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Here's the actual statement from the European Comission: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_312 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/pressco

by jjcm 8mo ago

Here'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 ago
I wouldn't worry about that. You're ignoring politics, and what this actually is. If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago. They do not intend, not even remotely, to sabotage the profit machines that those companies are, they just want political weapons against the companies. The intention here is not to cure addiction, destroy profits, the intention is to use economic power to achieve political ends. The EU is built on this, it just didn't use to involve that many private companies. Like most famous EU laws, this is not a law for people. Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies and certainly not against EU states, who have repeatedly shown willingness to use AI against individuals, including face recognition (which gets a lot of negative attention and strict rules in the AI act, and EU member states get to ignore both directly, and they get to allow companies to ignore the rules), violate GPDR against their own citizens (e.g. use medical data in divorce cases, or even tax debt collection, and they let private companies ignore the rules for government purposes (e.g. hospitals can be forced report if you paid for treatment rather than pay alimony, rather than pay your back taxes)). The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google. These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies. Here's how the process works: someone "files a complaint", which is an email to the EU commission (not a complaint in the legal sense, no involvement of prosecutors, or judges, or any part of the justice system of any member state at all). Then an EU commissioner starts a negotiation process and rules on the case, usually imposing billions of euros in fines or providing publicly-backed loans (in the case of banks). The vast, vast, vast majority of these complaints are ignored or "settled in love" (French legal term: the idea is that some commission bureaucrat contacts the company and "arranges things", never involving any kind of enforcement mechanism). Then they become chairman of Goldman Sachs (oops, that just happened once, giving Goldman Sachs it's first communist chairman, yes really. In case you're wondering: Barrosso), or join Uber's and Salesforce's executive teams, paid through Panama paper companies. In other words: these laws are not at all about addictive design, and saving you from it, they're about going after specific companies for political means. Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, ... Ironically the EU is doing exactly what Trump did with tariffs. It's just that Trump is using a sawed-off shotgun where the EU commission is using a scalpel.
- Aarchive 8mo ago
  > Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies Of course the GDPR gives individuals rights, counter example: > The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google.
  - drnick1 8mo ago
    The GDPR is a joke. Such a law should have prevented companies from collecting data in the first place. All we got are annoying pop-ups that do nothing for our privacy.
- wasabi991011 8mo ago
  > If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago. Addictive designs and social media have changed a lot in the last 10 years, for one. But more importantly, there's no statute of limitation on making laws.
  - jimnotgym 8mo ago
    Also, 10 years ago the US government used its almost unlimited soft power over Europe to stop them regulating tech firms. The US doesn't have any soft power any more.
- foldr 8mo ago
  > These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies. In the UK at least, the GDPR was incorporated into UK law (where it remains, essentially unmodified, even after Brexit). So it is certainly not necessary to get the EU commission involved to enforce the law. In the UK, the ICO is the relevant regulator. There are other national regulators that enforce the GDPR, such as the French CNIL.
- jamestest2e4p6x 8mo ago
  One of the best replies on hackernews in years. Hear. Hear. The EU realized they can extort the US big tech. The EU will now just focus on laws and taxing (the war in Ukraine isn't their problem). And frankly, we should just ignore EU laws in the US.
golemiprague 8mo ago
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lukan 8mo ago
Assuming it was "just" about banning infinite scrolling. Not saying it is a good idea, but right now I cannot think of a legitimate use case where you would need it, unless your goal is engagement.
- Yiin 8mo ago
  I like to scroll my logs w/o pagination
  - lukan 8mo ago
    But they ain't infinite (I assume). Maybe long, but finite. That is a big difference as it still gives meaning to the scrollbar. Infinite scroll is endlessly adding new content so you simply cannot scroll to the bottom.
    - rolph 8mo ago
      if your systemlog is very active or very verbose, this will happen. i do get the idea though. abusive infinate scroll games/exploits, the compulsion to "finish" the feed.
    - c7b 8mo ago
      Technically, infinite scroll is of course finite, too. Unless it adds newly created content, but if you count that as infinite then logs can be infinite too. That's exactly why you don't write legislation to ban infinite scroll but 'addictive' design. Then it's ultimately up to the courts to decide, and they have the necessary leeway to judge that journalctl -f isn't addictive but TikTok is, even if they both use a version of infinite scroll.
    - nradov 8mo ago
      I dunno, have you tried? Maybe you just need to scroll faster.
- rolph 8mo ago
  a webgame or a document browser, e.g. side scrollers, topdown/bottom up scroller, continuous page view.
asdfman123 8mo ago
> My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent These laws are harsh... but, as much as I hate to say it, the impact social media has had on the world has been worse.
Llamamoe 8mo ago
> I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". Only allowing algorithmic feeds/recommendations on dedicated subpages to which the user has to navigate, and which are not allowed to integrate viewing the content would be an excellent start IMO.
- trhway 8mo ago
  to me it isn't about addictive design, it is about infinite scrolling jerking/straining my eyes (and thanks to that strain, it brings me back to reality, and i immediately disconnect from the content thus avoiding whatever addiction it could have sucked me in). That actually makes me think that any page containing addictive design elements should, similar to cigarette warning, carry a blinking, geocities style, header or footer with "WARNING: Ophthalmologist General and Narcologist General warn about dangers of addictive elements on this page".
coffeemug 8mo ago
I thought about it for only a few seconds, but here is one way to do it. Have users self-report an "addiction factor", then fine the company based on the aggregate score using a progressive scale. There is obviously a lot of detail to work out here-- which specific question do you ask users, who administers the survey, what function do you use scale the fines, etc. But this would force the companies to pay for the addiction externality without prescribing any specific feature changes they'd need to make.
- vanviegen 8mo ago
  And what about games that are actually just great fun? That would be easy to confuse with addictive, right?
  - zestyping 8mo ago
    The important indicator is "I spend more time on this than I myself want to." That applies equally well to games or anything else.
- zestyping 8mo ago
  I like this approach. Specifying the requirement in terms of measured impact is a good strategy because it motivates the app companies to do the research and find effective ways to address addiction, not just replace specific addictive UI patterns with different addictive UI patterns. Building measurement into the law also produces a metric for how well the law is working and helps inform improvements to the law.
sincerely 8mo ago
>The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes" This is not such an unusual thing in law, as much as us stem-brained people want legal systems to work like code. The most famous example is determining art vs pornography - "I know it when I see it" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)
- idiotsecant 8mo ago
  Which is of course the only way it makes sense to write laws, since code can't model infinite reality. Not, at least, until our machine overlords arrive.
  - wellf 8mo ago
    Not just reality. Adversaries trying to find loopholes. Luckily the git history of law goes back millenia so its had some time to adapt to humans.
- loeg 8mo ago
  "I know it when I see it" notoriously does not work in law, either. Instead, we have the Miller test.
  - sincerely 8mo ago
    Pt 1 of the Miller test is just "I know it when I see it" where "I" is a hypothetical random person
    - loeg 8mo ago
      Not really. It has slightly more well-defined criteria than that. Material must satisfy all three prongs to be considered obscene.
- rambambram 8mo ago
  This exactly. The post you reply to implies they have discovered something very novel, which they did not. I don't remember which ancient king it was, but they already tried thousands of years ago to make codes of law with every situation described in it. They failed. Just leave the final interpretation to the judge, and let the politicians make broad laws (in good faith, I hope). > as much as us stem-brained people want legal systems to work like code I see this a lot on HN, and it makes sense to think like this if you're a programmer. It's also a sign these programmers should open up their world view a bit more.
randomNumber7 8mo ago
Life is complex and beautiful and trying to regulate every possible outcome beforehand just makes it boring and depressing.
- andybak 8mo ago
  But how do you stop the boring and depressing - and abusive and manipulative parts? I'm not saying legislation is a good solution but you seem to be making a poetic plea that benefits the abusers.
  - randomNumber7 8mo ago
    I would say the core problem is that we lack a goal as society. If you only care about making money stuff like this happens regardless how many regulations you do.
  - saidinesh5 8mo ago
    >I'm not saying legislation is a good solution but you seem to be making a poetic plea that benefits the abusers. Only if you believe everyone else has no agency of their own. I think most people outgrow these things once they have something more interesting in their lives. Or once they're just bored. Back when this thing was new, everyone was posting pictures of every food item they try, every place they've been to etc.. that seems to slowly change to now where there are a lot more passive consumers compared to a few polished producers. If you're calling people delivering the content "abusers", what would you call people creating the content for the same machine?
    - andybak 8mo ago
      I don't believe people have no agency. But I do believe we overestimate our own agency. Or more importantly society is often structured on the assumption that we have more agency then we actually do.
      - fatherwavelet 8mo ago
Funes- 8mo ago
>"well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?" Hear me out: banning advertising on the Internet. It's the only way. It's the primordial domino tile. You knock that one over, every other tile follows suit. It's the mother of chain reactions. There would be no social media, no Internet as we know it. Imagine having TikTok, YouTube or X trying to survive on subscriptions alone in their current iterations. Impossible. They'd need to change their top priority from "maximizing engagement by fostering addictive behavior" to "offering a product with enough quality for someone to pay a fee in order to be able to use it".
- thfuran 8mo ago
  Not just the internet. Ban third-party advertising everywhere.
- thesmtsolver2 8mo ago
  How will you ban that without infringing on free speech. That is a thing in the US and a lot of countries outside the EU.
  - admadguy 8mo ago
    Outside of US free speech isn't the carte blanche it is stateside. There are guardrails, there are limitations pretty much everywhere else. Even in the US This militant application is fairly recent, post 1980s.
  - Funes- 8mo ago
    "Commercial speech" being protected by free speech laws anywhere is abhorrent. The advertising industry, in and of itself, seems abhorrent to me. It's one of the worst things humans have come up with, ever.
    - nickff 8mo ago
      Could one not categorize material published in a book, magazine, or on television as 'commercial speech', liable to restrictive licensing and censorship? This seems like a slippery slope which the USA is on the correct side of.
kawera 8mo ago
> having a few large companies to watch over is better than millions of small micro-niche ones Not necessarily. The consequences of a few bad micro-niche ones would be, well, micro.
1vuio0pswjnm7 8mo ago
"The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes"." Wikitionary (2026) Noun vibe (plural vibes) 1. (informal, originally New Age jargon, often in the plural) An atmosphere or aura felt to belong to a person, place or thing. [c. 1960s]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 8mo ago
  s/Wikit/Wikt
johannes1234321 8mo ago
> The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do. The issue is: If you do a precise wording of what you don't want a lawyer will go through it wird by word and the company finds a way to build something which violated the spirit, but not the exact wording. By being more generic in the wording they can reach such cases and future development with very little oversight for later corrections and courts can interpret the intention and current state of art. There are areas where law has to be precise (calculation of tax, criteria for criminal offenses, permissions for authorities, ...), but in many cases good laws are just as precise as needed and as flexible as possible.
- piva00 8mo ago
  I think it's a general misunderstanding of Americans about other law systems, the American way of codifying laws leaves a lot of loopholes (intentionally or unintentionally) due to it being a game to be played, the spirit of the law is second to the letter of the law. They expect precise and well-defined constraints in the letter of the law. Most European countries, and the EU as a legislative body, work with the premise of the spirit of the law. It is less precise and requires real world judgment to determine its boundaries but it can be much harder to side-step with technicalities and "gotchas" using loopholes in the letter of the law. It's just a different system, in my opinion it's less exploitable even though it's riskier. I prefer the spirit of the law to be defended instead of a whole system of gaming technicalities, really don't like the whole vibe of playing Munchkin the USA has in its legal system. Makes some good legal drama though.
SllX 8mo ago
> It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling, but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it. If the EU passes a law that seems general but start giving out specific examples ahead of time, they’re outlawing those specific examples. That’s how they work, even if you read the law closely and comply with the letter of the law. And they’ll take a percentage of your global revenue while people shout “malicious compliance” in the virtual streets if they don’t get their way.
sophrosyne42 8mo ago
No, this is far worse. This is just a license for bureaucrats to selectively choose winners or losers in social media. Once regulatory capture happens it merely turns into a special privilehe for pre-established businesses or a vehicle for one business to destroy another without outcompeting it
ArchieScrivener 8mo ago
In the USA at least, we need a nation specific intranet where everyone on it is verified citizens and businesses where the government cant buy your data but instead is tasked with protecting it, first and foremost, from itself. No more for profit nets. Time for civil digital infrastructure.
paulddraper 8mo ago
This is everything terrible about laws. Laws are supposed to be just that — predictable, enforceable, and obeyable rules, like the laws of physics or biology. Bad laws are vague and subjective. It may be impossible to remove all ambiguity, but lawmakers should strive to create clear and consistent laws for their citizens. Else it is not a nation of laws, but a domain of dictators.
sriku 8mo ago
"what specific laws ...?" If a company chooses a design and it can be proved through a subpoena of their communications that the design was intended and chosen for its addictive traits, even if there has been no evidence collected for the addictiveness, then the company (or person) can be deemed to have created a design in bad faith to society and penalized for it. (Well that's my attempt. I tried to apply "innocent until proven guilty" here.)
johnnyanmac 8mo ago
>My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent, but after thinking on it more I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". I'd make the algorithms transparent, then attack clearly unethical methods on a case by case basis. The big thing about facebook in the 2010's was how we weren't aware of how deep its tracking was. When revealed and delved into, it lead to GDRP. I feel that's the only precision method of keeping thins ethical.
hinkley 8mo ago
I’m trying to think of what use I’d make of infinite scroll that would specifically not be for addictive purposes. Maybe ticket backlogs?
- akersten 8mo ago
  I'm also trying to think of what use I'd make of sugar that would specifically not be for addictive purposes. Maybe keeping down medicine? Point being, the internet is the clutchable pearl de jour for easy political points. There's far more proven addictions and harm elsewhere, but those problems are boring and trodden and don't give a dopamine hit to regulate quite like the rancor that proposals like this drum up. Hey, aren't dopamine hits what they're trying to mediate in the first place?
paulcole 8mo ago
Laws should be strict!
Waterluvian 8mo ago
> The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do. “You know it when you see it.”
dakolli 8mo ago
fracture all the services, idc. 3 hrs a day on your phone is equivalent to 15 years of your life (accounting for a 16 hour waking day). I know people that do a solid 6... That's 30 years of their life scrolling, getting their brains completely fried by social media, and soon the infinite jest machine that is generative AI. Sorry, we don't let people fry their brains with drugs, well we at least try to introduce some societal friction in between users and the act of obtaining said drug.
roenxi 8mo ago
> My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent, but after thinking on it more I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". Everything I thought of would have some way or workaround that could be found... This doesn't solve the problem though - the enforcers still have to come up with a standard that they will enforce. A line has to be drawn, letting people move the line around based on how they feel today doesn't help. Making the standard uncertain just creates opportunities for corruption and unfairness. I haven't read the actual EU stance on the matter but what you are describing is a reliable way to end up in a soup of bad policy. There needs to be specific rulings on what people can and can't do. If you can't identify the problem, then you aren't in a position to solve it. Applies to most things. Regulation by vibe-checks is a great way to kill off growth and change - which the EU might think is clever, but the experience over the last few centuries has been that growth and change generally make things better. And what they actually seem to be doing here is demanding that sites spy on their users and understand their browsing habits which does seem like a terrible approach. I don't see how their demands in that statement align with the idea of the EU promoting digital privacy.
seydor 8mo ago
The wording is vague enough so they canm milk american/chinese companies for fines in a few months. EU being sad again
- deaux 8mo ago
  Those companies are incredibly welcome to stop doing business in the EU. Or abide by the laws, which truly isn't that difficult. The fact that no one at Meta lets their own children use their platforms on its own justifies these laws a hundred times over.
- enaaem 8mo ago
  America forced the sale of Tiktok and China doesn't even allow American social media companies. I would argue the EU is late to the game.
  - seydor 8mo ago
    you can't milk it if you ban it
KPGv2 8mo ago
In the US we often use a "reasonable person" standard to get around trying to write super precise descriptions of things. "don't do X where a reasonable person would think Y."
iamflimflam1 8mo ago
This is a classic play book by anyone who is anti regulation. Present it as something that appears to be ludicrous - eg “they are banning infinite scroll!” and rely on the fact that very few people will actually dig any deeper as you’ve already satisfied their need for a bit of rage.
grumbel 8mo ago
> "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?" Expand the GDPR "Right to data portability" to publicly published content for third parties, i.e. open up the protocols so you can have third party clients that themselves can decide how they want to present the data. And add a realtime requirement, since at the moment companies still circumvent the original rule with a "only once every 30 days" limit. Also add an <advertisment> HTML tag and HTTP header and force companies to declare all their ads in a proper machine readable way. The core problem with addictive design isn't the addictive design itself, but that it's often the only way to even access the data. And when it comes to communication services that benefit from network effects, that should simply not be allowed.
shevy-java 8mo ago
> but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it I still don't like that explanation at all. They imply that infinite scrolling is a sign of addictive design. How do they reach this conclusion? I can think of other ways that don't necessitate an addictive design. Some art form for instance. It may not be your cup of tea but that is art in general. I just don't see the logical connection. Not that I am against taxing these greedy and evil US corporations. But that argument by the EU is simply not sound. > Regardless of your take around whether this is EU overreach, I'm glad they're not implementing strict laws around what you can/can't do - there are valuable situations for these UI patterns, even if in combination they can create addictive experiences. But why would you be in favour then? Does this make sense? > but the regulated friction of major platforms (ie discord w/ ID laws) is on a collision course This will happen anyway. Trump and his TechBros leverage the US corporations for their wars. You only need to listen to Vance, or Rubio doing his latest dance. Sadly the european politicians are also too weak to do anything other than talk big.
lylid2016 8mo ago
[dead]
Someone 8mo ago
> They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do. The EU, in general, phrases laws and regulations more in terms of what they want to accomplish with them than in terms of what you can’t do. In contrast, common law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law), over time, more or less collects a list of all things you may not do.
svara 8mo ago
> The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". A very common tension in law everywhere. In the US you now have a 'major questions doctrine'. What the hell is a major question?
hyperman1 8mo ago
Isn't this the standard EU way? First, they publish a statement, declaring what they want to see. 'Deal with addictive design', in this case. We've had 'Deal with the zillion different connectors on cell phones' in the past. It is now up to the industry to do this, in whatever way they see fit. If this happens, no law will be written. However, if the industry doesn't deal with it adequately, Laws will Follow, and the industry will not like them. European companies know this pattern, and tend to get the hint. US companies tend to try and maximize what they can get while claiming there is no law against it, then go very pikachu-faced when the consequences hit them.
- paulddraper 8mo ago
  > claiming there is no law against it Is there a law against it?
  - ncruces 8mo ago
    No, that's the entire point. There's a strong hint that something's wrong, and that good corporate citizens would change course and try to become positive forces for the world. Or else.
    - paulddraper 8mo ago
      Ah is sounded like it was claimed but incorrect
bojan 8mo ago
For Discord the regulation is just an excuse to gather as much personal information as possible: https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/oh-good-discords-age-verification-rollout-has-ties-to-palantir-co-founder-and-panopticon-architect-peter-thiel/ https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/oh-good-discords-...
atoav 8mo ago
I am betting people would quickly ignore the spitit of the law and make it about "inginite scroll verboten" like with the GDPR where some people quickly moved to make it mean "you have to have a cookie banner!" No you don't have to have a cookie banner. The law means you need to ask for informed consent for each purpose where you collect and or transfer personal data from your users. So (1) if you don't collect the data, you don't have to ask for consent at all and (2) it doesn't matter too much if cookies are involved (or you use some other client side storage for tracking) and (3) you need to have their informed consent, meaning just having them click OK somewhere is absolutely useless unless you explained which data you collect for what purpose. Good luck doing that for your 300+ "partners". The ad industry and self-declared SEO experts have displayed an astounding inability to read the text of the law and follow its spirit. One could argue, probably on purpose. The same will happen here. This is clearly about giving users an way to sue against addictive designs and giving the EU a lever to protrct consumers from particularily bad actors. Now anybody who still profits from using these dark patterns will try to make it about one thing "infinite scroll verboten" and then proceed to violate the spirit of the law.
henrikschroder 8mo ago
I remember the GDPRpocalypse which had a lot of Americans up in arms because of the wildly different approach to lawmaking that the EU has. Everyone on the US side was screaming for a checklist they could implement, and assumed they would get maximum penalties if they didn't cross every t and dot every i. But it just doesn't work like that, EU laws are generally not very procedural, they are a lot more about intent. These findings are very much in line with that, they bring up a feature, a checkbox, a specific thing TikTok did to pay lip-service to protect minors, and then they're simply saying that it doesn't appear to work. So it doesn't matter that TikTok checked the box and crossed the t.
- anomaly_ 8mo ago
  GDPR is in the process of being unwound by the EU as it has been an unmitigated disaster.
astrobe_ 8mo ago
France is considering a ban on certain social media for minors, and parental consent on all social media for minors under 15, pretty much like Australia. They had work around EU laws that prevented them to force service providers to do things, the trick they used is to make it illegal for those services to let minors register on the platform, because EU law acknowledge that local laws on forbidden content apply. If this law passes and they "blacklist" some of these design-for-addiction (sorry, "engagement") platforms, I believe it should send a strong signal for adults as well. Most adults are pretty much aware that these platforms are bad for everyone; according to some polls, the public opinion is unambiguously in favor of these laws.
bjackman 8mo ago
The thing is, I doubt anyone at TikTok ever says "this design choice is good because it's addictive". Almost certainly, their leadership gives them metrics to target, like watch time, and they just hypyothesise and experiment on changes with those metrics in mind. Almost certainly the design of TikTok is almost entirely emergent. Just like the scientific method is "revealing" truth I think TikTok is just "revealing" the design that maximises its target metrics. So what we have is a machine designed to optimise for something adjacent to addictiveness, and then some rules saying "you can't design for addictiveness"... What happens when an underspecified vibe rule clashes with a billion dollar optimisation machine? Surely the machine wins every time? The machine is already defeating every ruleset that it's ever come up against. Feels like the only way regulation could achieve anything is if it said "you can't build a billion dollar optimisation machine at all".
danpalmer 8mo ago
This is the EU digital strategy for legislation: vague but reasonable, so that you have to comply with the spirit of the law not the letter of it. They haven't nailed it every time, but on the whole it's a good approach. It's hard on companies, but rightly so.
direwolf20 8mo ago
It seems like most EU tech rules are about vibes. Like the well–known GDPR, which doesn't say thou shalt have a cookie popup, but says users shalt notify users and gain their consent for all unnecessary processing of personal data. Websites were the ones that chose to spitefully use cookie popups.
InsideOutSanta 8mo ago
Many laws work like that. They don't have very precise definitions of things, but instead depend on what an average, reasonable person would think. An example of this is contract law. There is no clear definition of what a legal contract must look like. Instead, a contract's validity can depend on whether an average, prudent person would have entered into it in similar circumstances.
RamblingCTO 8mo ago
Breaking infinite scrolling on these apps is one good step, but for me it's something else that would be more important. I'm recovering from a surgery and can't do much besides existing. So I'd like to scroll to keep me occupied and numb the pain in my face. But instagram tries to shove content down my throat that I don't want to see. It's always only a matter of time until I see THOT/incel content. No matter how often I click "not interested", they try again and again. If it's not playing genders out against each other, it's politics. It's brain rot. I don't wanna see that. I have interests and they know what they are. But no, they show me this garbage. The algorithms need to be the second thing we need to regulate imho
StopDisinfo910 8mo ago
> The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". That's not really accurate. The EU actually legislated in a way which is very typical of how countries regulate things which are now to carry hard to characterized and varied risks. Companies have to carry out a risk assessment and take appropriate preventive actions when they find something. The EU audits the assessment. That's how finance has been regulated for ages. It's all fairly standard I fear.
luplex 8mo ago
What will probably happen is that someone will develop an industry standard for "non-addictive design" and go around certifying products or product development practices. Like for example, they might disallow optimizing time spent, or they might require more transparency or customizability for your recommendation algorithm.
braiamp 8mo ago
> "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?" You can't. You don't need to specify how to comply with the law, just that generally a goal must be met. That's good lawmaking there, since it's flexible enough to catch all future potential creatives way to break it. I remember someone comment about how working at MSFT as a compliance officer, dude was going around saying that it's not the letter of the law that must be followed, but the spirit of thereof. They rolled over him and released the product nonetheless. Almost immediately came the EU investigation and that crap had to be reversed an put in accordance to what the stated goal of the law is.
KolibriFly 8mo ago
The Commission seems to be saying: not without guardrails
Valakas_ 8mo ago
Dude, if you have a page with 10 000 elements, it's practically as if it was infinite. Obviously addiction is a spectrum, but we can and should have some boundary that is 'good enough'. If a computer screen is usually 20-40cm, it can simply be defined on allowing max 2-4 screens for laptops and 2-4 screens for mobile phones. Of course the problem in the future might be proving whether something is addictive. But that's another story, I think the intention is good.

by jjcm 8mo ago

spwa4 8mo ago

I wouldn't worry about that. You're ignoring politics, and what this actually is. If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago. They do not intend, not even remotely, to sabotage the profit machines that those companies are, they just want political weapons against the companies. The intention here is not to cure addiction, destroy profits, the intention is to use economic power to achieve political ends. The EU is built on this, it just didn't use to involve that many private companies. Like most famous EU laws, this is not a law for people. Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies and certainly not against EU states, who have repeatedly shown willingness to use AI against individuals, including face recognition (which gets a lot of negative attention and strict rules in the AI act, and EU member states get to ignore both directly, and they get to allow companies to ignore the rules), violate GPDR against their own citizens (e.g. use medical data in divorce cases, or even tax debt collection, and they let private companies ignore the rules for government purposes (e.g. hospitals can be forced report if you paid for treatment rather than pay alimony, rather than pay your back taxes)). The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google. These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies. Here's how the process works: someone "files a complaint", which is an email to the EU commission (not a complaint in the legal sense, no involvement of prosecutors, or judges, or any part of the justice system of any member state at all). Then an EU commissioner starts a negotiation process and rules on the case, usually imposing billions of euros in fines or providing publicly-backed loans (in the case of banks). The vast, vast, vast majority of these complaints are ignored or "settled in love" (French legal term: the idea is that some commission bureaucrat contacts the company and "arranges things", never involving any kind of enforcement mechanism). Then they become chairman of Goldman Sachs (oops, that just happened once, giving Goldman Sachs it's first communist chairman, yes really. In case you're wondering: Barrosso), or join Uber's and Salesforce's executive teams, paid through Panama paper companies. In other words: these laws are not at all about addictive design, and saving you from it, they're about going after specific companies for political means. Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, ... Ironically the EU is doing exactly what Trump did with tariffs. It's just that Trump is using a sawed-off shotgun where the EU commission is using a scalpel.

Aarchive 8mo ago
> Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies Of course the GDPR gives individuals rights, counter example: > The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google.
- drnick1 8mo ago
  The GDPR is a joke. Such a law should have prevented companies from collecting data in the first place. All we got are annoying pop-ups that do nothing for our privacy.
wasabi991011 8mo ago
> If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago. Addictive designs and social media have changed a lot in the last 10 years, for one. But more importantly, there's no statute of limitation on making laws.
- jimnotgym 8mo ago
  Also, 10 years ago the US government used its almost unlimited soft power over Europe to stop them regulating tech firms. The US doesn't have any soft power any more.
foldr 8mo ago
> These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies. In the UK at least, the GDPR was incorporated into UK law (where it remains, essentially unmodified, even after Brexit). So it is certainly not necessary to get the EU commission involved to enforce the law. In the UK, the ICO is the relevant regulator. There are other national regulators that enforce the GDPR, such as the French CNIL.
jamestest2e4p6x 8mo ago
One of the best replies on hackernews in years. Hear. Hear. The EU realized they can extort the US big tech. The EU will now just focus on laws and taxing (the war in Ukraine isn't their problem). And frankly, we should just ignore EU laws in the US.

golemiprague 8mo ago

[dead]

lukan 8mo ago

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

Yiin 8mo ago
I like to scroll my logs w/o pagination
- lukan 8mo ago
  But they ain't infinite (I assume). Maybe long, but finite. That is a big difference as it still gives meaning to the scrollbar. Infinite scroll is endlessly adding new content so you simply cannot scroll to the bottom.
  - rolph 8mo ago
    if your systemlog is very active or very verbose, this will happen. i do get the idea though. abusive infinate scroll games/exploits, the compulsion to "finish" the feed.
  - c7b 8mo ago
    Technically, infinite scroll is of course finite, too. Unless it adds newly created content, but if you count that as infinite then logs can be infinite too. That's exactly why you don't write legislation to ban infinite scroll but 'addictive' design. Then it's ultimately up to the courts to decide, and they have the necessary leeway to judge that journalctl -f isn't addictive but TikTok is, even if they both use a version of infinite scroll.
  - nradov 8mo ago
    I dunno, have you tried? Maybe you just need to scroll faster.
rolph 8mo ago
a webgame or a document browser, e.g. side scrollers, topdown/bottom up scroller, continuous page view.

asdfman123 8mo ago

> My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent These laws are harsh... but, as much as I hate to say it, the impact social media has had on the world has been worse.

Llamamoe 8mo ago

> I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". Only allowing algorithmic feeds/recommendations on dedicated subpages to which the user has to navigate, and which are not allowed to integrate viewing the content would be an excellent start IMO.

trhway 8mo ago
to me it isn't about addictive design, it is about infinite scrolling jerking/straining my eyes (and thanks to that strain, it brings me back to reality, and i immediately disconnect from the content thus avoiding whatever addiction it could have sucked me in). That actually makes me think that any page containing addictive design elements should, similar to cigarette warning, carry a blinking, geocities style, header or footer with "WARNING: Ophthalmologist General and Narcologist General warn about dangers of addictive elements on this page".

coffeemug 8mo ago

I thought about it for only a few seconds, but here is one way to do it. Have users self-report an "addiction factor", then fine the company based on the aggregate score using a progressive scale. There is obviously a lot of detail to work out here-- which specific question do you ask users, who administers the survey, what function do you use scale the fines, etc. But this would force the companies to pay for the addiction externality without prescribing any specific feature changes they'd need to make.

vanviegen 8mo ago
And what about games that are actually just great fun? That would be easy to confuse with addictive, right?
- zestyping 8mo ago
  The important indicator is "I spend more time on this than I myself want to." That applies equally well to games or anything else.
zestyping 8mo ago
I like this approach. Specifying the requirement in terms of measured impact is a good strategy because it motivates the app companies to do the research and find effective ways to address addiction, not just replace specific addictive UI patterns with different addictive UI patterns. Building measurement into the law also produces a metric for how well the law is working and helps inform improvements to the law.

sincerely 8mo ago

>The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes" This is not such an unusual thing in law, as much as us stem-brained people want legal systems to work like code. The most famous example is determining art vs pornography - "I know it when I see it" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)

idiotsecant 8mo ago
Which is of course the only way it makes sense to write laws, since code can't model infinite reality. Not, at least, until our machine overlords arrive.
- wellf 8mo ago
  Not just reality. Adversaries trying to find loopholes. Luckily the git history of law goes back millenia so its had some time to adapt to humans.
loeg 8mo ago
"I know it when I see it" notoriously does not work in law, either. Instead, we have the Miller test.
- sincerely 8mo ago
  Pt 1 of the Miller test is just "I know it when I see it" where "I" is a hypothetical random person
  - loeg 8mo ago
    Not really. It has slightly more well-defined criteria than that. Material must satisfy all three prongs to be considered obscene.
rambambram 8mo ago
This exactly. The post you reply to implies they have discovered something very novel, which they did not. I don't remember which ancient king it was, but they already tried thousands of years ago to make codes of law with every situation described in it. They failed. Just leave the final interpretation to the judge, and let the politicians make broad laws (in good faith, I hope). > as much as us stem-brained people want legal systems to work like code I see this a lot on HN, and it makes sense to think like this if you're a programmer. It's also a sign these programmers should open up their world view a bit more.

randomNumber7 8mo ago

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

andybak 8mo ago
But how do you stop the boring and depressing - and abusive and manipulative parts? I'm not saying legislation is a good solution but you seem to be making a poetic plea that benefits the abusers.
- randomNumber7 8mo ago
  I would say the core problem is that we lack a goal as society. If you only care about making money stuff like this happens regardless how many regulations you do.
- saidinesh5 8mo ago
  >I'm not saying legislation is a good solution but you seem to be making a poetic plea that benefits the abusers. Only if you believe everyone else has no agency of their own. I think most people outgrow these things once they have something more interesting in their lives. Or once they're just bored. Back when this thing was new, everyone was posting pictures of every food item they try, every place they've been to etc.. that seems to slowly change to now where there are a lot more passive consumers compared to a few polished producers. If you're calling people delivering the content "abusers", what would you call people creating the content for the same machine?
  - andybak 8mo ago
    I don't believe people have no agency. But I do believe we overestimate our own agency. Or more importantly society is often structured on the assumption that we have more agency then we actually do.
    - fatherwavelet 8mo ago

Funes- 8mo ago

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

thfuran 8mo ago
Not just the internet. Ban third-party advertising everywhere.
thesmtsolver2 8mo ago
How will you ban that without infringing on free speech. That is a thing in the US and a lot of countries outside the EU.
- admadguy 8mo ago
  Outside of US free speech isn't the carte blanche it is stateside. There are guardrails, there are limitations pretty much everywhere else. Even in the US This militant application is fairly recent, post 1980s.
- Funes- 8mo ago
  "Commercial speech" being protected by free speech laws anywhere is abhorrent. The advertising industry, in and of itself, seems abhorrent to me. It's one of the worst things humans have come up with, ever.
  - nickff 8mo ago
    Could one not categorize material published in a book, magazine, or on television as 'commercial speech', liable to restrictive licensing and censorship? This seems like a slippery slope which the USA is on the correct side of.

kawera 8mo ago

> having a few large companies to watch over is better than millions of small micro-niche ones Not necessarily. The consequences of a few bad micro-niche ones would be, well, micro.

1vuio0pswjnm7 8mo ago

"The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes"." Wikitionary (2026) Noun vibe (plural vibes) 1. (informal, originally New Age jargon, often in the plural) An atmosphere or aura felt to belong to a person, place or thing. [c. 1960s]

1vuio0pswjnm7 8mo ago
s/Wikit/Wikt

johannes1234321 8mo ago

> The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do. The issue is: If you do a precise wording of what you don't want a lawyer will go through it wird by word and the company finds a way to build something which violated the spirit, but not the exact wording. By being more generic in the wording they can reach such cases and future development with very little oversight for later corrections and courts can interpret the intention and current state of art. There are areas where law has to be precise (calculation of tax, criteria for criminal offenses, permissions for authorities, ...), but in many cases good laws are just as precise as needed and as flexible as possible.

piva00 8mo ago
I think it's a general misunderstanding of Americans about other law systems, the American way of codifying laws leaves a lot of loopholes (intentionally or unintentionally) due to it being a game to be played, the spirit of the law is second to the letter of the law. They expect precise and well-defined constraints in the letter of the law. Most European countries, and the EU as a legislative body, work with the premise of the spirit of the law. It is less precise and requires real world judgment to determine its boundaries but it can be much harder to side-step with technicalities and "gotchas" using loopholes in the letter of the law. It's just a different system, in my opinion it's less exploitable even though it's riskier. I prefer the spirit of the law to be defended instead of a whole system of gaming technicalities, really don't like the whole vibe of playing Munchkin the USA has in its legal system. Makes some good legal drama though.

SllX 8mo ago

> It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling, but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it. If the EU passes a law that seems general but start giving out specific examples ahead of time, they’re outlawing those specific examples. That’s how they work, even if you read the law closely and comply with the letter of the law. And they’ll take a percentage of your global revenue while people shout “malicious compliance” in the virtual streets if they don’t get their way.

sophrosyne42 8mo ago

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

ArchieScrivener 8mo ago

In the USA at least, we need a nation specific intranet where everyone on it is verified citizens and businesses where the government cant buy your data but instead is tasked with protecting it, first and foremost, from itself. No more for profit nets. Time for civil digital infrastructure.

paulddraper 8mo ago

This is everything terrible about laws. Laws are supposed to be just that — predictable, enforceable, and obeyable rules, like the laws of physics or biology. Bad laws are vague and subjective. It may be impossible to remove all ambiguity, but lawmakers should strive to create clear and consistent laws for their citizens. Else it is not a nation of laws, but a domain of dictators.

sriku 8mo ago

"what specific laws ...?" If a company chooses a design and it can be proved through a subpoena of their communications that the design was intended and chosen for its addictive traits, even if there has been no evidence collected for the addictiveness, then the company (or person) can be deemed to have created a design in bad faith to society and penalized for it. (Well that's my attempt. I tried to apply "innocent until proven guilty" here.)

johnnyanmac 8mo ago

>My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent, but after thinking on it more I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". I'd make the algorithms transparent, then attack clearly unethical methods on a case by case basis. The big thing about facebook in the 2010's was how we weren't aware of how deep its tracking was. When revealed and delved into, it lead to GDRP. I feel that's the only precision method of keeping thins ethical.

hinkley 8mo ago

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

akersten 8mo ago
I'm also trying to think of what use I'd make of sugar that would specifically not be for addictive purposes. Maybe keeping down medicine? Point being, the internet is the clutchable pearl de jour for easy political points. There's far more proven addictions and harm elsewhere, but those problems are boring and trodden and don't give a dopamine hit to regulate quite like the rancor that proposals like this drum up. Hey, aren't dopamine hits what they're trying to mediate in the first place?

paulcole 8mo ago

Laws should be strict!

Waterluvian 8mo ago

dakolli 8mo ago

fracture all the services, idc. 3 hrs a day on your phone is equivalent to 15 years of your life (accounting for a 16 hour waking day). I know people that do a solid 6... That's 30 years of their life scrolling, getting their brains completely fried by social media, and soon the infinite jest machine that is generative AI. Sorry, we don't let people fry their brains with drugs, well we at least try to introduce some societal friction in between users and the act of obtaining said drug.

roenxi 8mo ago

> My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent, but after thinking on it more I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". Everything I thought of would have some way or workaround that could be found... This doesn't solve the problem though - the enforcers still have to come up with a standard that they will enforce. A line has to be drawn, letting people move the line around based on how they feel today doesn't help. Making the standard uncertain just creates opportunities for corruption and unfairness. I haven't read the actual EU stance on the matter but what you are describing is a reliable way to end up in a soup of bad policy. There needs to be specific rulings on what people can and can't do. If you can't identify the problem, then you aren't in a position to solve it. Applies to most things. Regulation by vibe-checks is a great way to kill off growth and change - which the EU might think is clever, but the experience over the last few centuries has been that growth and change generally make things better. And what they actually seem to be doing here is demanding that sites spy on their users and understand their browsing habits which does seem like a terrible approach. I don't see how their demands in that statement align with the idea of the EU promoting digital privacy.

seydor 8mo ago

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

deaux 8mo ago
Those companies are incredibly welcome to stop doing business in the EU. Or abide by the laws, which truly isn't that difficult. The fact that no one at Meta lets their own children use their platforms on its own justifies these laws a hundred times over.
enaaem 8mo ago
America forced the sale of Tiktok and China doesn't even allow American social media companies. I would argue the EU is late to the game.
- seydor 8mo ago
  you can't milk it if you ban it

KPGv2 8mo ago

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

iamflimflam1 8mo ago

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

grumbel 8mo ago

> "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?" Expand the GDPR "Right to data portability" to publicly published content for third parties, i.e. open up the protocols so you can have third party clients that themselves can decide how they want to present the data. And add a realtime requirement, since at the moment companies still circumvent the original rule with a "only once every 30 days" limit. Also add an <advertisment> HTML tag and HTTP header and force companies to declare all their ads in a proper machine readable way. The core problem with addictive design isn't the addictive design itself, but that it's often the only way to even access the data. And when it comes to communication services that benefit from network effects, that should simply not be allowed.

shevy-java 8mo ago

> but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it I still don't like that explanation at all. They imply that infinite scrolling is a sign of addictive design. How do they reach this conclusion? I can think of other ways that don't necessitate an addictive design. Some art form for instance. It may not be your cup of tea but that is art in general. I just don't see the logical connection. Not that I am against taxing these greedy and evil US corporations. But that argument by the EU is simply not sound. > Regardless of your take around whether this is EU overreach, I'm glad they're not implementing strict laws around what you can/can't do - there are valuable situations for these UI patterns, even if in combination they can create addictive experiences. But why would you be in favour then? Does this make sense? > but the regulated friction of major platforms (ie discord w/ ID laws) is on a collision course This will happen anyway. Trump and his TechBros leverage the US corporations for their wars. You only need to listen to Vance, or Rubio doing his latest dance. Sadly the european politicians are also too weak to do anything other than talk big.

lylid2016 8mo ago

[dead]

Someone 8mo ago

> They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do. The EU, in general, phrases laws and regulations more in terms of what they want to accomplish with them than in terms of what you can’t do. In contrast, common law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law), over time, more or less collects a list of all things you may not do.

svara 8mo ago

> The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". A very common tension in law everywhere. In the US you now have a 'major questions doctrine'. What the hell is a major question?

hyperman1 8mo ago

Isn't this the standard EU way? First, they publish a statement, declaring what they want to see. 'Deal with addictive design', in this case. We've had 'Deal with the zillion different connectors on cell phones' in the past. It is now up to the industry to do this, in whatever way they see fit. If this happens, no law will be written. However, if the industry doesn't deal with it adequately, Laws will Follow, and the industry will not like them. European companies know this pattern, and tend to get the hint. US companies tend to try and maximize what they can get while claiming there is no law against it, then go very pikachu-faced when the consequences hit them.

paulddraper 8mo ago
> claiming there is no law against it Is there a law against it?
- ncruces 8mo ago
  No, that's the entire point. There's a strong hint that something's wrong, and that good corporate citizens would change course and try to become positive forces for the world. Or else.
  - paulddraper 8mo ago
    Ah is sounded like it was claimed but incorrect

bojan 8mo ago

For Discord the regulation is just an excuse to gather as much personal information as possible: https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/oh-good-discords-age-verification-rollout-has-ties-to-palantir-co-founder-and-panopticon-architect-peter-thiel/ https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/oh-good-discords-...

atoav 8mo ago

I am betting people would quickly ignore the spitit of the law and make it about "inginite scroll verboten" like with the GDPR where some people quickly moved to make it mean "you have to have a cookie banner!" No you don't have to have a cookie banner. The law means you need to ask for informed consent for each purpose where you collect and or transfer personal data from your users. So (1) if you don't collect the data, you don't have to ask for consent at all and (2) it doesn't matter too much if cookies are involved (or you use some other client side storage for tracking) and (3) you need to have their informed consent, meaning just having them click OK somewhere is absolutely useless unless you explained which data you collect for what purpose. Good luck doing that for your 300+ "partners". The ad industry and self-declared SEO experts have displayed an astounding inability to read the text of the law and follow its spirit. One could argue, probably on purpose. The same will happen here. This is clearly about giving users an way to sue against addictive designs and giving the EU a lever to protrct consumers from particularily bad actors. Now anybody who still profits from using these dark patterns will try to make it about one thing "infinite scroll verboten" and then proceed to violate the spirit of the law.

henrikschroder 8mo ago

I remember the GDPRpocalypse which had a lot of Americans up in arms because of the wildly different approach to lawmaking that the EU has. Everyone on the US side was screaming for a checklist they could implement, and assumed they would get maximum penalties if they didn't cross every t and dot every i. But it just doesn't work like that, EU laws are generally not very procedural, they are a lot more about intent. These findings are very much in line with that, they bring up a feature, a checkbox, a specific thing TikTok did to pay lip-service to protect minors, and then they're simply saying that it doesn't appear to work. So it doesn't matter that TikTok checked the box and crossed the t.

anomaly_ 8mo ago
GDPR is in the process of being unwound by the EU as it has been an unmitigated disaster.

astrobe_ 8mo ago

France is considering a ban on certain social media for minors, and parental consent on all social media for minors under 15, pretty much like Australia. They had work around EU laws that prevented them to force service providers to do things, the trick they used is to make it illegal for those services to let minors register on the platform, because EU law acknowledge that local laws on forbidden content apply. If this law passes and they "blacklist" some of these design-for-addiction (sorry, "engagement") platforms, I believe it should send a strong signal for adults as well. Most adults are pretty much aware that these platforms are bad for everyone; according to some polls, the public opinion is unambiguously in favor of these laws.

bjackman 8mo ago

The thing is, I doubt anyone at TikTok ever says "this design choice is good because it's addictive". Almost certainly, their leadership gives them metrics to target, like watch time, and they just hypyothesise and experiment on changes with those metrics in mind. Almost certainly the design of TikTok is almost entirely emergent. Just like the scientific method is "revealing" truth I think TikTok is just "revealing" the design that maximises its target metrics. So what we have is a machine designed to optimise for something adjacent to addictiveness, and then some rules saying "you can't design for addictiveness"... What happens when an underspecified vibe rule clashes with a billion dollar optimisation machine? Surely the machine wins every time? The machine is already defeating every ruleset that it's ever come up against. Feels like the only way regulation could achieve anything is if it said "you can't build a billion dollar optimisation machine at all".

danpalmer 8mo ago

This is the EU digital strategy for legislation: vague but reasonable, so that you have to comply with the spirit of the law not the letter of it. They haven't nailed it every time, but on the whole it's a good approach. It's hard on companies, but rightly so.

direwolf20 8mo ago

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

InsideOutSanta 8mo ago

Many laws work like that. They don't have very precise definitions of things, but instead depend on what an average, reasonable person would think. An example of this is contract law. There is no clear definition of what a legal contract must look like. Instead, a contract's validity can depend on whether an average, prudent person would have entered into it in similar circumstances.

RamblingCTO 8mo ago

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

StopDisinfo910 8mo ago

> The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". That's not really accurate. The EU actually legislated in a way which is very typical of how countries regulate things which are now to carry hard to characterized and varied risks. Companies have to carry out a risk assessment and take appropriate preventive actions when they find something. The EU audits the assessment. That's how finance has been regulated for ages. It's all fairly standard I fear.

luplex 8mo ago

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

braiamp 8mo ago

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

KolibriFly 8mo ago

The Commission seems to be saying: not without guardrails

Valakas_ 8mo ago

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