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

nytimes.com

321–330 of 568 posts

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

#321
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…

>I had to go to the theater to see movies, but that didn't make cliffhangers and sequels any less compelling.

The argument against tiktok (and smartphones in general) is not that experiences above a certain threshold of compellingness are bad for you: it is that filling your waking hours with compelling experiences is bad for you.

Back when he had to travel to a theatre to have them, a person was unable to have them every free minute of his day.

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

#322
post #85

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…

I noticed Youtube shorts also seems to update the feed based on how long the last video you watched. If you're scrolling quickly then stop to watch a dog video long enough the next one is likely to be another dog video.

Facebook does the same. The longer I dwell on an image post, the more likely the next batch of posts would be similar

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

#323

It's such an odd request to make something less enjoyable. If the EU wants a time limit on app use they should just impose it themselves.

I think you dont consider that this is politics and why it s conducted through press releases

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

#324
post #51

The press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_... > At this stage, the Commission considers that TikTok needs to change the basic design of its service. For instance, by disabling key addictive features such as ‘infinite scroll' over time, implementing effective ‘screen time breaks', including during the night, and adapting its recommender system. Most of these seem concretely doable,…

the subtext here is the eu is just teeing up to fine tiktok, x and other social media

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

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenin described this exact process a century ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Stage... The 'choice' is an illusion. To quote Lenin, the state becomes the 'executive committee of the financial oligarchy.' The refusal to regulate isn't a a choice or a policy failure; it's the inevitable outcome of the system .

well my mother was born in the USSR, so I don't have to accept Lenin's position because my people suffered his "inevitable outcome of the system" for the choices he made. I'd rather fix up this existing system then day dream about a glorious socialist revolution that always seems to end in blood.

What if this current system also always ends in blood, as history has shown so far?

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>every country that has imposed a considerable sugar tax has seen benefits across the board Is there strong evidence for that? The first study that pops up if I search this suggests otherwise, that it could increase consumption of sugar-substitutes and overall caloric intake. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tjnut.2025.05.019 >we need guardrails to defend against There is no "we". You say that I and others need it, and you…

This is honestly a very silly take. You could make the same counterargument about any tax of any kind, or really any law of any kind. Like it or not, we do need both taxes and laws to function as a society.

And for most it would be a valid point. Nozick makes the best case for this.

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

#328
doom scrolling is not so much an addiction as it is a disease * , as heroin has fully functioning addicts who live very normal office work lives over a complete career. doom scrolling renders the patient unable to fully partisipate in society or do meaningfull work or interact in ways that promote there self interest. I get emails daily from people looking for work, which are clearly written by someone/thing, other than the person, and when I insist on turning a call into there job interview, they freeze up, and hang up after any request for detail. Waste products and they never even got the chance to get ripped out of there minds and have a wild good time first.

* juvinile dimentia

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