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> You might think how do you define that, but the companies have already made a whole science out of it so it's not that abstract anymore Hardly. Addictiveness

> You might think how do you define that, but the companies have already made a whole science out of it so it's not that abstract anymore Hardly. Addictiveness does not exist in binary. There are many people who obsessively check their email or refresh news websites. There is no doubt that social media companies choose the algorithms that maximize engagement and so most probably they also maximize addiction, but _any_ algorithm will cause addiction to some extent. What's the limit? How do we even measure this? Something that is maybe a little more interesting is banning the practice of recommending "negative content" because it produces more engagement than "positive content". How this is defined is also somewhat squishy, but we can at least try to define it -- content that is likely to provoke negative emotions, like anger, fear, aggression, etc. I think there's a much clearer through-line to argue that recommending negative content on social media produces a substantial negative externality, and that moves this into the category of things like environmental regulations.

Ghexor 3y ago
I agree with you that a pos/neg divide is clearer and more straight forward to construct. Reading your comment also evoked in me imaginations of political repression. Anger and fear are really important emotions signifying "this situation is not meeting my needs". Social Media can abuse these for profit probably precicely because they play this important role. In this light, a ban on recommending negative content seems really dangerous. Any content that expresses dissatisfaction with the political status quo is likely to contain some 'negative' (I suggest the term 'challenging') emotions. So while 'addictiveness' is, like you say, really difficuly to measure - I prefer we try.
presentation 3y ago
I’m fine with the deciding body being an independent, literate group (easier said than done) who observe allegedly addictive platforms and make judgements based on the spirit of the law. We don’t need to reduce this to some kind of automated decidability machine.

Ghexor 3y ago

I agree with you that a pos/neg divide is clearer and more straight forward to construct. Reading your comment also evoked in me imaginations of political repression. Anger and fear are really important emotions signifying "this situation is not meeting my needs". Social Media can abuse these for profit probably precicely because they play this important role. In this light, a ban on recommending negative content seems really dangerous. Any content that expresses dissatisfaction with the political status quo is likely to contain some 'negative' (I suggest the term 'challenging') emotions. So while 'addictiveness' is, like you say, really difficuly to measure - I prefer we try.

presentation 3y ago

I’m fine with the deciding body being an independent, literate group (easier said than done) who observe allegedly addictive platforms and make judgements based on the spirit of the law. We don’t need to reduce this to some kind of automated decidability machine.