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New York bans 'addictive feeds' for teens

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Re: New York bans 'addictive feeds' for teens

#11

Post by avalys »

yedava wrote: post #5

We need to think bigger. Having an app on your phone is like having a stranger in your house. The same legal protections that apply to property should apply inside the software that runs on your phone. An app should be at the mercy of the user and should provide easy (and automated) ways to turn off manipulative and surveillance features.

The same legal protections already apply.

You can invite a person into your house to perform a service for you. They can define conditions on performing their service: "I'll shampoo your carpet for $50." Those conditions could also be "I'll shampoo your carpet every month if you let me read your credit card bill every month." You don't have to agree to this! If you don't want to let them read your credit card bill, you don't have to agree to this service.

If you let someone into your house to shampoo your carpet, without agreeing to let them read your credit card bill, and they secretly do that anyway, that's already illegal!

What you're asking is the equivalent of saying that, if someone has a business of shampooing carpets in exchange for reading people's credit card bills, you want to be legally entitled to invite them into your house and force them to shampoo your carpet anyway, without giving them what they want in exchange.

(incidentally - if you respond to my post by nitpicking details of the analogy instead of addressing the central point, I'm not going to bother to respond).

Re: New York bans 'addictive feeds' for teens

#12

Post by zug_zug »

superkuh wrote: post #4

Another case of the political use of medical terms in completely unsupported ways for political goals. There is no medical or scientific support for the use of the word "addiction" in this context. It's a meme that's become more dangerous than the problem it imagines. It's not in the DSM 5 or ICD10 and not because they haven't addressed it in committee. They have, as recently as 2020 and found no support for it. And…

Eh, this feels like a bad-faith argument. I think most of us on this site first-hand feel that obsession to update a feed that seems to control us more than we control it.

I don't need the DSM's permission to notice that.

Whether the ban will work out, open question. But pretending there's no addiction here doesn't pass the smell test.

Re: New York bans 'addictive feeds' for teens

#13

Post by yedava »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #9
yedava wrote: post #5

We need to think bigger. Having an app on your phone is like having a stranger in your house. The same legal protections that apply to property should apply inside the software that runs on your phone. An app should be at the mercy of the user and should provide easy (and automated) ways to turn off manipulative and surveillance features.

An app is at the mercy of the user, who can uninstall at any time, just as you can kick out people out of your home, but you can't turn off "manipulative" behaviour for them.

I can let in a contractor in my house and also ask them not to smoke. They of course have the right to refuse that request and decline my money, but in the real world, contractors usually comply with such requests as smoking is known to harm health. I don't see why the digital world has to be any different. Just because laws and awareness are lagging behind, tech world's toxic practices don't need to get a pass.

Re: New York bans 'addictive feeds' for teens

#15

Post by superkuh »

czl wrote: post #10
superkuh wrote: post #4

Another case of the political use of medical terms in completely unsupported ways for political goals. There is no medical or scientific support for the use of the word "addiction" in this context. It's a meme that's become more dangerous than the problem it imagines. It's not in the DSM 5 or ICD10 and not because they haven't addressed it in committee. They have, as recently as 2020 and found no support for it. And…

> Another case of the political use of medical terms in completely unsupported ways for political goals. There is no medical or scientific support for the use of the word "addiction" in this context. Say the language is fixed up replacing addiction with disorder, ... Any other objections?

That would be a great first step.

My other big objection is that this bill as written applies to all people hosting websites instead of being restricted to just incorporated persons like corporations and institutions like the EU's Digital Markets Act.

If it were modified to only apply to incorporated entities then it'd be a solid bill doing net good without any significant violation of individual rights. But as is it applies to all human people that run websites and that makes it a net negative because of the violation of the rights of normal human people.

Re: New York bans 'addictive feeds' for teens

#17

Post by btown »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #8
koof wrote: post #6

Please ban it for me too thank you

HN is my most addictive social media, should this site be banned? :)

I see the name "dang" discussed here quite a bit; it seems to be an internal code name for a highly effective algorithm for surfacing relevant content. Whatever it is, it seems to be far more intelligent than any other automated system I've seen. Has HN somehow created a sentient recommendation system?

Re: New York bans 'addictive feeds' for teens

#18

Post by surge »

superkuh wrote: post #4

Another case of the political use of medical terms in completely unsupported ways for political goals. There is no medical or scientific support for the use of the word "addiction" in this context. It's a meme that's become more dangerous than the problem it imagines. It's not in the DSM 5 or ICD10 and not because they haven't addressed it in committee. They have, as recently as 2020 and found no support for it. And…

You can get addicted to anything that gives you little dopamine hits and stimulating reward centers the same way gambling, etc does. Dark patterns are well documented. Medical science and multiple studies involving brain scans during social media use and lighting up those areas of the brain back this up. The DSM hasn't been redefined but there's recognition of it as a problem and Internet/Gaming (digital media) addictions being added to the DSM is being discussed and there's no argument these platforms are designed by psychologists to use our own brain chemistry against us and create these addictive behaviors. How this is done is well documented and its exactly what the law lays out in it's defining of what constitutes an addictive feed.

Source: Just search HN, there's been so many posts related to this.

Re: New York bans 'addictive feeds' for teens

#19

Post by yedava »

avalys wrote: post #11
yedava wrote: post #5

We need to think bigger. Having an app on your phone is like having a stranger in your house. The same legal protections that apply to property should apply inside the software that runs on your phone. An app should be at the mercy of the user and should provide easy (and automated) ways to turn off manipulative and surveillance features.

The same legal protections already apply. You can invite a person into your house to perform a service for you. They can define conditions on performing their service: "I'll shampoo your carpet for $50." Those conditions could also be "I'll shampoo your carpet every month if you let me read your credit card bill every month." You don't have to agree to this! If you don't want to let them read your credit card bill, y…

The tech world does not give you the choice of letting you pay for privacy or pay by invading your privacy. Now, you can nitpick that you can build your own service or host your service, but then the question becomes why is programming/sysadmin knowledge a prerequisite for using your phone?

Re: New York bans 'addictive feeds' for teens

#20

Post by School-Cotton »

superkuh wrote: post #4

Another case of the political use of medical terms in completely unsupported ways for political goals. There is no medical or scientific support for the use of the word "addiction" in this context. It's a meme that's become more dangerous than the problem it imagines. It's not in the DSM 5 or ICD10 and not because they haven't addressed it in committee. They have, as recently as 2020 and found no support for it. And…

There is no requirement for laws to use words with the same meaning as they’re used in one specific niche publication. “Addictive” is a normal English word; it doesn’t exclusively belong to psychiatry.
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