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The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
- linuxdude314 8mo ago[flagged]
- scottscambaugh 8mo ago[dead]
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Rygian 8mo ago> Why would anyone care about something like this ... Because it is a dangerous addiction [1] with recognised adverse effects on human health. Like sugar, tobacco, or drugs. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959832
- rockskon 8mo agoWhile I agree it's not a net positive, I find it dangerous to equate all addictions.
- Forgeties79 8mo agoHe’s not equating all addictions beyond saying they are all addictions and should be treated as such.
- rockskon 8mo agoBut that's the problem - different substances require different solutions. You reduce sugar intake, not eliminate it. You eliminate cocaine intake, not just reduce it. Treating social media design as equal to something that can kill people in excess unnerves me.
- xracy 8mo agoIt looks to me like you're adding the conflation to "all addictions" because you can clearly distinguish between "sugar" and "cocaine" as both forms of addictions. Why would you not be willing to include "scrolling" as another form of addiction? Just because it's labeled the same way you yourself are demonstrating that we handle that in different ways. Social Media is being treated as "sugar" in this instance instead of as "cocaine".
- ben_w 8mo ago> Treating social media design as equal to something that can kill people in excess unnerves me. As it should, because there's a really obvious "slippery slope" argument right there. But… it can kill people. There is a certain fraction of the population who, for whatever reason, can be manipulated, to the point of becoming killers or of causing injury to themselves. Social media… actually, worse than that, all A/B testing everywhere, can stumble upon this even when it isn't trying to (I would like to believe that OpenAI's experience with 4o-induced psychosis was unintentional). When we know which tools can be used for manipulation, it's bad to keep allowing it to run unchecked. Unchecked, they are the tool of propagandists. But… I see that slippery slope, I know that any government which successfully argues itself the power to regulate this, even for good, is one bad election away from a dictatorship that will abuse the same reasoning and powers to evil ends.
- DarkUranium 8mo agoThere's literally a name for using this on purpose: stochastic terrorism. There's also a very good TED talk on this topic from 8 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI
- rockskon 8mo agoI've always found the notion of "stochastic terrorism" to be elastic, effectively transforming "speech a given person dislikes" into "danger" so censorship looks like virtue. Not to mention - you have to account for what happens if someone you hate may be in power and could wield any sort of system to stop "stochastic terrorism" against you. This is often dismissed as an abstract what-if, but....given what's been happening with world leaders these days, it should be a central consideration.
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo agoLets do the nanny state! (As I get older, unironically. I want my productive worker bees to be drug free, addiction free, enjoying simple pleasures that do not put me at risk. They pay Social Security. Everything is nice and safe. Freedom? Yeah no thanks, get to work and pay your taxes.)
- rendx 8mo agoThank you from talking about the Holy Freedom, my brother. Looking forward to enjoying further freedoms thanks to laws that protect me from behavior that makes me unfree and in need to constantly control me and my surroundings!
- pixl97 8mo agoI mean, lets do the opposite where a large corporation gets people intentionally addicted to drugs and then bilks them for every penny they have until they are husks. Remember, free market comes first!
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo agoThe thing is, why do you care? We like it this way. These companies are a cancer and they should be erradicated. You think that attacking these horrible companies is bad for our freedoms, we think our freedoms are fine with it.
- rendx 8mo ago> Whatever happened to freedom? Freedom from, or freedom to? ‘Freedom does not consist in doing what we want, but in overcoming what we have for an open future; the existence of others defines my situation and is the condition of my freedom. They oppress me if they take me to prison, but they are not oppressing me if they prevent me from taking my neighbour to prison.’ -- Simone de Beauvoir
- Jon_Lowtek 8mo agoSocial Media companies have actively and intentionally tried to make their products more addicting... now they have to face the very obvious consequences of that decision.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- ktm5j 8mo agoMaybe you're not the type of person who's struggled with addiction, but it can do awful things to you. Yes, including being addicted to scrolling social media. It screws with your head to the point where you don't know how to live in the moment anymore. IMO it's a feature that's not valuable enough to justify the fact that it contributes to poor quality of life for people who can't put it down.
- randomNumber7 8mo agoThe first step to get on track in life is to stop blaming the outside for all problems. Yes some people had really bad luck but in the end you can only change yourself.
- MrScruff 8mo agoI suspect there's not a huge amount of overlap between those who would like this banned and those who are targeted by it.
- randomNumber7 8mo agoThere is likely no overlap between software engineers and the people with below average IQ that the EU tries to protect from themself.
- jakubadamw 8mo agoDo you enjoy being so demeaning towards other people?
- randomNumber7 8mo agoThe freedom of having my own choice is too demanding for you...
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- slopusila 8mo agoit turns out that all those jokes about EU regulating the curvature of the cucumber were on to something
- solumunus 8mo agoWhy would someone care about a destructive addiction that's plaguing the lives of the majority of the planet, leading to mental health issues and proliferating massive levels of misinformation. I wonder. Freedom to be manipulated by algorithms, yay!
- mytailorisrich 8mo agoWe have great freedoms in Europe. We just need to apply in advance with our detailed plan, in three copies and the Commission will decide whether to deny our application or to deny it and fine us for unhealthy thoughts, too. Sarcasm now, but maybe what the near future will look like... More to the point: this is indeed a massive overreach with the Commission being the police, judge, jury, and executioner... what could go wrong? Exactly what we are seeing is taking shape, precedent by precedent.
- happytoexplain 8mo ago>Why would anyone care about something like this to the degree they feel like expressing the opinion publicly Why would anyone publicly express any negative opinion about the effects of doomscrolling? I don't think I'm uncharitably paraphrasing, right?
- pixl97 8mo ago>Whatever happened to freedom? Turns out it was a big lie you've told yourself so you can let the rich and powerful get away with atrocities. Hey, we all have free speech, it's just that I can buy a whole lot more of it than you can.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- 928570490687298 8mo ago[flagged]
- danny_codes 8mo agoWe live in a society. We chose rules that we think will make society better. Freedom is meaningless without context. Freedom to doomscroll or freedom from doomscrolling. American propaganda really likes to divorce the concept from reality.
- sensanaty 8mo agoOut of curiosity, do you or have you ever worked for one of the FAANGs?
- brikym 8mo agoPeople have less free will than we'd like to admit. I'd like to have freedom from outdoor advertising and online monopolies shoving short video formats down my throat.
- energy123 8mo agoBecause it impacts me, and I don't want it to impact me anymore? Not because I use these products, but because I have to live in a society with these people, and if they are unhappy and angry, that impacts me directly, through various second-order effects.
- eviks 8mo agoNothing happened, just that the bureaucrats are slowly catching up with new technologies to make them as free as everything else
- peterisza 8mo agoThey should move to kill the cookie popup
- ben_w 8mo agoJust so long as that means killing all the tracking, not just going back to hiding it.
- mcny 8mo agoYou don't have to have a cookie popup if you don't do stupid stuff. Don't use anything other than strictly necessary cookies and you are good to go. Disclaimer: I anal and this is not legal advice.
- rpdillon 8mo agoHaving worked at multiple companies and talked to multiple legal teams about this, they tend to be very conservative. So the guidance I've gotten is that if we store any information at all on the person's computer, even to know whether they've visited the site before, we still need a cookie banner. Basically, the law created enough fear among the lawyers that software developers are being advised to include the cookie banner in cases where it isn't strictly needed.
- norman784 8mo agoBut it should not be obnoxious, look at steam how is a small banner with two simple actions, vs all other cookie banners.
- rpdillon 8mo agoAgreed! Many sites don't actually comply with the GDPR because they don't provide simple tools to control the cookies and instead force you through a flow. Part of my gripe with the law is the way those violations are not being systematically cited.
- buzzerbetrayed 8mo ago
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- mocmoc 8mo ago[flagged]
- ben_w 8mo agoSo, like https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/07/12/2021-14674/submission-of-plans-for-cigarette-packages-and-cigarette-advertisements-revised-guidance-for https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/07/12/2021-14... ?
- mplewis 8mo agois this your first year on the internet?
- manuelmoreale 8mo agoI mean, clearly the companies at the top can't be trusted to do what's in the best interests of the users. So at some point someone has to do something. If this is the correct something that remains to be seen.
- simlevesque 8mo agoCompanies are part of society and we have a rule-based society.
- RiverCrochet 8mo agoImagine a society that had rules on the designs of haircuts, and punishments to enforce those rules.
- danny_codes 8mo agoExcept people aren’t addicted to haircuts and presumably don’t spend 8 hours a day staring at their hair in the mirror.
- RiverCrochet 8mo agoI should be able to stare at my phone 8 hours a day without government interference if I want to. No one is holding me at gunpoint. It's my phone and it doesn't hurt anyone else.
- graemep 8mo agoIts addictive design in general, but only for Tik-tok. If it works and is applied to others it will be the best thing the EU has ever done.
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo agoI have a proud European coworker trying to get their H1B... They talk about how great Europe is, how they like their 1-2 hour coffee/smoke breaks... These kind of moves give me that same vibe. But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? Why isn't the opposite happening? My hypothesis is that these kind of popular policies are short sighted. They are super popular, they use intuition and feeling. But maybe there is something missing. The unadulterated freedom has led people to enjoy these platforms. Obviously it affects the economy. So much so, even the US military has moved from Europe to Asia. I don't typically like fiction, but it seems "I, Robot" was spot on about Europe. (Maybe mistaking new Africa for Asia)
- rendx 8mo ago> But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? Why isn't the opposite happening? Citation needed. I took some minutes to try and find statistics, and also ChatGPT claims that the EU simply doesn't collect or publish that kind of data, so I'm wondering how you think you know.
- manuelmoreale 8mo ago> But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? All I see in my circle is people refusing to even go on vacation in the US, let alone move there.
- OKRainbowKid 8mo agoSame here, to the point I would even avoid layovers in the US and take a more expensive flight instead. I don't want to deal with some power tripping immigration officer insisting to search my phone and social media to send me to some camp because I wrote critical comments about the current administration.
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo agoIrrational fear. So who do you think funds this propaganda? Russia or China?
- poncho_romero 8mo agoI hope this goes through. Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive. It isn't a fair fight and the existence of infinite feeds is bad both for people and democracy. Regulating consumer products that cause harm to millions is nothing new.
- woodpanel 8mo ago[flagged]
- mym1990 8mo agoEh, its not like it is happening overnight. Its like a cancer that slowly spreads without much notice and then one day the democracy collapses and its too late to do anything about it.
- joe_mamba 8mo agoThis. If all it took was a $300k ad campaign on tiktok to get the population of a country(Romania in this case to be specific) to vote for a shady no-name candidate that came out of nowhere, instead of the well known candidates of the establishment, that should tell you the politics of your country betrayed its electorate so badly that they would rather commit national suicide instead of voting the establishment again to screw them over for the n-th time. Tiktok only exposed that, it didn't cause that. I'm not saying social media isn't cancerous and shouldn't be regulated, because it is and it should, I'm saying that in this specific case it's a symptom of a much bigger existing disease and not the root cause of it. What I'm mostly afraid of now, is that the lesson governments took from this is not that social media should be regulated and defanged of data collection and addictiveness, but instead that governments should keep and seize control of said data collection and addictiveness so they can weaponize it themselves to advance their agendas over the population. Case in point, the now US-controlled tiktok does more data harvesting than when it was Chinese owned.[1] At least China couldn't send ICE to your house using that data. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tiktok-new-terms-of-service-privacy-geolocation-personal-information/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tiktok-new-terms-of-service-pri...
- tokyobreakfast 8mo agoI see some synergy between this and the "iOS keyboard sucks" thread. Maybe they can regulate that next. I'm curious how they plan to pretend to enforce this. Will you need a loisence to implement infinite scroll?
- ARandomerDude 8mo agoWatch what governments do, not what they say. This isn’t about addiction, it’s about censorship. If you limit the amount of time someone can spend getting information, and make it inconvenient with UI changes, it’s much harder to have embarrassing information spread to the masses. Amazingly, the public will generally nod along anyway when they read governmental press releases and say “yes, yes, it’s for my safety.”
- cbg0 8mo agoScrolling through an infinity of AI slop videos can't really be classified as "getting information". If you want to read the news and stay up to date with the "embarrassing information" there's plenty of news websites out there.
- slopusila 8mo agoanother cookie warning disaster incoming hopefully AI will wake them up and save us from all this nonsense
- badpun 8mo agoWould it affect HackerNews? The list of topics on the main page is a form of infinite scroll.
- asib 8mo agoNo it's not? It's paged.
- OGEnthusiast 8mo agoGiven how badly scrolling has cooked the brain of the average American, seems like a smart thing for the EU to ban.
- manuelmoreale 8mo agoAnd based on some of the replies in this thread we better act fast before it's too late.
- breezykoi 8mo agoReading some comments I don’t know whether some use fallacious arguments deliberately or are simply incapable of logical reasoning.
- Aerbil313 8mo agoIt's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it. Way too many working in/adjacent to the advertising or the doomscrolling industry here.
- Aerbil313 8mo agoI don't use any social media (except HN ~once a week) and every time I suggest a person they try stopping social media it's either a quiet "Yeah I know it's not good but I can't stop" or defending the "fun" and supposed virtues of doomscrolling with great fervor. I think it's this latter camp of people. It triggers them as if you threatened to take away his candy from a child.
- KolibriFly 8mo agoI get the frustration behind that sentiment, but I'm not convinced it's as simple as "scrolling cooked brains"
- ZoomZoomZoom 8mo agoDunno about using legislative moves, but yes please. The stupidest solution to a problem no one had. Moving layouts, unreachable footers, no or unsatisfactory indication of one's position. All just to remove navigation clicks no one minded and reduce server loads, in exchange for users suffering laggy lazy loading (or, what a hate-inducing pattern!) inability to preload, print, search or link.
- spiderice 8mo ago[flagged]
- manuelmoreale 8mo agoWhere are you suggest we move to escape this dystopian nightmare?
- pixl97 8mo agoTo Muskland where corporations own everything including the infinite scroll feeds. You can buy as much freedom as you want there.
- manuelmoreale 8mo agoYeah exactly, right? Europe is the dystopian nightmare, sure.
- 928570490687298 8mo agoHow low do you have to sink to defend a legislature attacking the privacy of the sovereign again and again? Pathetic. Von der Leyen, who illegally deleted her SMS and is being investigated for corruption, conflict of interest and destruction of evidence, must be glad she can count on you to defend spying on every citizen via "Chat Control" and forcing browser developers to accept any state-mandated root certificates via eIDAS.
- uxcolumbo 8mo agoWhat exactly is dystopian about protecting developing minds of children and teens from detrimental effects and social media addiction caused by companies like Meta and Bytedance. These companies profit immensely from being quasi unregulated.
- jjcm 8mo agoHere's the actual statement from the European Comission: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_312 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_... It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling, but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it. The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do. My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent, but after thinking on it more I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". Everything I thought of would have some way or workaround that could be found, and equally would have terrible consequences on situations where this is actually quite valuable. IE if you disallow infinite scrolling, what page sizes are allowed? Can I just have a page of 10,000 elements that lazy load? Regardless of your take around whether this is EU overreach, I'm glad they're not implementing strict laws around what you can/can't do - there are valuable situations for these UI patterns, even if in combination they can create addictive experiences. Still, I do think that overregulation here will lead to services being fractured. I was writing about this earlier this morning (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005367), but the regulated friction of major platforms (ie discord w/ ID laws) is on a collision course with the ease of vibe coding up your own. When that happens, these comissions are going to need to think long and hard around having a few large companies to watch over is better than millions of small micro-niche ones.
- spwa4 8mo agoI wouldn't worry about that. You're ignoring politics, and what this actually is. If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago. They do not intend, not even remotely, to sabotage the profit machines that those companies are, they just want political weapons against the companies. The intention here is not to cure addiction, destroy profits, the intention is to use economic power to achieve political ends. The EU is built on this, it just didn't use to involve that many private companies. Like most famous EU laws, this is not a law for people. Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies and certainly not against EU states, who have repeatedly shown willingness to use AI against individuals, including face recognition (which gets a lot of negative attention and strict rules in the AI act, and EU member states get to ignore both directly, and they get to allow companies to ignore the rules), violate GPDR against their own citizens (e.g. use medical data in divorce cases, or even tax debt collection, and they let private companies ignore the rules for government purposes (e.g. hospitals can be forced report if you paid for treatment rather than pay alimony, rather than pay your back taxes)). The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google. These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies. Here's how the process works: someone "files a complaint", which is an email to the EU commission (not a complaint in the legal sense, no involvement of prosecutors, or judges, or any part of the justice system of any member state at all). Then an EU commissioner starts a negotiation process and rules on the case, usually imposing billions of euros in fines or providing publicly-backed loans (in the case of banks). The vast, vast, vast majority of these complaints are ignored or "settled in love" (French legal term: the idea is that some commission bureaucrat contacts the company and "arranges things", never involving any kind of enforcement mechanism). Then they become chairman of Goldman Sachs (oops, that just happened once, giving Goldman Sachs it's first communist chairman, yes really. In case you're wondering: Barrosso), or join Uber's and Salesforce's executive teams, paid through Panama paper companies. In other words: these laws are not at all about addictive design, and saving you from it, they're about going after specific companies for political means. Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, ... Ironically the EU is doing exactly what Trump did with tariffs. It's just that Trump is using a sawed-off shotgun where the EU commission is using a scalpel.
- causalmodels 8mo agoDoes this only apply to companies the commission doesn't like or will it apply to the hn app I use, my email clients, shopping sites, etc? Because it seems like the actual concern how good the algorithms are and not the UI.
- idle_zealot 8mo agoThis is a finding of a violation of the DSA, which only applies to services (not local reader apps), and only if they have a lot of users. Like, a significant fraction of the country level of usage. You don't need to worry about the EU coming and taking away your HN client APK. You do need to be worried about Google doing that, though.
- gib444 8mo agoI don't know how the EU has time for this kind of thing right now. Honestly
- amelius 8mo agoYes they should be banning the political propaganda instead.
- avaer 8mo agoI admire the EU's attempts at things like the cookie law, age verification, and tackling the addictiveness of infinite scrolling, but the implementation is pure theater. Trackers have much more effective techniques than "cookies", kids trivially bypass verification, and designers will make a joke of tell me you have infinite scrolling without telling me you have infinite scrolling. When you are facing trillions of dollars of competition to your law, what do you think is going to happen? Maybe if there was an independent commission that had the authority to rapidly investigate and punish (i.e. within weeks) big tech for attempting engagement engineering practices it might actually have some effect. But trying to mandate end user interfaces is wasting everyone's time putting lipstick on a pig.
- puppycodes 8mo agoFacinating that they landed on infinite scrolling as the problem to spend time and energy on instead of all the other things happening online that have an impact on society. Genuinely curious about the actual data on this. Does anyone have a link to a reputable, sizable study?
- somewhereoutth 8mo agoInfinite scrolling combined with the algorithmic feed is the real nasty. Feeds should be heavily regulated, effectively they are a (personalized!) broadcast, and maybe the same strictures should apply. Definitely they should be transparent (e.g. chronological from subscribed topics), and things like veering more extreme in order to drive engagement should be outlawed.
- pedroma 8mo agoLooks like the EU can just get a feature flag to use pagination or a "Load More" button? Doesn't seem as big of a deal as enforcing USB-C. Though if it applies to the YouTube, seems annoying when trying to find a video to watch. I usually trigger a few infinite scrolling loads to look for videos. And I assume they'd have to specify a maximum number of items per page, or else devs could just load a huge number of items up front which would technically not be infinite scrolling but enough content to keep someone occupied for a long time.
- dheera 8mo ago> We value your privacy > We use cookies and other technologies to store and access personal data on your device Evidently you don't value privacy.
- Funes- 8mo agoFrom another article: >"Social media app TikTok has been accused of purposefully designing its app to be “addictive” by the European Commission, citing its infinite scroll, autoplay, push notification, and recommendation features." All of these have immediate and easy replacements or workarounds. Nothing will substantially change (for the better; maybe it does for the worse, even). Moreover, "purposefully designing something to be addictive" (and cheap to make) is the fundamental basis of late stage capitalism.
- yencabulator 8mo ago> Moreover, "purposefully designing something to be addictive" (and cheap to make) is the fundamental basis of late stage capitalism. I'm fine with EU resisting late stage capitalism.
- tartoran 8mo agoThis was long overdue. I hope killing other dark patterns that feast on attention or hunt on flaws in human psychology follow. However, my only concern is how this will be taken care of. I hope they learned something from the GDPR fiasco.
- flanked-evergl 8mo ago[flagged]
- observationist 8mo agoHow many days before the only legal social media in the EU is the official government run platform?
- Nemo_bis 8mo agoThey can't even agree to leave XTwitter for official EU accounts...
- lemoncookiechip 8mo agoThis comes from the same EU that's wholeheartedly embracing gambling across their member states, gambling mind you that children can just as easily jump into with their phones and some will, but devastating for grown-ups just as much. They're not alone in this by any means, America has also opened their doors for all forms of gambling like Kalshi which now even sponsors news networks of all things. The EU has this disconnect with the things they push, which makes sense considering their size and the speed at which it moves. One example that comes to mind is how they're both pushing for more privacy online while also pushing for things such as chat control which is antithetical to privacy. Does social media need regulating? Yeah. Is infinite scrolling where they should be focusing? Probably not, there's more important aspects that should be tackled and are seemingly ignored.
- retired 8mo agoIn Spain I can’t even have a meal at a restaurant, get groceries or go to IKEA without someone trying to sell me lottery tickets. They really need to regulate that.
- MBCook 8mo agoIs your country allowed to ban it even if the EU in general allows it?
- kuschku 8mo agoGermany has regulated it, (though states have slightly different regulations, some states even allowing online gambling, some banning all except the government run lottery). So it should be possible to regulate it.
- MBCook 8mo agoThanks. I’m not an EU citizen so I don’t know when EU level laws override member states or not.
- randomNumber7 8mo agoNext: Gaming company sued because a game is fun to play.
- econ 8mo agoEarly on in the internet age it somewhat bothered me that every page on the www either acts like it is the first thing one reads on a topic or assumes great knowledge of the subject. With nothing in between. Wondering about a technical solution I couldn't find anything besides fold out explanations and links to explain jargon. Neither would really bridge the gap. One obvious theory was to keep track of what the user knows and hide things they don't need or unhide things they do. This is of course was not acceptable from a privacy perspective. Today however you could forge a curriculum for countless topics and [artificially] promote a great diversity of entry level videos. If the user is into something they can be made to watch more entry level videos until they are ready for slightly more advanced things. You can reward creators for filling gaps between novice and expert level regardless of view count. Almost like Khan academy but much slower, more playful and less linear. Imagine programming videos that assume the reader knows everything about each and every tool involved. The algorithm could seek out the missing parts and feed them directly into your addiction or put bounties on the scope.
- aristofun 8mo ago[flagged]
- GaryBluto 8mo agoThe EU's mission statement seems to be to make the internet as difficult to legally utilize as possible. I'm interested to see what measures people will use to get around the increasingly bizarre restrictions. Perhaps an official browser extension for each platform that reimplements bureaucrat-banned features?
- nicman23 8mo agoi mean res did that for reddit before reddit got its new ui or app
- Lorin 8mo agoAs long as this doesn't create yet another cookie popup UX nonsense we've ended up with...
- relaxing 8mo agoGood. Infinite scrolling is a scourge. Give me back my time ordered feed that if I navigate away stays on the page where I left off.
- mh2266 8mo agoWhat does ranking vs. chronological having to do with infinite scrolling? You can have a ranked paginated UI. You can also have an "infinite" (until you run out of items, but this is not different for ranked) chronological UI.
- relaxing 8mo agoMoving away from chronological allows them to feed you more addicting content, as does the infinite feed. They involved together because they work together synergistically. It’s of no value to point out both can technically be implemented independently. That isn’t what happened, and even if it did it would still be user hostile.
- mh2266 8mo agoI still don't understand. If TikTok simply showed the user every single TikTok ever created, strictly in reverse chronological order, it would still be an infinite scrolling UI. The sorting algorithm that they choose isn't what makes a UI infinite scrolling or not, they're completely orthogonal. In MVC architecture terms they're model and view respectively...
- relaxing 8mo agoThis would never happen, because it’s of no value to anyone. Not the advertisers or the users. Stop getting hung up on whether things are technically possible, and instead think critically about the actual effects of design choices. The architecturally boundary between view and model (famously difficult to keep cleanly separated, by the way) is what’s orthogonal here. These are business decisions, not software decisions.
- tsoukase 8mo agoThe hunt has started: EU burocracy vs TK. In the past EU has rarely directly attacked a single company with so specific points. But anytime they remained consistent and dedicaded to their target and usually won. It just took a long time (from a few years till decades). The only time they lost a policy was at stopping summer-time switch which was cancelled when Covid started. They avoid to mention the rest of social media platforms, which happen to be US based. It seems they choose a single quick and easy China-based target more like an experiment to decide for the rest. The key point is when: either the current kids will experience it or those that are not yet born.
- nicman23 8mo agoeven disregarding the fact that this affects multiple US based platforms that are larger than tiktok, have they tried to moderate their platform to not be unfettered brain rot?
- booleandilemma 8mo agoHere here. Nothing is infinite except for God, I say.
- coldtea 8mo agoOh, no, this will kill all slop innovation!
- phendrenad2 8mo agoTechnically this is about Tiktok's "addictive design", and their examples include "infinite scroll over time". It's totally unclear what they mean by that, or what Tiktok would have to change it to in order to be in compliance. The whole thing seems like it was written by a boomer bureaucrat who has never used Tiktok, let alone a computer.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Retr0id 8mo agoThe implication that the scrolling mechanic itself is causal in the harm feels like a bit of a leap to me.
- sashank_1509 8mo agoI’m mixed on this. I do at times waste a lot of time doom scrolling, and would like regulation to prevent me from doing so. But also some times you just want to doomscroll to escape your day to day life. Do we want this decision to be made by the govt? I guess we don’t let people have hard drugs even if sometimes they just need to escape their painful life. And maybe this could fall under that logic. But we do let people drink themselves, which serves the same purpose. And if I had to choose, I think doomscrolling is more at the level of Drinking, and less at the level of Heroin. So I would actually be fine with an age limit for doomscrolling after which, you have a hands off approach.
- jeandejean 8mo agoThat sounds reasonable
- esprehn 8mo agoI wish they would go after the fake spinning wheel discount pattern and the "app exclusive" or "better in the app" pattern. That's all a way to get people to install apps that will then bombard folks with notifications or slurp data off the device.
- thr0waway001 8mo agoEven c0rnhub doesn't have infinite scrolling. It knows to stop after the first 10-20 thumbs.... according to my friend.
- isametry 8mo agoThis isn’t heavily censored social media, you can say Pornhub.
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- deadbabe 8mo agoWhat if we implement something like "pay per scroll"?
- Frannky 8mo agoIt's interesting how there may be an implicit assumption that imposing more rules on tech will lead to positive outcomes. From my perspective, technology is like reality itself: very difficult to control, with countless ways to achieve the desired result while circumventing the rules. And what's the actual result? Just look at the market capitalization of European companies compared to US companies... Or maybe it just feels good to add new rules and engage in virtue-signaling contests. Or maybe it's just a way to make everything illegal—'find me the person, and I'll find you the crime' type of control. Maybe a combination of all those. Who knows? From my experience, the farther you get from the influence of bureaucrats, the happier life becomes...
- pyrale 8mo ago> Just look at the market capitalization of European companies compared to US companies... Counterexample: just look at the state of EU tech companies compared to Chinese tech companies. I’m not saying China is an attractive example, but chalking up Europe’s tech issues to a regulation problem fails to address europe’s digital woes.
- simongray 8mo ago> And what's the actual result? Just look at the market capitalization of European companies compared to US companies.. Europe is actually doing quite well at the moment. The European stock markets have over-performed quite decently vs. the US ever since Trump became president, despite the various curveballs thrown at Europe in recent years. Market capitalisation in the US is held up primarily by the Magnificent 7 who are great outliers in the American stock market.
- Saline9515 8mo agoThere is a recency bias here. The Sp500 has outperformed the Stoxx600 every year for the last 5 years, except 2022. Cumulative returns are around 100% for the american index, vs 60% for the EU one.
- simongray 8mo ago
- seydor 8mo ago[flagged]
- jama211 8mo agoNot sure this is likely to be a successful angle but I understand the motivation behind it
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- bluescrn 8mo agoThere is no infinite scrolling. There’s a finite (albeit vast) amount of content to serve up.
- tefkah 8mo agoshut up man you know what they mean
- shevy-java 8mo agoPersonally I don't like infinite scrolling - but the EU also needs to stop wasting time and energy on trying to micro-manage everything. We already had that disaster where pop-ups fly out "do you want to accept those cookies". That is just a usability nightmare. People are forced into extensions, just to stop wasting their time here. Also, while I dislike infinite scrolling, why should the EU regulate the design of a website? I don't like this idea as a principle. This clearly comes from overpaid bureaucrats. I am not at all saying the EU should not become stronger, in the face of a very hostile and abusive USA - but the focus by these bureaucrats is wrong. Those micro-regulations will not get rid of US dominance in the software sector.
- seszett 8mo ago> why should the EU regulate the design of a website? There are laws regulating many things that could be considered "design", for example misleading packaging, mandatory information on some categories of ads, cigarette packaging, container sizes, accessibility requirements, etc. I would say regulating against addictive design (infinite scrolling is not banned per se, it just makes for a catchy headline) is well within what laws are meant for.
- sbszllr 8mo ago> We already had that disaster where pop-ups fly out "do you want to accept those cookies". That is just a usability nightmare. People are forced into extensions, just to stop wasting their time here. You’re perpetuating a gross misunderstanding of the cookie law. What it states is different from how the advertisers implement malicious compliance to bias people, like yourself. Websites that implement basic functional cookies do not need to display any popups. They’re permitted to do so. Any cookies that are essential to the functioning of the website within reason are permitted. In fact at no point a website should serve you a cookie popup unless you seek it out because analytics and advertising cookies are supposed to be opt in. So many websites do two things, serve you a popup that has everything enabled which is a clear violation; or a popup that has only functional cookies selected but the biggest highlighted button allows all of them. The law is fine. Malicious compliance is to blame. The EU has been slow to rectify it.
- vasco 8mo agoWhat about TV, how come the channels are always playing?? They should shut off after 30mins and I shouldn't be able to press down button to do zapping all night long. What about video games? We need session limits of 30mins, kids get too addicted to it. In fact we're going to put a timer in every bedroom so that if you have sex with your wife for too long we'll fine you because it can turn into a real addiction.
- rurban 8mo agoThey must rule against chess also then. It's clearly addictive design, harming the minds of innocent kids. Absurd
- breezykoi 8mo agoChess is healthy you get to go outside and meet people to play with, engage in your local club. Some online platforms make the thing addictive.
- seydor 8mo agomost people play online tho
- breezykoi 8mo agoI'm not sure about that and if it is so, it's very recent. Playing online isn't bad and addictive per say I would argue though. My comment was more in response to someone who seemed to associate chess to the main online platform which to me, is using addictive patterns to some level.
- throw_m239339 8mo agoThe only absurd thing here is you linking chess to billion dollar US corporation social media dark patterns.
- geysersam 8mo agoI feel we can't make laws against the subject of moral panic every generation. People have felt the same way about the activities of youths since forever. But ultimately it often turns out fine. Change can bring new problems, but it also brings positives that are hard to understand and even formulate, that's culture. Trying to be the arbiter of that is foolish. Is ticktock addictive because of it's design, or is it addictive because it brings thousands of people and experiences and emotions right to you? Probably both, but it's hard to separate one from the other. Apps are not opium, it's not as clear cut. Instead of micromanaging technology and culture they should make sure that society is kind, that there is slack in the system, that people don't have reason to want to flee their real lives, that those hurt by new technology get support. Of course truly malicious dark patterns and fraud should be punished. But that feels like a different category.
- dgellow 8mo ago> Is ticktock addictive because of it's design We have clear answers here. Yes it’s by design
- Aerbil313 8mo agoAnd social media is objectively and measurably harming children, see: https://jonathanhaidt.com/essays/ https://jonathanhaidt.com/essays/
- sharperguy 8mo agoTiktok will never have any competitors after this law comes into force. They will have the resources the implement the require changes, and the customer base will remain with them. Anyone starting a new service will have a tough time building something that jumps through all the hoops required by the EU, on top of the usual problems with network effects.
- piekvorst 8mo agoCensorship comes
- breezykoi 8mo agoI don't see censorship here could you enlighten me? It doesn't seem like they are trying to censor specific topics is it?
- piekvorst 8mo agoI didn’t want to say that a ban on infinite scrolling is a literal censorship. Sorry if I made that impression. I thought that if one thinks that it’s right to violate property rights, the form of the violation is only a matter of time. Today infinite scrolling, tomorrow unpopular opinions.
- swiftcoder 8mo agoI will 100% take this approach over the current EU tack of banning kids from accessing the internet. The problem wasn't ever the kids - it is the tech executives trying to profit from making the kids addicted to an advertising platform.
- betteryet 8mo agoThis stuff is important and can only happen at this level through legislation. If you don't do it this way to apply for everyone, then any good actor products will be crushed by profitmaxxing competitors. Or any good actor executives and workers will be pushed out by profitmaxxing shareholders. Legislators need to be careful to keep requirements tight and manageable, but it's better to limit negative externalities than outright ban something. Banning infinite scroll or any particular pattern is nonsense, but restricting addictive design (e.g. TikTok) and algorithm weaponization (e.g. TikTok) is very sensible.
- pnt12 8mo ago> then any good actor products will be crushed by profitmaxxing competitors This is what I always say, and defended by many economists: The free market needs legislation and enforcement! Especially public companies, which are especially adamant to maximize shareholder profits at any cost. Fee market only reacts in a positive way by default in matters that are clear to customers, eg pricing. But when the user isn't the customer, and the defects are not immediately sensed, winners will never do the good thing on their accord.
- xg15 8mo agoThe first part sounded good, the "every platform is different, we have to decide everything case-by-case" and the specific focus on TikTok less so IMO. Keep in mind that in Europe, TikTok is still run by the original owners with China connections - unlike the new "American TikTok" after the owner change in the US. The US legislature only seemed to discover its concern about addictive behavior when foreign actors or pro-palestinian content were involved, but had no problem with YouTube or Facebook doing the same stuff. I seriously hope it's different in the EU but wouldn't bet on it.
- 0dayz 8mo agoWhy wouldn't you? The DSA for instance has only been used against to western companies so far (doesn't mean Chinese companies are immune).
- arter45 8mo agoThe DSA list includes Chinese companies like Alibaba and TikTok Technology Limited (Bytedance's European subsidiary). Proceedings have been opened against both US and Chinese companies. You can check all of this here: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-designated-vlops-and-vloses https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-desig...
- creatonez 8mo agoBanning personalized recommendation algorithms altogether would do so much good. Feeds should be the same for everyone who has the same filters and subscriptions configured.
- gunapologist99 8mo agoHow would that do any good? And what good exactly would it do? I like my feed being personalized to who I am. I am unique. I'm not like anyone else.
- creatonez 8mo agoThen you can personalize it... manually, using deterministic filters. Ideally, the algorithm just wouldn't be black box anymore.
- degun 8mo agoI wholeheartedly agree with this.
- lpcvoid 8mo agoCommon EU win. Anything which curbs addiction to harmful social media services is a good thing.
- Havoc 8mo agoNot a terrible idea but to me this feels like it misses the point somewhat. The mechanics of the scrolling isn't what corners people psychologically
- strangescript 8mo ago[flagged]
- sambapa 8mo agoAnd I'm trying to bench press an elephant while Europe is succeeding to macromanage shitty companies.
- strangescript 8mo agoWhen you cannot win, you regulate the scoreboard. This is why Europe keeps getting lapped. They mistake control for competence. They cannot build platforms at scale, so they try to govern everyone else’s.
- neop1x 8mo agoThere is no TikTok in China. A local version Douyin enforces strict time restrictions for users under the age of 14. Daily usage limit: Users under 14 are limited to 40 minutes per day on the app. Access hours: The app is locked from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. for this age group. Enforcement: These restrictions are part of a mandatory "Youth Mode" that activates automatically for users under 14 who complete real-name authentication. Content focus: Youth Mode promotes educational content such as science experiments, museum tours, historical stories, and nature scenery. China also implemented time restrictions in games played by minors. They are well aware of negative impacts of those shi*y services.
- gunapologist99 8mo agoSwiping is addictive, but touching a button for the next page is not. One is arbitrarily banned by unelected bureaucrats. The other is fine. We blame social companies for failing to raise our children the way we think they should.
- kvdveer 8mo agoInfinitief scrolling is only mentioned in the title. The actual legislation focuses on addictive patterns of which infinite scroll is just one. The exact formulation will of course matter a lot, but it will not simply be banning infinite scroll, as that would be trivial to circumvent.
- gunapologist99 8mo agoFair point, but such regulatory ambiguity in the U.S. would likely be unconstitutionally vague: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness_doctrine#Unconstitutional_vagueness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness_doctrine#Unconstitut... The article reads as if the EC chose one or a few apps that they didn't like, and then wrote a regulation based on that app's key features.
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- janlucien 8mo ago[dead]
- CrzyLngPwd 8mo agoDid they do Meta services yet?
- oompydoompy74 8mo agoWhat happened to… personal responsibility? I hate dark patterns as much as the next person, but this will likely be as effective as the EU’s existing hand wringing (not).
- Culonavirus 8mo ago[flagged]
- MiddleEndian 8mo agoThey hate infinite scrolling because it's addictive. I hate infinite scrolling because it's annoying lol. The worst is when you scroll to the bottom of a news article and it just loads another and your scrollbar and your URL/browser history get fucked up.
- KolibriFly 8mo agoInfinite scroll itself isn't inherently harmful, it's a pagination mechanism. The harm comes from recommender systems tuned for engagement over wellbeing
- Aerbil313 8mo agoThis is the best piece of news I've seen in years. Jonathan Haidt's and others work is finally bearing fruit, assuming our society is not collectively too addicticed to get rid of these palm-sized slot machines.
- the_black_hand 8mo agoEuropean politicians got a big imagination lol. arent there real actual problems over their they should be fixing?