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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

#401

Post by _DeadFred_ »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #213
saubeidl wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. It's capitalism that's the core problem. Social media is just a particularly nasty outgrowth.

its not necessarily "capitalism". Think about how Myspace was, or early Facebook, that was capitalism but didn't have the same issues. Its the "lean startup" culture as well as books like "Hooked, how to build habit forming products" - Nir Eyal. The dark lean startup pattern is where you break down the big picture rationale for the company. You extract metrics that contribute to the company's success (i.e. engagement…

Early Facebook's behavior was what they wanted to do/be. But upon exposure to what others were doing Facebook chose to adopt patterns/techniques that repulsed them originally because Facebook didn't want to be out competed (so Capitalism). Capitalism/competition is what led their behavioral change.

Go back to the recent removal of lead article discussed here. In Capitalism government regulation has to level the playing field or else all players will stoop to poisoning society/the world because if they don't then someone else will gain and advantage. Even hyper rightwing Rayliner agreed Government intervention is the ONLY way to prevent Capitalists from injecting poison into their products if that poison gives a competitive advantage.

What leaded gas was to the boomers brains social media is to current youths' brains.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46865275

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

#402

Post by programjames »

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.

> Making your media as engaging as possible is the basic imperative of any media company.

Not so. I think your logic is that engagement often leads to dollars, and the "basic imperative of any company" is to make dollars. There are pro- and anti-social ways to do this. You can create better art for your video games, or you can insert gambling mechanisms. You can spend more time designing your cinematic universe, or you can put a cliffhanger after every episode. You can make a funny skit, or you can say, "wait for it... wait for it... you can't believe what's about to happen!" Optimizing for engagement, for the sake of engagement, is necessarily anti-social. It's trying to redirect attention towards your media without actually making the user experience better in any way.

Legally, the basic imperative of any company is to make dollars, as long as it is prosocial. You should not expect the government to turn a blind eye to scam centers or disfunctional products. The same applies to the media landscape.

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

#403

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

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 thing is, people who live in Europe actually like that companies aren't allowed take advantage of people in every way concievable.

I have an ideia, if you don't like regulation that protects people why don't you fuck off to your own country and advocate for it in whatever dystopian hellhole you came from?

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

#404

Post by programjames »

dinfinity wrote: post #186
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…

Exactly. It's not that the producers or distributors (of food, content, etc.) are not malicious/amoral/evil/greedy. It's that the real solution lies in fixing the vulnerabilities in the consumers. You don't say to a heroin addict that they wouldn't have any problems if those pesky heroin dealers didn't make heroin so damn addictive. You realize that it's gonna take internal change (mental/cultural/social overrides to…

Doesn't the government try to ban heroin?? You have to live in the real world, not your ideal world, and in the real world people are not perfectly rational agents. They make mistakes. Each and every mistake could have been avoided if the individual just had a stronger will, was a little smarter, a little more prudent, or took a little more time to think, but just because mistakes can be avoided and some people are better at avoiding them than others does not change the fundamental issue: drugs, tobacco, gambling, and TikTok are trying to increase the rate at which mistakes are made. Wouldn't you rather live in a society where they aren't out to get you?

I think there's an argument that can be made, like, "well maybe 10% of the time people consuming alcohol is a mistake, but I just use it recreationally. The government shouldn't prohibit all drinking!" And sure. If it is really the case that people would take the same actions even if they had more time to think things through and were in a good mental state, the government should probably not be intervening for the 10% of the cases that doesn't hold. But you have to draw the line somewhere.

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

#405

Post by WarcrimeActual »

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…

I'd go as far as saying every film ever made should have to have a concrete ending and stand on it's own. I am however much less into "freedoms" as I get older and see people become crackheads for apps and the worst form of capitalism possible where market breaking hoarders and resellers get rich denying people both necessities and wants in equal measure. I'm also radical enough to think that it should be illegal to own more than one house, more than one car for every licensed member of a household, and reselling anything for profit. I guess put simply, I hate resellers. I hate hanging threads, and I hate people that design things to constantly leave people wanting or "needing" more.

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

#406

Post by 7tflutter7 »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #361
7tflutter7 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But in Europe you can drink at 14. Age of consent is also 14. That is hilariously general. You're conflating a lot of different nations there. In practice; its different depending on the nation, consent is usually 16 and alcohol is ~18.

I was referring to Germany, the largest EU nation. But sure let's look at percentages.

40% of the EU has age of consent 14 or lower. (Germany, Italy, Portugal, etc.) 78% of the EU has it at 15 or lower (France, Sweden, Denmark, etc.)

No 'official line' at 18-21.

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

#407

Post by mghackerlady »

sidharthv wrote: post #334
BoxOfRain wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my gripes with youtube at the moment is that they break my adblock filters to remove shorts more often than they break the filters stopping the actual ads.

I naively searched in the mobile app settings for a way to turn off shorts, before realising there will not be one.

If you're on android it's better to just use revanced or something

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

#408

Post by seydor »

SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #74
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #44

Might be a generational thing, but I never understood the "shorts" (in any format on any social network). I can watch a 9 hour video on GTA games without problems (not in one sitting, but in parts), but 3 'shorts' in a row with not enough info and explanation to be interesting makes me close any of the 'shorts' apps (tiktok, youtube shorts, instagram....). (eg, the 9 hour video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Faxpr_…

You likely weren’t wired into it while your brain was developing. There’s clear scientific evidence that these shorts trigger addiction-like behavior[1]. The detrimental effects on a kid’s brain development can be inferred[2]. A reasonable argument could made that it’s not so different from things like nicotine, alcohol or other drugs when it comes to child brain development. I believe these companies know this and w…

actually the study does not show a trigger by shorts, instead they hypothesize the addiction exists based on previous studies done on internet/video game addictions.

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

#409

Post by dlcarrier »

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…

To that end, there's no logical reason entertainment exists at all. There's a biological advantage to finding community members entertaining, but anything that broadcasts that entertainment to another community is just exploiting human nature.

By the logic of the court decision, anything that is entertaining should be banned, from movies to TV shows to any news that makes any analysis whatsoever.

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

#410

Post by piekvorst »

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…

What's illegal about intentionally making money for being addictive? "Unfair"? Maybe. But not illegal.
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