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The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

politico.eu

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Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#201

Post by Xelbair »

thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #177
Funes- wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 iter…

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.

True, you can't separate ads vs sponsored content quite easily.

but you can help this by banning all forms of active tracking.

Static ads only, no click tracking, and complete ban on profiling clients and especially on adjusting prices based on client/possible client behavior patterns.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#202

Post by tialaramex »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #91
rendx wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? Why isn't the opposite happening? Citation needed. I took some minutes to try and find statistics, and also ChatGPT claims that the EU simply doesn't collect or publish that kind of data, so I'm wondering how you think you know.

> But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? All I see in my circle is people refusing to even go on vacation in the US, let alone move there.

And in two of my circles there is concern about people who do live in the US but are not citizens. Both married US citizens, both have clean paperwork, but whereas normally it'd take considerable paranoia to expect any trouble today it seems entirely on brand. One of the US citizens is angry because of course her rural hospital is going bankrupt and she'll be left in the middle of nowhere with her foreign-born sick and gradually dying husband and somehow that's not even near the top of the agenda. The other is just keeping her head down, crossing fingers, maybe in all the excitement they won't get around to undoing Obergefell and she can stay married to the love of her life?

I do know people who've gone, only on vacation and they were exactly the sort of unthreatening rich white folks that you'd expect to have least trouble. Oh, and some US citizens who went "home" to see family at Xmas but work here.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#203

Post by johannes1234321 »

jjcm wrote: post #64

Here's the actual statement from the European Comission: 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 feat…

> 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.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#204

Post by kbelder »

TFYS wrote: post #171
chickensong wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but not everyone is like us There will never be anything close to uniformity, so we must decide if we cripple freedom to protect the weak while increasing bureaucracy and authoritarianism, or allow natural selection to take its course while improving treatment of symptoms. I'm empathetic to the struggle of addiction, which is a real and terrible thing, but I don't think we should create vague nanny laws as a soluti…

> allow natural selection to take its course while improving treatment of symptoms. I have a feeling natural selection will take its course at the level of nations, with nations that do protect their weak surviving and the ones that let profit extractors exploit and abuse theirs dying off.

Darwinism exists at the level of nations, but I think you may have the outcome exactly backwards.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#205

Post by andybak »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #185
andybak wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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…

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.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#206

Post by GaryBluto »

The EU's mission statement seems to be to make the internet as difficult to legally utilize as possible.

I'm interested to see what measures people will use to get around the increasingly bizarre restrictions. Perhaps an official browser extension for each platform that reimplements bureaucrat-banned features?

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#207

Post by Barrin92 »

thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #177
Funes- wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 iter…

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.

>How will you ban that without infringing on free speech

You don't, but the EU doesn't need to care about American ideas of free speech. This is actually in some sense the biggest hurdle to all of this, the psychologically defensive posture that somehow assumes that on European territory this should even be a concern. Also as a sidenote this is even within America a kind of revisionist history, the 20th century had plenty of broadcasting and licensing rules. This unfettered, deregulated commercial environment is even in the US a creature of the last ~40-50 years, and those unchained companies, not unironically, then went on to convince everyone to defend that state of affairs given each opportunity.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#208

Post by tokyobreakfast »

ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #109
tokyobreakfast wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a phone. Put it in the trash. You will not go through physiological withdrawal symptoms. The amount of people in here right now clamoring for legislation to keep them away from electronics which they themselves purchased is mind-bogglingly insane.

Oooooof. Can I recommend you spend some time developing some empathy? The world is complicated. People's lives are complicated (and often meditated by their phones). People's emotional and social wellbeing is complicated, and simply ghosting all your social groups on a random Tuesday is likely to cause significant problems.

[flagged]

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#209

Post by BrenBarn »

thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #177
Funes- wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 iter…

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.

I'd say the first amendment is due for an overhaul anyway for a variety of reasons. (Heck, the whole constitution is.)

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#210

Post by MrScruff »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #172
ktm5j wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you're not the type of person who's struggled with addiction, but it can do awful things to you. Yes, including being addicted to scrolling social media. It screws with your head to the point where you don't know how to live in the moment anymore. IMO it's a feature that's not valuable enough to justify the fact that it contributes to poor quality of life for people who can't put it down.

The first step to get on track in life is to stop blaming the outside for all problems. Yes some people had really bad luck but in the end you can only change yourself.

I suspect there's not a huge amount of overlap between those who would like this banned and those who are targeted by it.
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