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The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

politico.eu

331–340 of 979 posts

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#331

I hope this goes through. Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive. It isn't a fair fight and the existence of infinite feeds is bad both for people and democracy. Regulating consumer products that cause harm to millions is nothing new.

> Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive. Or you could just shut the phone off and/or not install the app. It's a simple solution, really, and one that is available at your disposal today at no cost.

Honestly, at this point, just ** OFF to all the useful idiots that just relentlessly block any possible solution to the overbearing power of social media companies with this crooked vision of individual responsibility.

They are trying to block a harmless mechanism, that has proven to be addictive, and that companies have willfully exploited for this very reason, proceeding to wreak havoc to various facets of society while concentrating never before seen levels of wealth in the process.

Wealth that in many case makes them more powerful than the government that should regulate them, which in many cases drank the kool-aid of self-policing these companies have gleefully distributed and lobbied for for years. So, enough with this fine principled arguments about slippery slope that don't exist. What is your comment good for, if not for maintaining a status quo that makes these companies even reacher at the expense of everyone?

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#332
post #158
post #64

Here's the actual statement from the European Comission: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_... It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling , but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it. The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain feat…

>"well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?" Hear me out: banning advertising on the Internet. It's the only way. It's the primordial domino tile. You knock that one over, every other tile follows suit. It's the mother of chain reactions. There would be no social media, no Internet as we know it. Imagine having TikTok, YouTube or X trying to survive on subscriptions alone in their current iter…

I agree [0]. Well, taxed rather than banned. But we’re in the same postcode.

[0]: https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver...

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#333
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Strictly necessary cookies — These cookies are essential for you to browse the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Cookies that allow web shops to hold your items in your cart while you are shopping online are an example of strictly necessary cookies. These cookies will generally be first-party session cookies. While it is not required to obtain consent for these cookies, what t…

Right, and then the legal teams tell me they don't care, and we should put up the cookie banner anyway. I feel like you didn't read my original comment.

I've built software used by EU governments, and we don't use a cookie banner for our login cookies either.

If your legal team genuinely suggests that, it's likely your company uses the login cookies for some additional purposes.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning ads? That's just so authoritarian and absurd. I hope you never become king

Have we come to such a low cultural point that ads are seen as some kind of basic human right? Fuck ads. What's absurd is tolerating them and the damage they do to media, consumers, kids, lesser and/or more honest businesses, culture, products, and so on all the way to the Windows and macOS system UIs.

Freedom of speech is a basic human right.

Ads are speech.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#336
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will you ban that without infringing on free speech. That is a thing in the US and a lot of countries outside the EU.

"Commercial speech" being protected by free speech laws anywhere is abhorrent. The advertising industry, in and of itself, seems abhorrent to me. It's one of the worst things humans have come up with, ever.

You make your feelings clear, but don't give any arguments for it.

That won't convince anyone.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#337

Good. Infinite scrolling is a scourge. Give me back my time ordered feed that if I navigate away stays on the page where I left off.

What does ranking vs. chronological having to do with infinite scrolling?

You can have a ranked paginated UI. You can also have an "infinite" (until you run out of items, but this is not different for ranked) chronological UI.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#338
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Commercial speech" being protected by free speech laws anywhere is abhorrent. The advertising industry, in and of itself, seems abhorrent to me. It's one of the worst things humans have come up with, ever.

I'm kind of curious how people think a new business should make its existence known to prospective customers.

They don't think of that. At all.

Many don't think businesses should exist in the first place.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we come to such a low cultural point that ads are seen as some kind of basic human right? Fuck ads. What's absurd is tolerating them and the damage they do to media, consumers, kids, lesser and/or more honest businesses, culture, products, and so on all the way to the Windows and macOS system UIs.

Freedom of speech is a basic human right. Ads are speech.

Ads aren't free speech, they are the absence of it, because you are paid for a preselected speech.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes" This is not such an unusual thing in law, as much as us stem-brained people want legal systems to work like code. The most famous example is determining art vs pornography - "I know it when I see it" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it )

Which is of course the only way it makes sense to write laws, since code can't model infinite reality. Not, at least, until our machine overlords arrive.

Not just reality. Adversaries trying to find loopholes. Luckily the git history of law goes back millenia so its had some time to adapt to humans.
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