits to get people hooked on their product. Pick-up "artists" use this to get laid. Advertisers use it to sell their junk products, etc. Its easy to point out whats wrong, but nobody sticks their neck out and tells people how to fix the situation. Here, someone seems to be trying, and for that I give them some props..
geddy 7y ago
Absolutely agreed. There are plenty of things I want politicians removed from - but possibly getting fined over a website I design is absolutely ludicrous. It's like getting rid of deer coming on to your property and eating your flowers by planting landmines. Pretty sure there's something less extreme than making something illegal. Although these days, everything has to be either extreme this or extreme that, and common sense (like just not using those websites, or utilizing this thing called personal responsibility to recognize and curb your own addictions) has gone the way of the 8-track. Nope, we need the government to start fining people. This doesn't do anything except make instant-criminals out of people overnight, signed into law by politicians who aren't even remotely close to being experts at the subject matter.

neilv 7y ago

I'll be the first to say that dotcoms overall have become an industry of greedy and grossly irresponsible and sneaky backstabbing sociopaths, but... the idea of legislators trying to get into the fine details of practice, and keep up with it, doesn't immediately sound like it's likely to be effective. And that's even before we factor in the possibility of lobbyist influence. While you're banning infinite scrolling (which has legitimate applications, and people should be horrified that such basic neutral ideas of communication could become illegal), the dotcom bad actors are running circles around you -- with numerous other dark pattern tactics, and sometimes entire technology infrastructure architectures and platforms irrevocably designed around what could also be considered dark patterns. I'm reminded of some other abusive industries, with regulations that create waste, and barriers to entry for upstart competitors, while not doing nearly enough to reign in abuses. Bring on the regulations (and, hopefully, eventually, a culture of professionalism and responsibility will follow), but first figure out how to make the regulations wise and genuinely effective, not counterproductive distractions.

ilovetux 7y ago

I would like to see warnings on certain websites which use user retention tactics such as these to prominently display warnings like cigarette companies are required to do. Something like the following: "Facebook is known to be addictive and use deceptive practices in user interface design to influence you into spending an unhealthy amount time on their platform in order to maximize the number of advertisements you view."

calais 7y ago
That would be a much better law than the lawmakers'.

segmondy 7y ago

Tech needs to fight. There are tons of new regulations being pushed to regulate tech with politics. It's going to end very badly. This is not about caring for people, but controlling tech. People care about high hospital bills, expensive insurance and high college costs. Why are these same politicians not writing new bills to fix those? Why do they want to tame Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, Google, Amazon?

scarface74 7y ago
Because tech companies are run by the “liberal elite” and they don’t bribe enough congressmen. People in tech should be much more concerned than they are about the government encroaching on it. The government does not represent big states/big cities in proportion to the population once you consider the tiniest state has the same two senators as the largest.

phil248 7y ago

Banning things is obviously silly but I wouldn't mind regulations that force media outlets to give subscribers some simple options so we can choose exactly how we consume the media we pay for. That might wreck the holy grail of A/B testing that these companies live and die by, but it would be fantastic for the consumer.

deleted 7y ago

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macinjosh 7y ago

This is the last shreds of personal responsibility disappearing from the culture.

tlrobinson 7y ago

So why wasn't a ban necessary for the ultimate autoplaying video, television?

DannyB2 7y ago

From TFA... > Deceptive design played an enormous part in last week’s FTC settlement with Facebook, and Hawley’s bill would make it unlawful for tech companies to use dark patterns to manipulate users into opting into services. For example, “accept” and “decline” checkboxes would need to be the same font, format, and size to help users make better, more informed choices. So don't use color. Make the two choices equally clear. Example: Would you like to enroll in our craptacular offer which is free for 90 days and then costs $9.95 per month thereafter? Please check one of the following options: [_] No. Please DO NOT add me to the list of people to be excluded from being automatically enrolled in our special craptacular offer. [_] Yes. Please DO add me to the list of people ineligible to not be excluded from not being enrolled in our special craptacular offer. If you do not select one of the options, then default will automatically be selected for you. Thank you for enrolling in our craptacular special offer!

dingus 7y ago

Here's an idea, how about spending time and effort on something that's an actual priority.

BFatts 7y ago

Uh, TV is unending, constantly "scrolling" to new content meant to addict you as well, correct? How does this differ from having the TV on and just consuming what's on it versus Netflix autoplay feature? Is it possible to distinguish autoplay (auto-continuation) from just regular TV streaming over the airwaves or cable?

eridius 7y ago

I could support something like this if, instead of banning it, simply made these practices opt-in. Autoplay is great if you want it. It sucks if you don't. And Netflix makes it so dang hard to disable (you have to use a web browser and find an obscure preference). So instead of autoplay, it should require interaction the first time, with an option to autoplay for the rest of the session. Similarly for infinite scrolling, how about we don't infinitely scroll the first time, but have a footer you can click to load more, with an option to infinitely scroll for the rest of the session.

stunt 7y ago

I'm not sure if banning can fix anything. They will come up with different ideas. Every company is heavily focused to optimize digital products for business values now. Auto-play-video is probably very high on list of things that wasted so much time in human history.

aussieguy1234 7y ago

Infinite scrolling is just good UI. I've implemented it in Libr, the Tumblr replacement (https://librapp.com https://librapp.com)

Scoundreller 7y ago

Can we also replace “next”/“prev” buttons with “newer”/“older”? I always get confused by the 2nd page.

aitchnyu 7y ago

While we are at it, ads need to be marked in contrast colors and show business details of the ad buyer and if its an app, what kind of contract you are entering. My Android nags me "Enable anti-malware" and I don't know if it came from the OEM or from some originally minimal app that sold itself to a unscrupulous buyer. Elders's Androids (in India) have undismissable notifications many times taller than 2000s IE toolbars nagging them to install intrusive system tools.

CaptainSteve89 7y ago

They just want to prevent people from easily tabbing/scrolling away from ads.

CaptainSteve89 7y ago

Seems like a way to limit a users access to desirable content while ramping up paid placement advertising?

lunias 7y ago

Don't ban things. Educate the population as to why they should ban themselves from doing things; and whenever possible, offer people better alternatives.