Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

ec.europa.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 204 posts

Re: EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

#41

Post by nathias »

somenameforme wrote: post #36
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #12

Forcing social media apps to have a less addictive design is a much better way to protect young people's brains than a social media age limit is (and frankly adults need help here too).

Social media, even before the era of dark patterns and 'engagement' maximization was still extremely addictive. It just had a less pronounced effect in large part because fewer people were using it. For instance there was a time when Facebook was university only and invite only. And this is all for people that are of the 'legal age' so to speak using it. For kids, who are going to be even more insecure, have more ong…

it isn't about avoiding all harm as sociallity itself is harmful, it's about software not hijacking/exploiting our cognition especially in times when this would mess with our development

Re: EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

#42

Post by karahime »

pembrook wrote: post #23
kittikitti wrote: post #17

This is welcome news but I have several friends, family members, or acquaintances that are addicted to social media and have to take psychiatric medication for it. The trouble is, and I'm not sure if the algorithm incentivizes it, but they don't take their pills. They don't even take multivitamins because of whatever idiotic misinformation they're being fed. It becomes a positive feedback loop and anything I and othe…

> are addicted to social media and have to take psychiatric medication for it. I’m sorry but this is just not real. There’s not a single non-quack doctor who will recommend psychiatric medication for “social media addiction,” which is not a real thing and pretty much all of the recent academic literature proves as much. If your doctor is suggesting medication for social media use, you either have much deeper underlyi…

Which is exactly the problem with this whole discussion. On the far side, you hear that it's heroin! It's fentanyl! It's alcohol! Facebook groups are the modern opium den! But when actually challenged, it's oh no no, that's a metaphor, it's metaphorical fentanyl, not real fentanyl. People on Instagram are metaphorically injecting metaphorical drugs into their metaphorical veins.

It's a poor basis for policy and thought. I would wager 20 francs that none of these people have ever seen a heroin OD. The whole discussion centers around a maximally impactful comparison but the middle of the comparison is hollow.

Re: EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

#43

Post by dmoose »

carlosjobim wrote: post #16
rimeice wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all citizens are invited to broadcast Is this really the way we’re wired after thousands of years of evolution? Even the word broadcast implies something very one way. Pre social media it was very normal to “broadcast” by discussing ideas with friends, family and neighbours, face to face in a civil manner. Good ideas gained traction gradually, bad ideas didn’t get traction because the extremists were too far apart.…

> Is this really the way we’re wired after thousands of years of evolution? No, and we're certainly not wired to have TV or radio being broadcasted in our homes - or sitting still and silent on a bench for the most of our childhoods having to listen to some screeching fool having their weekly psychotic fit. There will never in history be anything more extreme than the government broadcasts, urging young people to go…

> Atomization is a fact, and the best road out of it might be to connect with other like minded people wherever they are, but it seems that the Internet hasn't lived up to this promise. Why? What have we done wrong?

The Internet itself is just a way to transfer information. Humans are the ones manipulating that information for commercial and ideological reasons. I would say as several posters above have implied we have not evolved filters that protect us from this manipulation. Quite the opposite we have biases baked into us that are being actively exploited.

What we have done wrong is not find a way to manage this for the benefit of society rather than its harm, sadly that describes much of human history. When an environment exists that amplifies self serving behavior and concentration of power it is not surprising to see it come to reflect the worse rather than best of humanity.

Re: EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

#44

Post by vrganj »

pembrook wrote: post #33

This is the same EU commission pushing chat control and VPN bans and passports to access the internet. Which people on HN hate. Yet, when they couch authoritarian action under the premise of a popular moral panic, suddenly the reaction here is “tie us up and tell us what we’re allowed to see daddy.” I really don’t get it. Do you not see how cheering on this social media moral panic and inflating the idea of a big tec…

The EU is an institution that is democratically legitimized at every level (Either through direct elections in the parliament or through elections to the appropriate national government in the case of the Council / Commission). Sure, it's not perfect and sometimes the Conservatives do some messed up lawfare to introduce fucked up things like Chat Control, but at least they were voted in and can be voted out again.

Big Tech is some foreign rich dudes being dictators of their little fiefdom doing whatever they can to make themselves even richer. We have zero control over them and what they do to our society in this pursuit. No elections. No recalls. No public votes.

The only correct reaction is for the sovereign to assert its sovereignty and lay out some ground rules.

Re: EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

#45

Post by ajsnigrutin »

testing22321 wrote: post #24
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #12

Forcing social media apps to have a less addictive design is a much better way to protect young people's brains than a social media age limit is (and frankly adults need help here too).

Forcing alcoholic drinks to have a less addictive product is a much better way to protect young people’s brains than an alcohol age limit is (and frankly adults need help there too).

In quite a few countries, you can drink less-acoholic drinks, eg. beer and wine, much younger than high-alcohol drinks, eg. whiskey, vodka, etc.

Germany is one such example.

Re: EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

#46

Post by ajsnigrutin »

somenameforme wrote: post #36
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #12

Forcing social media apps to have a less addictive design is a much better way to protect young people's brains than a social media age limit is (and frankly adults need help here too).

Social media, even before the era of dark patterns and 'engagement' maximization was still extremely addictive. It just had a less pronounced effect in large part because fewer people were using it. For instance there was a time when Facebook was university only and invite only. And this is all for people that are of the 'legal age' so to speak using it. For kids, who are going to be even more insecure, have more ong…

Back then, you had 20, 30, 50 'friends' on facebook and basically all the content you saw was made by them. Except for chatting, you could basically view all the 'daily content' (all the posts by everyone you had on your friends list) in maybe 10 minutes.

Then facebook turned to "let's show you random political articles instead of your friends dinner plates", and people moved to instagram... which stopped showing your friends dinner plates soon after it got bought out by facebook and it too replaced the friends dinner plates with random "reels".

If the kids only saw stuff posted by their 'friends', instead of being pushed a lot of random garbage they never decided to 'follow', it would still be a much nicer place.

Re: EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

#48

Post by carlosjobim »

flumpcakes wrote: post #10
carlosjobim wrote: post #3

Nothing was ever said about the addictive design of mainstream TV - because then the rulers controlled the message being streamed into the brains of the population. It is precisely on Facebook and Instagram where you find the only popular movements against the current order in Europe, and the citizen journalists who expose and scrutinize the powers. It's a giant political threat towards those in power. So, how do we…

> Nothing was ever said about the addictive design of mainstream TV - because then the rulers controlled the message being streamed into the brains of the population. More outlandish conspiracy theories on hackernews... You are in fact wrong - see the myriad of rules advertising, especially what can be advertised on children's TV. What messages are not being allowed to be 'streamed into the brains of the population'…

> You are in fact wrong - see the myriad of rules advertising, especially what can be advertised on children's TV.

That hasn't to do with the addictive design of the broadcast medium, which is what I commented on. There are myriad of advertising rules for social media as well.

Re: EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

#49

Post by zkmon »

While it is genuinely a huge concern, the legal measure are not going to address it. One has to consider the overall picture, not just a corner of it.

The ship has sailed. There will be addictive designs, products, services etc. The very theme of a business is centered around keeping the customers addicted. It's just a matter of time, every business on this planet would, with the help of AI, make their products and services extremely addictive.

Re: EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

#50

Post by millionSBASH »

zkmon wrote: post #49

While it is genuinely a huge concern, the legal measure are not going to address it. One has to consider the overall picture, not just a corner of it. The ship has sailed. There will be addictive designs, products, services etc. The very theme of a business is centered around keeping the customers addicted. It's just a matter of time, every business on this planet would, with the help of AI, make their products and s…

Do you think people made similar arguments about privacy before the GDPR?
Post reply on HN