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

nytimes.com

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

#291

Post by amarant »

CJefferson wrote: post #246
amarant wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like this narrative. I'm a person, and HN is the only social media I use.I tolerate this one because I find the addictiveness off-putting, but unlike other social media HN doesn't engage in that much. I'm not some sort of prodigy or anything, just a random schmuck. If I can do it, anyone can. People just really like blaming others for their own vices instead of owning up to having a vice. HN is a vice too. On…

That feels like it applies to so many things we make illegal, scams of all kind, snake-oil medical sellers, baby powder full of asbestos. Sure, people can handle all of these things, but we've decided, as a society, it's better not to allow them. So then the question is, is it better to let these things happen, as a society?

False equivalence. Unless you can point to an instance where tiktok claims to cure cancer or erectile dysfunction with their recommendations.

To be clear: I don't like these addictive recommendation engines. That's why I avoid them. Some people do like them. I don't want to take their fun vice away from them. I also don't want them to take my fun vices away from me!

Yes it'd probably be better for my health if I stopped with a few of them. I don't care. I like it. It's my health, and I'm an adult. If I can choose my vices, why shouldn't others be allowed to? Will they make choice I wouldn't have? Of course! That's the point! It's THEIR choice!

This logic does not apply to scams or firearms, there's no informed consent in getting shot. It also doesn't apply to asbestos baby powder(wtf?)

Getting scammed is not a choice. Scammers lie to you. Recommendation engines never claim to do anything other than recommend stuff you're likely to interact with based on previous behaviour. They give you exactly what's on the package label. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want something like that, but I also don't understand why people eat surströmming. I say let them, anyway. I can put up with the stink, it's not the end of the world.

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

#292

Post by AreShoesFeet000 »

james_marks wrote: post #268
Jensson wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it good that you need self control to not get slop? Its much better if you can just turn that off and relax rather than having to stay alert to avoid certain content that it tries to trick you to serve you more slop. Distancing yourself from temptations is an effective and proven way to get rid of addictions, the programs constantly trying to get you to relapse is not a good feature. Like imagine a fridge that…

Basically, I want to set boundaries in a healthy frame of mind, and have that default respected when my self control is lower because I’m tired, depressed, bored, etc. “The algorithm” of social media is the opposite.

I think your reply has me convinced. You really can’t expect to have such self control all of the time. Damn.

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

#293

Post by lsuresh »

jamesblonde wrote: post #45

I gave a talk at PyData Berlin on how to build your own TikTok recommendation algorithm. The TikTok personalized recommendation engine is the world's most valuable AI. It's TikTok's differentiation. It updates recommendations within 1 second of you clicking - at human perceivable latency. If your AI recommender has poor feature freshness, it will be perceived as slow, not intelligent - no matter how good the recommen…

Thanks for the Feldera shoutout Jim.

For anyone else, if you want to try out Feldera and IVM for feature-engineering (it gives you perfect offline-online parity), you can start here: https://docs.feldera.com/use_cases/fraud_detection/

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

#294

Post by Jensson »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #288
Jensson wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess I needed to rail against every type of capitalism at the start for you to appreciate my position earlier. No, your position earlier was wrong according to what you are saying here, you said Facebook and Myspace didn't have these issues so its not capitalisms fault. But Facebook and Myspace existed under much less regulated circumstances than exists today, so your original statement would make it seem you wa…

> But Facebook and Myspace existed under much less regulated circumstances than exists today sorry, what regulation are you talking about here? Afaik regulation in the US is pretty much the same back then as it is now. Worst case scenarios are usually slap on the wrists like when Snapchat lied to its users about ephemeral messaging and got fined a pathetic amount. > No, your position earlier was wrong according to wh…

> I just don't like blaming capitalism in the abstract because it doesn't have to be like this. We can change it.

But saying that Facebook or Myspace wasn't that bad does nothing to support this position, so why did you bring those up?

> So simply saying "capitalism bad" with an implication that we need to tear down the system isn't good enough for me

Read my post, I didn't say "capitalism bad", I said its good from the start. Its you that never understood why I objected to you and not the other way around.

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

#295

Post by Etheryte »

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…

You could make the same argument about sugary beverages, that you can't legislate intelligence, yet every country that has imposed a considerable sugar tax has seen benefits across the board. This of course omits a lot of nuance, but the main takeaway remains the same. We all have that monkey brain inside us and sometimes we need guardrails to defend against it. It's the same reason we don't allow advertising alcohol and casinos to kids, and many other similar examples. (Or at least we don't allow it where I'm from, maybe the laws are different where you're from.)

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

#296

Post by luxuryballs »

wackget wrote: post #132
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…

You are not acknowledging the fact that the companies producing these addictive apps are very much doing it intentionally. They are specifically making it as engaging as possible because that's how they make money . And they have billions of dollars to sink into making their products as irresistable as possible. The average person has zero chance against all-pervasive, ultra-manipulative, highly-engineered systems li…

The government could spend effort on making a documentary and funding a study on brain scans and a little campaign to show everyone the damage and educate rather than just wielding the ban hammer. Especially because it’s often possible that they can have a different motive for ban hammering even if the reason given is valid.

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

#297

Post by 7tflutter7 »

mylifeandtimes wrote: post #171
dmix wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> A subset of the population doesn't have self control? please fix this to A subset of the population who has not yet reached the age of consent I think society broadly accepts that there are different expectations for children and adults; the line is currently officially drawn somewhere around 18-21 years old.

But in Europe you can drink at 14. Age of consent is also 14.

So, no, there is no official line at 18-21. Especially in the EU.

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

#298

Post by luxuryballs »

trcf23 wrote: post #170
wackget wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not acknowledging the fact that the companies producing these addictive apps are very much doing it intentionally. They are specifically making it as engaging as possible because that's how they make money . And they have billions of dollars to sink into making their products as irresistable as possible. The average person has zero chance against all-pervasive, ultra-manipulative, highly-engineered systems li…

And it’s also mostly targeting children/teenagers. As a parent you can add limitations on cinema, binging series. You can’t on TikTok. I’m quite glad that there is a form of control preventing a company from a different part of the world that don’t really care about the mental health or wellbeing of my kids to creep into their life like that… As a parent, it’s not a fair fight and I should not have to delegate that t…

This strikes me as potentially a hardware problem more than a software problem.

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

#300

Post by bondarchuk »

jonners00 wrote: post #281
bondarchuk wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fundamentally don't think governments should do a careful cost-benefit analysis of everything in society and then ban it if it falls on the wrong side. Just on basic principles of personal freedom. That's why the "addiction" framing is so important, because it implies that citizens don't have agency, and so justifies the authoritarian intervention. PS if we apply your analysis to video games they surely would have…

With social media, the cost benefit analysis doesn't deliver marginal results, just less stark/concentrated results. Drink driving is self evidently bad even though 99 times out of 100(?) it does no harm, because one time out of a hundred its consequences are catastrophic. Social media on the other hand is harming essentially 100% of the population in initially milder ways - even if you don't use it you're forced to…

> * even if you don't use it you're forced to live in a dumbed down society where wealth and power is becoming concentrated in the hands of those [...] *

Exactly the same applies to TV but where is all the handwringing about that? Remember those stats about people watching 7 hours of TV a day? Those people need some serious help too. What's happening is clearly just the old mass-media-supported order refusing to yield power to new media used by younger people. Governments couldn't care one bit about false information[1], nor about zoomers getting brainrot, it's all about controlling the flow of information.

[1] ("disinformation", another nice example of framing which ignores the fact that people have agency)

edit: the system is escaping my asterisks automatically now, anyone know how to get italics now?

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