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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

#391

Post by swiftcoder »

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #279
wat10000 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference in terms of frequency and availability. Physical design of stores gets you when you're shopping, then it's done. Organized religion tends to get its hooks into you once or twice a week. Marketing, PR, ads, all sporadic. Social media is available essentially 24/7 and is something you can jump into with just a few seconds of spare time. If more traditional addiction machines are a lottery you c…

I don’t know what personal religious experience you’re speaking from, but my church is a little more oriented toward helping people overcome addictions and personal failings. If you’re in Europe, then I think the messaging in the mosques about consuming alcohol are pretty strict. I can’t speak from firsthand knowledge.

> personal failings

I'm sure your specific church is lovely, but depending on the church, "personal failings" may include such gems as "being gay", depression, autism, PTSD, poverty...

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

#392

Post by hahn-kev »

tantalor wrote: post #305
Aurornis wrote: post #76

The headline overstates what actually happened. Ironic that they’re using clickbait headlines on an article about a service using tricks to get people to engage with something. They haven’t concluded anything yet. It’s early in the process and they’re opening the process of having TikTok engage and respond. The article starts with a headline the makes it sound like the conclusion was already made, then the more you r…

Which headline are you referring to? The headline on the article is, > Europe Accuses TikTok of ‘Addictive Design’ and Pushes for Change What's overstated about that?

The headline I see on HN is "TikTok's 'Addictive Design' Found to Be llegal in Europe"

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

#393

Post by comboy »

pinnochio wrote: post #362
comboy wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do get addicted to bikes. Not even questionable. But of course that's not a charitable interpretation, and on that - yes I don't think personalized content is comparable to heroin. What is so evil about personalized content? I'm sincerely trying to understand. Your whole argument here is based on the premise that TV is OK because it's not personalized.

Are you a sophist, or have you made any actual attempt to understand the concerns here?

Sincerely want to understand it, now that there's more comments it seems I'm not the only one but in minority. Currently most interesting dimension to me is how big part of HN is effectively against open access to information and supporting censorship but of course within this discussion context that's me misrepresenting those people who only want to save lives.

Suriously though, decent part of posters probably were around when WWW was effectively born. Tell me it was not addictive and not full of harmful content. I'm pretty happy it was not banned despite, unlike TV, providing personalized information that you were seeking.

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

#394

Post by Barrin92 »

Havoc wrote: post #372

The trick bit is that addiction and showing people what they want to see are near indistinguishable. It's optimizing for same thing basically and don't think it'll be possible to legislate a clear distinction

There's a big difference between healthy wants and addiction. The latter involves compulsion and craving. The clearest sign anyone is addicted to something is that they use something precisely when even they don't want to.

I'd even say it's orthogonal to the content and what someone wants to see. You can design an app full of crap that's addictive purely because of its reward mechanisms, and on the other hand you can design something that discourages addiction while having high quality content, it's not optimizing for the same thing. People get addicted to mechanisms, not to content, the same way you can enjoy a nice scotch but the addict goes for the five dollar handle of vodka. The latter doesn't want the vodka, he wants the alcohol.

Addiction in many ways erodes genuine higher-order wants and only leaves stimulation. I'd not be surprised if people who watch 8 hours of TikTok a day don't even care what they watch any more.

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

#395

Post by Lerc »

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…

I don't think we should allow any form of abusive software, addictive, dark patterns, bait-and-switch. They all need to be robustly regulated.

At the same time I don't think you can demonstrate harm without good evidence.

Making money can not be used as a criteria unless you want to draw the conclusion that no company can turn a profit and be ethical at the same time. It would amount to demanding an outcome that you don't believe us possible.

I think considering overly broad criteria, like say, infinite scroll applied selectively to a few is just arbitrarily targeting candidates for reasons unstated outside the criteria.

The rules need to be evidence based, clear, specific, and apply to all.

Cracking down on ticktok while The Guardian has a bunch of dark patterns. Or the NYT, who is reporting on this while at the same time attracting people with online games that have an increasingly toxic user interface.

Tiktok may suck, but so do a lot of other businesses that escape scrutiny. I worry the harms attributed to TikTok are magnified to allow them to be a whipping boy drawing the focus allowing systemic issues to persist.

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

#396

Post by svara »

bondarchuk wrote: post #142
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…

It's also very much an exercise in framing, though. Making your media as engaging as possible is the basic imperative of any media company. But choosing to call this specific instance of it "addictive" has everyone up in arms.

Everything's on a spectrum, but there's a point where you're so far along on the spectrum that it makes sense to call it something else.

See, "quantity has a quality of its own".

Sometimes you have to leave the theoretical view aside and just look out the window. How are people using this? Is it hurting them? What can we do about it?

I don't like blanket bans, but putting TikTok and, say, a publishing company marketing novels, in the same category because they strive for an audience, doesn't clarify anything. It just confuses the discussion.

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

#397

Post by touristtam »

beAbU wrote: post #322
dmix wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is amazon using the same thing??? I can't count the number of times I am getting recommended the EXACT same type of product I just purchased.

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

#398

Post by 7tflutter7 »

fifilura wrote: post #337
7tflutter7 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So social media is pure 'poison' with 0 positive impact but other addictive media like video games are tools with noble utility? The World Health Organization has reached the exact opposite conclusion. The ICD-11 doesn't include 'social media addiction.' It doesn’t exist clinically. What they did include is 'Gaming Disorder', classifying your 'sword' alongside substance abuse and gambling. My point is governments cou…

It is not about that. There is surely lots of hypocrisy in particular around alcohol. In most parts of the world TBH. The discussion is whether companies are treated equally with regards to a particular law.

Ya that's my point. The particular law in question - 'Online platforms that are creating any negative effects on mental wellbeing, like addiction'

This is Fortnite, Minecraft, Netflix, Online Shopping, Dating Apps etc.

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

#399

Post by nozzlegear »

saubeidl wrote: post #251
Quarrelsome wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it does that because of US hegemony empowering its equity to be extractive. We've lost a lot of organisations in the UK due to aggressive and leveraged buyouts. That's not necessarily reflective of capitalism as an abstract but geo-political reluctance in regulating its very worst excesses. I appreciate your position but I can't help but feel like it's like saying cars are crap because they breakdown too easily,…

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 .

Citing Lenin for a critique of capitalism's trajectory is a little bit like asking a prosecutor to write the defense's closing argument. He was a smart guy, but he wasn't some disinterested analyst writing a symposium on capitalism versus socialism; he was a revolutionary leader trying to build up support and justification for overthrowing the system.

But even if we overlook his inherent bias, he was just plain wrong. He wrote that capitalism had reached its final stage through imperialism, and that, as you said, state capture via financial oligarchy was inevitable. That was over 100 years ago, and history has produced welfare states, labor protections, financial regulation, the SEC, Germany's codetermination laws, even the Nordic social democracies. None of those should be possible under Lenin's framework for capitalism.

(Disclaimer: I'm all for common sense regulation of capitalism.)

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

#400

Post by tridentboy »

eddd-ddde wrote: post #389
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…

I have to say, it is _extremely_ impressive when a tiktok I watched reminds me of some other tiktok, so I go and search for a very loose description of the tiktok, and the first result is 95% of the time what I wanted to find. I don't think any single other platform has as good a search feature as TikTok does.

oh wow, you're really lucky. around my friend groups who use tiktok, the main complaint is how bad the search is. unfortunately for us, getting a specific video is almost impossible =(
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