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This would include everything from my Spotify recommending new music that I like to my Netflix showing me similar shows. I'm a responsible adult. I want those t

This would include everything from my Spotify recommending new music that I like to my Netflix showing me similar shows. I'm a responsible adult. I want those things. I make use of them. They make my life better when I'm trying to listen to some music while I work on something or when I have exactly 2 hours of TV watching time in a week and don't want to waste it finding a new show. I do not want regulations coming along and making all of my products worse due to heavy-handed regulation. Practically, it won't happen. These thought experiments are exercises where people imagine the websites they don't want other people using getting worse, while failing to imagine any way that it might negatively impact any site they use. Usually when I press the topic it turns into a game of whack-a-mole where the other people come up with more and more exceptions and specifics to these theoretical laws to reveal what they really have in mind, which is targeting some small handful of social media sites that they don't want other people to use. We see this with the age restriction laws where the comments come out in full force demanding ID checks and huge fines for Facebook and TikTok, but there are meltdowns whenever people realize that the regulations would be coming for their Discords, YouTube viewing, and Reddit access too. I halfway imagine this whole exercise ending with some big show about warnings, where users who join TikTok or other websites have to click a big warning sign that says they might be addictive. If some countries start instituting laws against recommendations or personalize recommendations, the popularity of VPNs will continue to rise so people can simply use the products like they want instead of having to deal with nerfed versions to satisfy some country's laws.

dudefeliciano 2mo ago
Ok then at the very least allow for a toggle to turn those algorithmic “recommendations” on and off
Groxx 2mo ago
Seems like you don't have to rule it out completely? "You might also like this show" is rather different than YouTube's "OMFG SHORTS WATCH THEM NOW" experience. Even if the line is fuzzy, I think many can agree some things are closer than others, and that's enough for some laws (there are plenty of other not-perfectly-testable laws out there as counterexamples).
- ben_w 2mo ago
  While this is true in principle, my understanding is that the failure to carefully deliniate ahead of time, was why prohibition in the USA ended up being "all alcohol" rather than "just liquor".
- Aurornis 2mo ago
  > Seems like you don't have to rule it out completely? This is what I was talking about in the second half of my comment: Every time I bring up the fact that these proposals would be overbearing, people start brainstorming infinite carve outs and exceptions that would exempt the products they use, but harm the products they don’t want other people using. If these laws hit the books they’re not going to be neatly shaped to avoid the things you like and only impact the things you don’t.
  - Groxx 2mo ago
    That seems inevitable for laws that try to address private behavior, yes. It'll waffle around and strike randomly as it gets tested more and more in court to narrow the definition, and that gradually causes a chilling effect around the whole concept. The only real consideration worth having is "will things be better after", not "will my life be unchanged".
dotancohen 2mo ago
> when I have exactly 2 hours of TV watching time in a week and don't want to waste it finding a new show. Please please somebody explain this to me. I see it often, but fail to understand it. The television is a tool for watching shows. The show is ostensibly the draw, and the television is the vehicle for watching it, no? So why do some people (lots of people actually) feel compelled to sit in front of the television to watch something? If there is no show that one wants to watch, why the compulsion to sit in front of the television? I've spent countless nights in front of Netscape Navigator surfing from site to site. I'm fully aware how compelling the device-content system can be. But it's always been the content side, not the device side, that was compelling.
- 2muchcoffeeman 2mo ago
  GP is addicted and can’t see it.
  - Aurornis 2mo ago
    2 hours of TV per week is addicted?
- josephg 2mo ago
  Sometimes the desire isn't to watch some specific show. It is to have the experience of sitting on the couch and watching something good on tv. This is why people channel surf, or scroll through netflix's collection. You want to have the experience of watching something. The goal is to be stimulated, to cure your momentary boredom. I have the same experience with youtube, reddit and HN. I don't really know what I expect to see when I open the HN front page. If I knew, I'd navigate to that site directly. But I know I'll see something on HN. Maybe something that catches my eye. Netflix is just the same. "I'm in the mood to watch a documentary. Let's see what they've got."
  - dotancohen 2mo ago
    > "I'm in the mood to watch a documentary. Let's see what they've got." Thank you, this is a sentiment I can understand.
DonHopkins 2mo ago
Cigarette packages have disgusting photos of carcenogenic lung autopsies to discourage you from smoking them, so Facebook and TikTok etc should have similar disgusting photos and vidoes of what happens to you if you use their product, that you have to watch every day before using it. Sleep-deprived teenager autopsy: a teenager with enormous purple eye bags, phone surgically fused to their hand, lying face-down on a school desk at 3 AM. Body-image filter ward: rows of teenage faces grotesquely stretched, pinched, inflated, beautified and looksmaxed until everyone looks like the same embalmed Instagram mannequin. Doomscroll thumb: a gigantic swollen thumb with the fingerprint worn completely smooth from infinite scrolling. The tendon is labeled "ENGAGEMENT." Facebook scam victim: an elderly person's wallet dissected on an autopsy table -- completely hollow, with a Facebook ad where the money used to be. Algorithmic stomach contents: an autopsy tray containing "suggested for you": rage bait, diet videos, conspiracy sludge, influencer ads, and one photo from somebody you actually know. Predator warning: a cute Instagram DM screen shown as an anglerfish -- friendly profile photo as the glowing lure, enormous teeth hiding behind it. Facebook Hospital: a free to play educational game where you have to spend virtual currency for cures to the ailments Facebook gave you, like Bloaty Head from reading all the AI generated engagement porn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M
- blackoil 2mo ago
  Images on cigarette packages are of real patient and real impact and still smokers ignore it. A fake, stylized hypothetical image will have much lower impact.
  - DonHopkins 2mo ago
    Are you saying that fake, stylized hypothetical image will have much lower impact reducing the impact of all the fake, stylized hypothetical images in Facebook? Maybe they should insert disgusting slices of actual carcinogenic lung tissue into boxes of cigarettes, since images of them aren't impactful enough. That would be harder for smokers to ignore, and it would make the cigarettes harder to light, worse smelling and tasting.
globular-toast 2mo ago
There's a big difference between a completely optional "recommendations" area and a loop. If the recommended stuff happens automatically without you having to look for it, then it's a loop.
- frabcus 2mo ago
  Yep - some emotional core of my being (not rational) hates ML recommendations. I'm a happy paid user of Spotify and just ignore the recommendations (I'm not looking at a screen), and I use YouTube heavily with a browser plugin that hides recommendations (which kills the end of video loop). I get recommendations from people, and use the products for curation, bookmarking and subscriptions. They're good. Whereas Instagram and TikTok are vacuous and useless to me - I can't make myself use them. I think my brain knows what's wrong with them, and makes a kind of disgust reaction very quickly. I agree, there's a very low level, emotional difference between them. I'm not sure I could encode it in law, but it is different.
- ffaccount2 2mo ago
  So Spotify is a loop (it automatically plays the next recommended song)
  - globular-toast 2mo ago
    True. I feel like "primary attention" should be a part of it too.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
ricardobayes 2mo ago
Yes, anyone who has been looking for Spotify alternatives can readily tell how poor the music recommendation algorithms of competitors. I feel like the only comparative one is weirdly, youtube, since they simply have more data points and context to attach recommendations to.
- philipallstar 2mo ago
  And that ability to recommend what you want is the harm being decided.
- ikr678 2mo ago
  At it's peak, I found Pandora's recomendation algo vastly superior to Spotify
- BoxOfRain 2mo ago
  I've come to realise that the only truly good recommendation engines for music are written in wetware; there's a lot to be said for DJ sets and independent radio.
friendzis 2mo ago
> > “Do you use personal / behavioral data / usage to shape the user experience and recommendations, creating a reinforcing loop?” > This would include everything from my Spotify recommending new music that I like to my Netflix showing me similar shows. Spotify recommending music and Netflix recommending shows that are similar to what? To previously recommended music/shows. This is exactly the problem. > I'm a responsible adult. I want those things. This is a clear indicator that these things are addictive and are in fact gambling.
- Aurornis 2mo ago
  > This is exactly the problem. What problem, exactly? Helping me find new music to enjoy? I’m beginning to think some people have forgotten what we’re supposed to be angry about and now we’re just angry at all things tech. Spotify recommending new music to me or continuing to play music suggestions when my playlist runs out is in no way harmful. It improves my life. I lose nothing to it. I gain new exposure to music. It’s fine. Let people enjoy things. > This is a clear indicator that these things are addictive and are in fact gambling. I assure you I am neither addicted nor am I gambling when I listen to new music on Spotify. What are we even doing here? Is this some puritanical push against all things that people might enjoy?
  - philipallstar 2mo ago
    Yes. It's like the prohibitionists. They couldn't see any problem that couldn't be solved by banning alcohol.
  - salawat 2mo ago
    The poster is implying the reinforcement at play is the problematic thing at issue, and they are assigning the word "gambling" to represent it, or so it looks like to me. I think you aren't parsing their meaning correctly because what they seem to be aiming for is extinguishing the automatic reinforcement. You're claiming it's making your life better, ostensibly by a relative report of the hedonic response a newly introduced piece of music auto delivered to you by the recommendation algorithm invokes. The problem they hint at though is the passive nature involved. You aren't finding that new piece, it's getting pushed. That pushing incentivizes optimizing for continued engagement, an act children, intellectually and developmentally disabled individuals, as well as those in the throes of cognitive decline/impairment, are not at all well equipped to self-regulate against when pitted against paid behavioral psychologists designing maximally engagement encouraging interfaces. The incentive, and the existence of predatible populations is the problem I take away from it. I can agree you should be free to opt-in mind, but I can also see the wisdom in a by default interface wherein engagement hacking is forbidden being the norm, and that norm coming with a minimally controversial algorithm boiling down to "chronological feed of known/subscribed to sources", followed by a link of some sort to open an interface to the recommendations. Facebook/Insta/Shorts are absolutely not that non-engagement farming interface. Hell my grandmother toward the end was about driven mad by it, and it was all I could do to just try to remind her that just because the machine had it on offer doesn't mean she had to partake, but her community centric character made that a bit of an ordeal for her. There is absolutely a pathological pattern to the way tech companies hunt for eyeballs to monetize, and it is a damn shame it's taken this long to start getting traction to even talk about it.
rglullis 2mo ago
> I want those things. I make use of them. Can you opt out of those features? If not, how do you know you want those things or if you are just being manipulated into using them?
- blackoil 2mo ago
  > Can you opt out of those features? Kind of, by using a different software.
  - rglullis 2mo ago
    How can you use a different version of Facebook to talk with the people that are on Facebook? How can you use a different version of Netflix to watch shows that are only available on Netflix? How can you use a different version of YouTube to watch videos that are only available on YouTube?

dudefeliciano 2mo ago

Ok then at the very least allow for a toggle to turn those algorithmic “recommendations” on and off

Groxx 2mo ago

Seems like you don't have to rule it out completely? "You might also like this show" is rather different than YouTube's "OMFG SHORTS WATCH THEM NOW" experience. Even if the line is fuzzy, I think many can agree some things are closer than others, and that's enough for some laws (there are plenty of other not-perfectly-testable laws out there as counterexamples).

ben_w 2mo ago
While this is true in principle, my understanding is that the failure to carefully deliniate ahead of time, was why prohibition in the USA ended up being "all alcohol" rather than "just liquor".
Aurornis 2mo ago
> Seems like you don't have to rule it out completely? This is what I was talking about in the second half of my comment: Every time I bring up the fact that these proposals would be overbearing, people start brainstorming infinite carve outs and exceptions that would exempt the products they use, but harm the products they don’t want other people using. If these laws hit the books they’re not going to be neatly shaped to avoid the things you like and only impact the things you don’t.
- Groxx 2mo ago
  That seems inevitable for laws that try to address private behavior, yes. It'll waffle around and strike randomly as it gets tested more and more in court to narrow the definition, and that gradually causes a chilling effect around the whole concept. The only real consideration worth having is "will things be better after", not "will my life be unchanged".

dotancohen 2mo ago

> when I have exactly 2 hours of TV watching time in a week and don't want to waste it finding a new show. Please please somebody explain this to me. I see it often, but fail to understand it. The television is a tool for watching shows. The show is ostensibly the draw, and the television is the vehicle for watching it, no? So why do some people (lots of people actually) feel compelled to sit in front of the television to watch something? If there is no show that one wants to watch, why the compulsion to sit in front of the television? I've spent countless nights in front of Netscape Navigator surfing from site to site. I'm fully aware how compelling the device-content system can be. But it's always been the content side, not the device side, that was compelling.

2muchcoffeeman 2mo ago
GP is addicted and can’t see it.
- Aurornis 2mo ago
  2 hours of TV per week is addicted?
josephg 2mo ago
Sometimes the desire isn't to watch some specific show. It is to have the experience of sitting on the couch and watching something good on tv. This is why people channel surf, or scroll through netflix's collection. You want to have the experience of watching something. The goal is to be stimulated, to cure your momentary boredom. I have the same experience with youtube, reddit and HN. I don't really know what I expect to see when I open the HN front page. If I knew, I'd navigate to that site directly. But I know I'll see something on HN. Maybe something that catches my eye. Netflix is just the same. "I'm in the mood to watch a documentary. Let's see what they've got."
- dotancohen 2mo ago
  > "I'm in the mood to watch a documentary. Let's see what they've got." Thank you, this is a sentiment I can understand.

DonHopkins 2mo ago

Cigarette packages have disgusting photos of carcenogenic lung autopsies to discourage you from smoking them, so Facebook and TikTok etc should have similar disgusting photos and vidoes of what happens to you if you use their product, that you have to watch every day before using it. Sleep-deprived teenager autopsy: a teenager with enormous purple eye bags, phone surgically fused to their hand, lying face-down on a school desk at 3 AM. Body-image filter ward: rows of teenage faces grotesquely stretched, pinched, inflated, beautified and looksmaxed until everyone looks like the same embalmed Instagram mannequin. Doomscroll thumb: a gigantic swollen thumb with the fingerprint worn completely smooth from infinite scrolling. The tendon is labeled "ENGAGEMENT." Facebook scam victim: an elderly person's wallet dissected on an autopsy table -- completely hollow, with a Facebook ad where the money used to be. Algorithmic stomach contents: an autopsy tray containing "suggested for you": rage bait, diet videos, conspiracy sludge, influencer ads, and one photo from somebody you actually know. Predator warning: a cute Instagram DM screen shown as an anglerfish -- friendly profile photo as the glowing lure, enormous teeth hiding behind it. Facebook Hospital: a free to play educational game where you have to spend virtual currency for cures to the ailments Facebook gave you, like Bloaty Head from reading all the AI generated engagement porn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M

blackoil 2mo ago
Images on cigarette packages are of real patient and real impact and still smokers ignore it. A fake, stylized hypothetical image will have much lower impact.
- DonHopkins 2mo ago
  Are you saying that fake, stylized hypothetical image will have much lower impact reducing the impact of all the fake, stylized hypothetical images in Facebook? Maybe they should insert disgusting slices of actual carcinogenic lung tissue into boxes of cigarettes, since images of them aren't impactful enough. That would be harder for smokers to ignore, and it would make the cigarettes harder to light, worse smelling and tasting.

globular-toast 2mo ago

There's a big difference between a completely optional "recommendations" area and a loop. If the recommended stuff happens automatically without you having to look for it, then it's a loop.

frabcus 2mo ago
Yep - some emotional core of my being (not rational) hates ML recommendations. I'm a happy paid user of Spotify and just ignore the recommendations (I'm not looking at a screen), and I use YouTube heavily with a browser plugin that hides recommendations (which kills the end of video loop). I get recommendations from people, and use the products for curation, bookmarking and subscriptions. They're good. Whereas Instagram and TikTok are vacuous and useless to me - I can't make myself use them. I think my brain knows what's wrong with them, and makes a kind of disgust reaction very quickly. I agree, there's a very low level, emotional difference between them. I'm not sure I could encode it in law, but it is different.
ffaccount2 2mo ago
So Spotify is a loop (it automatically plays the next recommended song)
- globular-toast 2mo ago
  True. I feel like "primary attention" should be a part of it too.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

ricardobayes 2mo ago

Yes, anyone who has been looking for Spotify alternatives can readily tell how poor the music recommendation algorithms of competitors. I feel like the only comparative one is weirdly, youtube, since they simply have more data points and context to attach recommendations to.

philipallstar 2mo ago
And that ability to recommend what you want is the harm being decided.
ikr678 2mo ago
At it's peak, I found Pandora's recomendation algo vastly superior to Spotify
BoxOfRain 2mo ago
I've come to realise that the only truly good recommendation engines for music are written in wetware; there's a lot to be said for DJ sets and independent radio.

friendzis 2mo ago

> > “Do you use personal / behavioral data / usage to shape the user experience and recommendations, creating a reinforcing loop?” > This would include everything from my Spotify recommending new music that I like to my Netflix showing me similar shows. Spotify recommending music and Netflix recommending shows that are similar to what? To previously recommended music/shows. This is exactly the problem. > I'm a responsible adult. I want those things. This is a clear indicator that these things are addictive and are in fact gambling.

Aurornis 2mo ago
> This is exactly the problem. What problem, exactly? Helping me find new music to enjoy? I’m beginning to think some people have forgotten what we’re supposed to be angry about and now we’re just angry at all things tech. Spotify recommending new music to me or continuing to play music suggestions when my playlist runs out is in no way harmful. It improves my life. I lose nothing to it. I gain new exposure to music. It’s fine. Let people enjoy things. > This is a clear indicator that these things are addictive and are in fact gambling. I assure you I am neither addicted nor am I gambling when I listen to new music on Spotify. What are we even doing here? Is this some puritanical push against all things that people might enjoy?
- philipallstar 2mo ago
  Yes. It's like the prohibitionists. They couldn't see any problem that couldn't be solved by banning alcohol.
- salawat 2mo ago
  The poster is implying the reinforcement at play is the problematic thing at issue, and they are assigning the word "gambling" to represent it, or so it looks like to me. I think you aren't parsing their meaning correctly because what they seem to be aiming for is extinguishing the automatic reinforcement. You're claiming it's making your life better, ostensibly by a relative report of the hedonic response a newly introduced piece of music auto delivered to you by the recommendation algorithm invokes. The problem they hint at though is the passive nature involved. You aren't finding that new piece, it's getting pushed. That pushing incentivizes optimizing for continued engagement, an act children, intellectually and developmentally disabled individuals, as well as those in the throes of cognitive decline/impairment, are not at all well equipped to self-regulate against when pitted against paid behavioral psychologists designing maximally engagement encouraging interfaces. The incentive, and the existence of predatible populations is the problem I take away from it. I can agree you should be free to opt-in mind, but I can also see the wisdom in a by default interface wherein engagement hacking is forbidden being the norm, and that norm coming with a minimally controversial algorithm boiling down to "chronological feed of known/subscribed to sources", followed by a link of some sort to open an interface to the recommendations. Facebook/Insta/Shorts are absolutely not that non-engagement farming interface. Hell my grandmother toward the end was about driven mad by it, and it was all I could do to just try to remind her that just because the machine had it on offer doesn't mean she had to partake, but her community centric character made that a bit of an ordeal for her. There is absolutely a pathological pattern to the way tech companies hunt for eyeballs to monetize, and it is a damn shame it's taken this long to start getting traction to even talk about it.

rglullis 2mo ago

> I want those things. I make use of them. Can you opt out of those features? If not, how do you know you want those things or if you are just being manipulated into using them?

blackoil 2mo ago
> Can you opt out of those features? Kind of, by using a different software.
- rglullis 2mo ago
  How can you use a different version of Facebook to talk with the people that are on Facebook? How can you use a different version of Netflix to watch shows that are only available on Netflix? How can you use a different version of YouTube to watch videos that are only available on YouTube?