10 ms·

You are not acknowledging the fact that the companies producing these addictive apps are very much doing it intentionally. They are specifically making it as en

• stronglikedan 8mo ago
  I hate this age of zero personal accountability. It's so easy to just not doomscroll, but I should be allowed if I want to.
  • saithir 8mo ago
    It's also super easy not to use hard drugs, yet that's not a reason to stop restricting them. If something's harmful it should be controlled.
    • landl0rd 8mo ago
      I find it pretty hypocritical that the same people who push for e.g. legal marijuana would go for banning social media apps. Don't get me wrong, I use neither and think both are mentally, physically, and morally corrosive. I would not care to have either present in the community where I live, nor for my future children to use them. That does not mean it is the province of the state to ban them.
      • rzz3 8mo ago
        To give them some credit, they support both positions because they were told to support them by the same people and never put much thought into it.
      • Quarrelsome 8mo ago
        weed isn't designed to be addictive. You'll find most people would be cautious about legalising heroin, meth or crack.
        • yibg 8mo ago
          Weed isn't designed to be anything, but it certainly is addictive in the same sense that social media is. There is no physical addiction (which is also true for TikTok), but there are definitely people that are hooked on it.
          • Quarrelsome 8mo ago
            it is habit forming, but its not designed to be, by some of the brightest minds of a generation.
  • saubeidl 8mo ago
    Personal accountability is contrary to human nature. We are primates dominated by our primitive urges.
  • wasmainiac 8mo ago
    did you see what happened when we tried to decriminalise hard drugs in Vancouver? Feel good for yourself that you have the discipline to have self control, other do not and need help. You are free to not use TikTok yourself, no one is stopping you. Also drug decriminalisation is very nuanced, I’m not 100% against it, I’m just pointing out just that open drug use spiked after.
    • dylan604 8mo ago
      > Also drug decriminalisation is very nuanced, I’m not 100% against it, I’m just pointing out just that open drug use spiked after. Was that spike a true spike in new users, or existing users just coming out of the shadows?
• bondarchuk 8mo ago
  It's also very much an exercise in framing, though. Making your media as engaging as possible is the basic imperative of any media company. But choosing to call this specific instance of it "addictive" has everyone up in arms.
  • horsawlarway 8mo ago
    To the framing issue - I can frame an alternate lens through which we balance enrichment against engagement. Media can enrich people - expose them to new ideas, new stories, different views and opinions. This expands worldview and generally trends in the same direction as education. Media can also be engaging - Use tools that make it compelling to continue viewing, even when other things might be preferable, on the low end: cliffhangers and suspenseful stories. on the high end: repetitive gambling like tendencies. I'd argue if we view tiktok through this lens - banning it seems to make sense. Honestly, most short form social media should be highly reviewed for being low value content that is intentionally made addictive. --- It's not society's job to cater to the whims of fucking for-profit, abusive, media companies. It's society's job to enrich and improve the lives of their members. Get the fuck outta here with the lame duck argument that I need to give a shit about some company's unethical profit motives. I also don't care if meth dealers go bankrupt - who knew!
    • bondarchuk 8mo ago
      I fundamentally don't think governments should do a careful cost-benefit analysis of everything in society and then ban it if it falls on the wrong side. Just on basic principles of personal freedom. That's why the "addiction" framing is so important, because it implies that citizens don't have agency, and so justifies the authoritarian intervention. PS if we apply your analysis to video games they surely would have been banned too. Edit: by the way I remember back in the day we searched for "addicting flash games" and it was seen as a positive ;p
      • munk-a 8mo ago
        It is completely unreasonable for a society to do a careful cost-benefit analysis of everything in society - it's completely reasonable for a society to identify highly harmful things (especially those that hijack our brains through direct chemical or emotional addiction) and police those, or, as per Portugal's approach, make available societal supports to allow people to better cope with that addiction. The later isn't very reasonable to expect in a world of rising austerity due to financialization so the former seems more realistic.
• moi2388 8mo ago
  Do they though? I’d love to think of myself as an exceptional individual because I don’t use Facebook or TikTok, but most likely I’m not exceptional at all, and other people could also just not use TikTok.
• trcf23 8mo ago
  And it’s also mostly targeting children/teenagers. As a parent you can add limitations on cinema, binging series. You can’t on TikTok. I’m quite glad that there is a form of control preventing a company from a different part of the world that don’t really care about the mental health or wellbeing of my kids to creep into their life like that… As a parent, it’s not a fair fight and I should not have to delegate that to another private company
  • luxuryballs 8mo ago
    This strikes me as potentially a hardware problem more than a software problem.
    • trcf23 8mo ago
      Probably a bit of both but I don’t know any other hardware that is that addictive… Social network are not necessarily bad, even for teens. The issue here is the effort to make any user into a scrolling machine combined to a medium always in your pocket.
• amarant 8mo ago
  I don't like this narrative. I'm a person, and HN is the only social media I use.I tolerate this one because I find the addictiveness off-putting, but unlike other social media HN doesn't engage in that much. I'm not some sort of prodigy or anything, just a random schmuck. If I can do it, anyone can. People just really like blaming others for their own vices instead of owning up to having a vice. HN is a vice too. One of many that I have. And they're all mine. I've chosen them all. In most cases knowing full well that I probably shouldn't have.
  • dinfinity 8mo ago
    Exactly. It's not that the producers or distributors (of food, content, etc.) are not malicious/amoral/evil/greedy. It's that the real solution lies in fixing the vulnerabilities in the consumers. You don't say to a heroin addict that they wouldn't have any problems if those pesky heroin dealers didn't make heroin so damn addictive. You realize that it's gonna take internal change (mental/cultural/social overrides to the biological weaknesses) in that person to reliably fix it (and ensure they don't shift to some other addiction). I'm not saying "let the producers run free". Intervening there is fine as long as we keep front of mind and mouth that people need to take their responsibility and that we need to do everything to help them to do so.
    • programjames 8mo ago
      Doesn't the government try to ban heroin?? You have to live in the real world, not your ideal world, and in the real world people are not perfectly rational agents. They make mistakes. Each and every mistake could have been avoided if the individual just had a stronger will, was a little smarter, a little more prudent, or took a little more time to think, but just because mistakes can be avoided and some people are better at avoiding them than others does not change the fundamental issue: drugs, tobacco, gambling, and TikTok are trying to increase the rate at which mistakes are made. Wouldn't you rather live in a society where they aren't out to get you? I think there's an argument that can be made, like, "well maybe 10% of the time people consuming alcohol is a mistake, but I just use it recreationally. The government shouldn't prohibit all drinking!" And sure. If it is really the case that people would take the same actions even if they had more time to think things through and were in a good mental state, the government should probably not be intervening for the 10% of the cases that doesn't hold. But you have to draw the line somewhere.
• forgotaccount3 8mo ago
  > They are specifically making it as engaging as possible because that's [how they make money.] ... what people want. Fixed that for you. Your argument is basically the same as saying that Banana Ball should be banned because they are intentionally making the experience as fun as possible, because that's how they make money.
  • darkhorse222 8mo ago
    Yeah! Or cigarettes!
  • mrpandas 8mo ago
    You're suggesting that it doesn't matter what children are exposed to / become addicted to because companies should be able to sell what children want? So there's no limits to that in your mind? Should every child be given cocaine because they ask for it? They're certainly given candy, right? You must believe there's no difference between cocaine and candy, I can assure you there is a difference and show you evidence to the contrary, if you're that dense.
    • anthonypasq 8mo ago
      sigh... he is saying that addictiveness itself is not a justification to ban something. exercising is addictive to some people, sex is addictive, reading is addictive for some people. everything worth doing in life is addicting. what matters is the negative consequences of doing something. so the justification for banning tiktok is that it destroys childrens attention spans for life and lets them get propagandized by a hostile foreign government, NOT that its addictive.
      • krapp 8mo ago
        Tiktok hasn't been around long enough for the claim that it "destroys childrens attention spans for life" to make any sense. And children get propagandized by hostile foreign governments everywhere online. And by their own government. The premise that TikTok was somehow more dangerous in this regard than Facebook or Twitter or even Discord is based entirely on sinophobia.
• SirMaster 8mo ago
  >The average person has zero chance against all-pervasive, ultra-manipulative, highly-engineered systems like that. So you are saying I am not an average person because I have the willpower to simply not install the TikTok app or watch short form video on any platform? Has the bar for the average person really sunk this low?
  • foobar_______ 8mo ago
    Maybe? I really don't know. I don't want to believe it but the data and just looking around in public and seeing the scroll addition seems to indicate otherwise?
  • Jensson 8mo ago
    > So you are saying I am not an average person because I have the willpower to simply not install the TikTok app or watch short form video on any platform? Yes, since more people use Tiktok than not. The average person is also fat today, so this shouldn't come as a surprise to you. People didn't grow fat and addicted to screens due to changes to themselves, its due to companies learning how to get people to eat more and watch more since the they make more money.
  • tvink 8mo ago
    If only you could reach out of your own experience and ponder what might cause otherwise reasonable people to do so. Young people peer pressure, current marketing landscape, you're forced there if you want to make money as a creative, so many reasons. Great, you can live your life without. Can you live your life without assuming everyone has the privilege of your situation?
  • integralid 8mo ago
    You also probably don't use heroin. Everyone knows it's a bad idea and yet for some reason we have very severe punishments for people that distribute it. Why? Because addictive things are addictive, and addicted people suffer, and everyone can get addicted if their guard slips. We prefer to regulate highly addictive things instead.
    • 8mo ago
• TheOtherHobbes 8mo ago
  That's not wrong, but it's a selective take. The entire economy operates like an addiction machine, using proven psychological techniques to modify individual and collective behaviours and beliefs. It's not just social media. It's gaming, ad tech, marketing, PR, religion, entertainment, the physical design of malls and stores... And many many more. The difference with social media is that the sharp end is automated and personalised, instead of being analysed by spreadsheet and stats package and broken out by demographics. But it's just the most obvious poison in a toxic ecosystem.
  • saubeidl 8mo ago
    Yup. It's capitalism that's the core problem. Social media is just a particularly nasty outgrowth.
    • Quarrelsome 8mo ago
      its not necessarily "capitalism". Think about how Myspace was, or early Facebook, that was capitalism but didn't have the same issues. Its the "lean startup" culture as well as books like "Hooked, how to build habit forming products" - Nir Eyal. The dark lean startup pattern is where you break down the big picture rationale for the company. You extract metrics that contribute to the company's success (i.e. engagement) and you build a machine that rewards changes to the underlying system that improves those metrics. If done successfully, you create an unwitting sociopathy, a process that demands the product be as addictive as possible and a culture that is in thrall to the machine that rewards its employees by increasing those metrics. You're no longer thinking about purpose or wondering about what you're doing to your users. You simply realise that if you send this notification at this time, with this colour button, in this place, with this tagline then the machine likes it. Multiple people might contribute a tiny piece of a horrifying and manipulative whole and may never quite realise the true horror of the monster they've helped build, because they're insulated by being behind the A/B test.
      • Jensson 8mo ago
        > its not necessarily "capitalism". Think about how Myspace was, or early Facebook, that was capitalism but didn't have the same issues. No thats exactly capitalism, capitalism ensures processes gets more and more efficient over time, as you say previous versions were less efficient at inducing addictive behaviors but capitalism ensured we progressed towards more and more addictive apps and patterns. Capitalism doesn't mean we start out with the most efficient money extractor, it just moves towards the most efficient money extractor with time unless regulated. This is well known and a feature, capitalism moves towards efficiency and regulation helps direct that movement so that it helps humanity rather than hurts us. Capitalism would gladly serve you toxic food but regulations ensures they earn more money by giving you nutritious food. Now regulations are lagging a bit there so there is still plenty of toxic food around, but it used to be much worse than now, the main problem with modern food is that people eat too much directly toxic compounds.
• rzz3 8mo ago
  And I’m so glad they did. Tiktok has brought so many positive changes to my life, and it never would have happened if they hadn’t built a product so good that it’s literally addictive. I don’t want the government to be my parent. Additionally, Instagram and Facebook have tried their best to make their products as addictive as possible, yet their recommendation algorithm is so absolutely terrible (not to mention their ads) that I barely stay on the platform for five minutes when I use it.
  • Noumenon72 8mo ago
    What the TikTok algorithm does for me: surfaces exercises for all my joint problems, finds people exploring local sites and reporting on local issues, helps me discover new music, reveals how we treat prisoners, shows me what it's like to do jobs from sitcom writer to oil rig tech What Europe does for me: Makes me click "Accept cookies"
    • Quarrelsome 8mo ago
      > What Europe does for me: Makes me click "Accept cookies" that's only because the implementation of the law is poor and advertisers drag their heels in having it as a brower-level setting. Not helped by the fact that advertisers run one of the biggest browsers and fund one of the next biggest.
• luxuryballs 8mo ago
  The government could spend effort on making a documentary and funding a study on brain scans and a little campaign to show everyone the damage and educate rather than just wielding the ban hammer. Especially because it’s often possible that they can have a different motive for ban hammering even if the reason given is valid.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• Lerc 8mo ago
  I don't think we should allow any form of abusive software, addictive, dark patterns, bait-and-switch. They all need to be robustly regulated. At the same time I don't think you can demonstrate harm without good evidence. Making money can not be used as a criteria unless you want to draw the conclusion that no company can turn a profit and be ethical at the same time. It would amount to demanding an outcome that you don't believe us possible. I think considering overly broad criteria, like say, infinite scroll applied selectively to a few is just arbitrarily targeting candidates for reasons unstated outside the criteria. The rules need to be evidence based, clear, specific, and apply to all. Cracking down on ticktok while The Guardian has a bunch of dark patterns. Or the NYT, who is reporting on this while at the same time attracting people with online games that have an increasingly toxic user interface. Tiktok may suck, but so do a lot of other businesses that escape scrutiny. I worry the harms attributed to TikTok are magnified to allow them to be a whipping boy drawing the focus allowing systemic issues to persist.
• piekvorst 8mo ago
  What's illegal about intentionally making money for being addictive? "Unfair"? Maybe. But not illegal.
• yibg 8mo ago
  Where does a desirable product or experience end and addictive begin though? Pretty much all products or services sold are designed to be desirable. Some things are physically addictive (nicotine, opioids etc), so those are a bit more clear. But when we're talking about psychologically addictive, where do we draw the line between what's ok and what's not? If my restaurant's food is so good people are "addicted" to it, that's a good thing. If it's about applying psychological patterns to trigger the addictive behavior that applies to a large swath of marketing.
  • IanCal 8mo ago
    You really must be able to understand the difference between liking a thing and being addicted to a thing? If not it’s probably worth just starting with basic definitions of addiction.
    • Thiez 8mo ago
      The DSM-5 acknowledges only gambling as a diagnosable behavioral addiction. Being addicted to a thing means substance addiction, not TikTok or games or internet.
      • IanCal 8mo ago
        The dsm-5 is not the only way we use words, but even there it clearly can define between liking gambling and being addicted right?
        • Thiez 8mo ago
          Sure, I just think we if we're going to pathologize activities with intent to pass laws we ought to at least stick to a science-based approach. Right now there is no basis to conclude that even a single person is addicted to TikTok, since no such diagnosis exists. The word 'addicted' is used informally in all kinds of contexts where it's a wild exaggeration. Just like people say they have OCD or autism when they sort something, or say they are hypochondriacs when they wash their hands more often than average. Of course people who actually have these conditions might do the same, but a lot of the time it's just perfectly neurotypical people using hyperbole and/or a flawed understanding of psychiatry. Let's wait until psychiatrists agree on the existence of TikTok addiction and come up with a set of diagnostic criteria. Until such time we should take the existence of such addictions with a grain of salt, and refrain from moral panic.
• eggy 8mo ago
  There was significant awareness and negative sentiment toward advertising long before Marshall McLuhan became prominent in the 1960s. Some of the stuff from 1900 to 1930 is interesting. I realize there is a lot at work here with multi-faceted attacks on the senses, but advertising was intentional too, and I am not sure if just making things illegal that are hard to educate people on is the right tack.