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The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

politico.eu

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Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#411

Post by SecretDreams »

allan_s wrote: post #347
Funes- wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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…

Thats too vague and drastic, every "show HN" is an ads, for notoriety at least. I would prefer we draw the line at "content pushed by a third party against payment must be displaid only with regard to where it is displaid and must not use information about to whom it is displaid" . I.e displaying an ads about Sentry on a ads technica page, find . Displaying an ads about hiking equipment on ars techbica because i made…

Nah, advertisement in general. Just make the internet a paid sub. We don't need influencers or snake oil ads. And without ads and influencers, there is no reason for meta to try to keep people infinitely stuck to their phones. They can get their cut just from a paid sub.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#412

Post by foxygen »

qsera wrote: post #345
Funes- wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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…

Banning ads is not possible. But we can build a culture that knows how to avoid ads and the technology to enable it.

Don't you realize that those with money are the ones who have the means to build a culture? How do you propose we compete with Jeffrey Epsteins who have a shit-ton of money to spend on pushing whatever narrative they want to? Just look around and see the "culture" we're in.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#413

Post by johnnyanmac »

jbxntuehineoh wrote: post #390
BurningFrog wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> mmmmm yes thank you daddy may I have some more?

If he's from the US, he's technically correct. That's the high level argument of Citizens United.

Granted, that's proven to be a horrible concept. So let's repeal that.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#414

Post by mrob »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #364
mrob wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An industry group is not a disinterested party. Minimum competition requirements can be imposed. As I said elsewhere in the thread, a solution being imperfect is not a good reason to leave the problem unaddressed.

> An industry group is not a disinterested party. No, but they can convince a disinterested party that people aren't aware of because that's actually true. > Minimum competition requirements can be imposed. But that brings back the original problem. Company invents new patented invention, how does anybody find out about it? > a solution being imperfect is not a good reason to leave the problem unaddressed. This is th…

Advertising causes great harm. Banning advertising, or better yet, making it economically nonviable without restricting freedom of speech, solves this problem. As already pointed out by several other posts in this thread, the purported benefits of advertising are already available through non-harmful means.

But I acknowledge that there may be edge cases. My point is that the existence of edge cases does not mean we should permit the harm to continue. Those specific edge cases can be identified and patched. My suggestion is a hypothetical example of a potential such patch, one that might possibly be a net benefit. Maybe it would actually be a net harm, and the restriction should be absolute. The specifics don't matter, it's merely an example to illustrate how edge cases might be patched.

Your objections to this hypothetical example are nit-picking the edge cases of an edge case. They're so insignificant in comparison to the potential harm reduction of preventing advertising that they can be safely ignored.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#415

Post by paulcole »

jjcm wrote: 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…

Laws should be strict!

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#416

Post by SecretDreams »

gchamonlive wrote: post #268
recursive wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Serious question. The internet was a mistake.

How can your question be serious if you already decided the internet was a mistake? I don't think it was. Far from it.

Good things get tainted over time. The internet was a good thing. Today, not so much. It's probably a net negative for most youth in terms of cognitive development. Aka a drag on the future of humanity.

Maybe it could be good again, but not on the path it's on.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#417

Post by mh2266 »

relaxing wrote: post #373
mh2266 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Moving away from chronological allows them to feed you more addicting content, as does the infinite feed. They involved together because they work together synergistically. It’s of no value to point out both can technically be implemented independently. That isn’t what happened, and even if it did it would still be user hostile.

I still don't understand. If TikTok simply showed the user every single TikTok ever created, strictly in reverse chronological order, it would still be an infinite scrolling UI.

The sorting algorithm that they choose isn't what makes a UI infinite scrolling or not, they're completely orthogonal. In MVC architecture terms they're model and view respectively...

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#418

Post by phyzix5761 »

Funes- wrote: post #158
jjcm wrote: 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…

If these companies fail because their quality isn't good enough to support paid subscribers isn't that effectively the same thing as people choosing to not use their platform?

Those of us who dislike these practices already have a choice. We can simply not use the service. So why remove that choice from others who don't mind ads and are willing to use the free version?

Also, forcing a paid only model raises the barrier to entry. Most of the world lives on less than $10 a day, so a subscription would effectively limit access to relatively wealthy people by global standards.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#419

Post by nine_k »

Funes- wrote: post #158
jjcm wrote: 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 think this would have an opposite effect. An addicted customer is a customer willing to pay. Think about gambling or tobacco. BTW OnlyFans somehow lives off subscriptions.

OTOH I gladly pay for YouTube Premium.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#420

Post by phyzix5761 »

Funes- wrote: post #190
thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #177

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.

99.9% of businesses in the US are considered small businesses. If we look at all the businesses in the world small businesses make up an even larger percentage. In most parts of the world these are people with 0-5 employees; meaning they're just families and individuals trying to make ends meet.

If you remove the ability for these people to advertise there goes their livelihood. I understand the desire to want to punish big evil corporations but all this will do is strengthen them because they're the ones who have enough capital to survive something like this and scoop up the marketshare left behind by the millions of small businesses that will fail when this is implemented.

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