Here here. Nothing is infinite except for God, I say.
The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
251–260 of 979 posts
Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
It only assumes they are aware that the category of products exists, and ordinary word-of-mouth communication is sufficient to propagate that knowledge.
How does word-of-mouth communication propagate knowledge that is currently in the possession of zero existing customers? Or operate for products that people have little reason to discuss with other people? Suppose you sell insulation and replacing the insulation in an existing house could save $2 in heating and cooling for each $1 the insulation costs. Most people know that insulation exists , but what causes them to…
People don't need to discuss specific products, they only need to be aware of the existence of product categories. If it's genuinely the case that whole product categories are unknown to many people who could realistically benefit from them, as determined by a disinterested third party, an exception could be made for advertising that does not mention specific products or brands.
The insulation example can be solved by publication of data on average heating costs. When people learn that their neighbors are paying less they will be naturally incentivized to investigate why. Equivalent problems can be solved with the same general technique.
Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need to ban advertising, you just need to ban paying for advertising. That doesn't harm free speech. When there's no money to be made the problem will sort itself out.
That's gonna probably just create a bunch of loopholes or hacks like paying with favors instead of cash
Loopholes can be addressed on a case-by-case basis. A solution being imperfect is not a good reason to leave the problem completely unaddressed.
Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except people aren’t addicted to haircuts and presumably don’t spend 8 hours a day staring at their hair in the mirror.
I should be able to stare at my phone 8 hours a day without government interference if I want to. No one is holding me at gunpoint. It's my phone and it doesn't hurt anyone else.
Nobody is holding you or other addicts at gunpoint to stop that, so what are you complaining about?
Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
#255Earlier 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…
Infrastructure costs money. There's no way around it. I'm all up for banning ads. But there should be another viable business model to replace it.
I don't think we have a right to a business model. Either you figure one out for your particular site (selling access to the website, donations, etc) or you don't and stop and either is ok.
Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
#256Earlier 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…
Perfect idea, the internet should only be for rich people. After all, who cares about the 50% of the planet that can barely afford a coffee? Or the millions of small businesses that are only able to survive because of targeted ads? Fuck 'em all, because people can't be trusted to use their own devices properly!
Poor people pay more for ads (as part of product price), and suffer more because of ads (from misleading advertising for shit products like junk food and drugs, to having certain out of reach lifestyles based on purchasing crap they don't need hammered on them and getting in debt). They also pay with having a worse media landscape, worse social media, and many more (not to mention the influece big companies with big spending budgets get).
People would also be better of without 90% of the ad-driven internet.
Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ads per se are not evil. The motherfucker we'd want to shoot, however, is targeted advertising and especially those that rely on harvested user data. In a sense, I'm just agreeing with a fellow comment in the vicinity of this thread that said GDPR is already the EU's shot at banning (targeted) ads---it's just implemented piss-poorly. Personally formulated, my sentiment is that GDPR as it stands today is a step in the…
what if ads were displayed only on request? “hi, ad page, I need some shoes, let’s go!”
So basically what Google & Amazon does and ban what Meta & Apple does ?
Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
#258Earlier 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.
Easy: free speech was never meant for and fought for advertising. Any judicial body who says otherwise is bullshiting people.
Conflating advertising with free speech is like conflating sex work with reproductive rights.
Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like to scroll my logs w/o pagination
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.
I dunno, have you tried? Maybe you just need to scroll faster.
Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
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.
Commercial speech is not the same as advertising.
The product is the same as the speech, whereas in advertising the speech is in sycophantic service of another product.