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

TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 568 posts

Re: TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe

#121

Post by rglullis »

dmix wrote: post #89
mtoner23 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short form video has been a total break from previous media and social media consumption patterns. Personally I would support a ban on algorithmic endless short form video. It's purely toxic and bad for humanity

People are way too comfortable banning things these days. This is where the term 'nanny state' comes from. A subset of the population doesn't have self control? Ban it everyone. Even if it's a wildly popular form of entertainment with millions of creators sharing their lives, who cares we know better.

The "subset of the population" is not small, and there is no easy way to protect the most vulnerable.

> it's a wildly popular form of entertainment with millions of creators sharing their lives

I don't think we should be rewarding those who make a living by creating "content" that serves for nothing but a dopamine rush, and you can bet that those who who put it in the effort to create valuable content would prefer to have one less channel where they are forced to put out content just to satisfy the algorithm overlords.

Re: TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe

#122

Post by cmsp12 »

llbbdd wrote: post #47

Idk how to feel about this specifically but I kind of hope they come for Duolingo next. They are up to some similar mind hacking shit to keep people from leaving. There's the downright abusive streak management tactics that have become a major part of their brand and PR, and the lesson plans seem designed to plateau to prevent you from actually getting proficient enough in a language to ever unsub. They reset your cl…

actually language learning is complex enough that they could build new products/ features to retain users and still deliver value. But for some reason they don't

Re: TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe

#123

Post by moring »

llbbdd wrote: post #47

Idk how to feel about this specifically but I kind of hope they come for Duolingo next. They are up to some similar mind hacking shit to keep people from leaving. There's the downright abusive streak management tactics that have become a major part of their brand and PR, and the lesson plans seem designed to plateau to prevent you from actually getting proficient enough in a language to ever unsub. They reset your cl…

Devil's advocate here (not associated with Duolingo, and in fact I haven't even used it):

> They reset your cleared lessons and require you to redo them if they add new vocab to them

The same would be true if that case was never considered, or postponed, during development.

I tinkered with my own toy learning platform; I too found the question of how to deal with added content to an already-completed lesson, and the answer is that there is no easy answer. Every solution sucks in a way.

> as well as randomly clearing them in the name of making you practice them again

Anki does the same, calls it "spaced repetition" and says it's a feature. Should we ban Anki now?

Re: TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe

#124

Post by robin_reala »

llbbdd wrote: post #47

Idk how to feel about this specifically but I kind of hope they come for Duolingo next. They are up to some similar mind hacking shit to keep people from leaving. There's the downright abusive streak management tactics that have become a major part of their brand and PR, and the lesson plans seem designed to plateau to prevent you from actually getting proficient enough in a language to ever unsub. They reset your cl…

This is the owl image I got when I finally made it to the “delete my account” page: https://drive-thru.duolingo.com/static/owls/sad.svg

Re: TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe

#125

Post by RobotToaster »

clydethefrog wrote: post #15
RobotToaster wrote: post #2

> On Friday, the regulators released a preliminary decision that TikTok’s infinite scroll, auto-play features and recommendation algorithm amount to an “addictive design” that violated European Union laws for online safety. How is that any different to Facebook?

The European Commission bases its investigation on the rules laid down in the Digital Services Act (DSA). This European legislation, introduced in 2022, imposes strict requirements on companies offering digital services in Europe. In addition to TikTok, the social media company Meta, Facebook's parent company, is also under the investigation. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_... Quoting: >T…

Thanks.

Let's hope they don't chicken out.

Re: TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe

#126

Post by cedws »

llbbdd wrote: post #47

Idk how to feel about this specifically but I kind of hope they come for Duolingo next. They are up to some similar mind hacking shit to keep people from leaving. There's the downright abusive streak management tactics that have become a major part of their brand and PR, and the lesson plans seem designed to plateau to prevent you from actually getting proficient enough in a language to ever unsub. They reset your cl…

Duolingo is a shitty company, they don’t care about education, only retention mechanics and dark patterns. The CEO called his employees communists because they wanted to make the product beneficial for users instead of a money extraction machine.

Re: TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe

#127

Post by wackget »

eggy wrote: post #71

I'm skeptical about banning design patterns just because people might overuse them. Growing up, I had to go to the theater to see movies, but that didn't make cliffhangers and sequels any less compelling. Now we binge entire Netflix series and that's fine, but short-form video needs government intervention? The real question is: where do we draw the line between protecting people from manipulative design and respecti…

> It's whether we trust adults to manage their own media consumption

HA!

Re: TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe

#128

Post by Andrex »

cmsp12 wrote: post #122
llbbdd wrote: post #47

Idk how to feel about this specifically but I kind of hope they come for Duolingo next. They are up to some similar mind hacking shit to keep people from leaving. There's the downright abusive streak management tactics that have become a major part of their brand and PR, and the lesson plans seem designed to plateau to prevent you from actually getting proficient enough in a language to ever unsub. They reset your cl…

actually language learning is complex enough that they could build new products/ features to retain users and still deliver value. But for some reason they don't

The AI video call feature is kinda neat, even though it's pretty buggy.

Re: TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe

#130

Post by AnssiH »

xienze wrote: post #48
fifilura wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt they would if this becomes illegal. EU laws are slow, sometimes stupid, but consistent.

The problem I have with the way the EU doles out these punishments is that they like to spring them on tech companies after years and years of radio silence and then suddenly it’s “hey TikTok, we just determined you’ve been breaking the law for years, pay us a couple billion please.” Like, where were they years ago saying “hey TikTok, we think your design is addictive and probably illegal, you need to change or face…

> Like, where were they years ago saying “hey TikTok, we think your design is addictive and probably illegal, you need to change or face penalties.”

That is basically what happened today. No penalties have been issued at this point.

Also Commission had sent various requests for information to TikTok in 2023 before they opened these proceedings in early 2024 (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...) - this didn't come out of the blue.

Post reply on HN