Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

If you sleepwalk into this, and they 'fix' it, what's to keep you sleepwalking into the next thing?

People struggling with addiction should seek professional help if they really struggle rather than waiting for laws to protect them... - this is never going to solve their additions...

Too many companies offer a defense for behavior we find distasteful of, "It isn't illegal," as if the law draws the complete contours of ethical behavior. Generally, we look to laws to dictate punishment for violations of ethics. Of course the law also forbids things we find ethical, but that is another issue.

So no, it won't make social media less addictive, but perhaps it is time we started to formally define what behaviors we consider ethical for these types of interactions between businesses and consumers. With it defined perhaps respectable companies will start to act in the manner we grow to expect.

A: Many people are not aware that's a thing: "I did not click like on a racist video, but it keeps showing them to me", when in reality, the algorithm detected that you slowed down when shown that type of content so decided to feed more of it to you.

B: I targets your worse instinct (oh a half naked girl, maybe she has something interesting to say?), and if you're not aware of point A, it's a loosing battle. If you are aware of point A, it's constantly tiring to have to adjust you speed scroll etc.

I would personally make a GDPR type law that would require: "Any feed of user data must be presented in a non-opaque way, such as chronological, ranked by upvotes etc. Any personalized feed based on expectations of user preference should be entirely transparent, by allowing the user to access, modify their profile, as well as locking them (preventing future behaviour from changing the type of content you see).

I've been considering and trying to practice being kinder to myself, my phone, and my relationship with it. I still want to use less of it, but it's now a part of us, and will take time to almost amputate. I want to just stop feeding it, and let it die off slowly, peacefully instead of amputating it with a hacksaw.

Any kind of self-control based on shame seems doomed to be a vicious cycle.

I'm not sure how well that work work given the very fuzzy lines between "enough to connect with peers" versus "everything else". For example, a "show off your pictures" company could obey the letter of the rule but break the spirit, but not allowing the images-being-discussed in the chats, making participation pointless.

I think a more-robust approach would be a scheme permitting the development of third-party "frontends" for these services (possibly already permitted by law [0]) with the compromise that they must pass-through any non-personalized ads the service makes available.

That way it creates competition of "kid safe" versions--whatever blend of functionality that really means--and companies come under pressure to have a not-too-shitty version of their own.

[0] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/02/was-there-a-trojan-horse...