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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

#421

Post by Findecanor »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #174

This comes from the same EU that's wholeheartedly embracing gambling across their member states, gambling mind you that children can just as easily jump into with their phones and some will, but devastating for grown-ups just as much. They're not alone in this by any means, America has also opened their doors for all forms of gambling like Kalshi which now even sponsors news networks of all things. The EU has this di…

Every member state has its own laws for it, and AFAIK all of them now regulate (or ban) online gambling more or less.

There were many startups here in Sweden in the early '00s, and I believe they had taken advantage of a legal loophole which has since been plugged. Regulation has tightened. Players have to be 18 y/o, use digital ID and not be registered as a gambling addict. But I still find the industry to be depraved, to be honest.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#422

Post by mrtksn »

foxygen wrote: post #405
mrtksn wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who pays for the costs of those and why?

There are many Mastodon servers run by ordinary people simply because they want to. And before the shit-show the internet has become, there were many forums and IRC channels, absolutely free, and with 0 ads.

Very low traction on these. Let me know when there’s something that people actually use in tens or hundreds of millions and random people are just providing the infrastructure out of pocket and spending all their time on this without expectation.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#423

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mrob wrote: post #414
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

No, the problem is that the "edge cases" will swallow the rule if you make an exception for every instance where advertising is actually serving a purpose, but if you don't make those exceptions then you would have created so many new problems or require so many patches that each carry its own overhead and opportunity for cheating or corruption that the costs would vastly exceed the benefits.

> The specifics don't matter, it's merely an example to illustrate how edge cases might be patched.

Only it turned out to be an example to illustrate how patching the edge cases might be a quagmire.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#425

Post by jason_oster »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #371
jason_oster wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising is a monetary transaction between an advertiser and a publisher. The customer (or product) is not involved in the transaction; it is their attention that is being bought and sold. That's a different model than paying a technical writer to do technical writing.

You're contrasting authorship with distribution. The advertising equivalent to paying a technical writer is paying an ad agency to create the ad. The customer isn't a party to that transaction either. But now how are you distributing either of them?

I am not making such an error. Paying a technical writer for labor is not the same as paying a publisher for conversions. The scenario you posed was "hire someone to write the documentation and then someone else to distribute it." Those are two parties, each of which is paid independently for services rendered. The customer is not selling their attention, here. The customer is (presumably) purchasing a product and is reading the documentation to understand how to operate it.

Advertising is not distribution. Publishing is distribution, and advertising sometimes comes along for the ride.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#427

Post by derektank »

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…

You don’t even have to move towards a full ban. Instead, simply tax companies that offer ads in proportion to how long users spend on their site. This will naturally encourage websites to get users in, experience whatever content it is that they’re offering ads against, and then GTFO.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#428

Post by foxygen »

mrtksn wrote: post #422
foxygen wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many Mastodon servers run by ordinary people simply because they want to. And before the shit-show the internet has become, there were many forums and IRC channels, absolutely free, and with 0 ads.

Very low traction on these. Let me know when there’s something that people actually use in tens or hundreds of millions and random people are just providing the infrastructure out of pocket and spending all their time on this without expectation.

Moving the goalposts much? Of course there aren't any free services serving millions currently, how could they, when Facebook/X spends millions to make sure everyone stays on their platform? Which non tech savvy would want to move to a platform without all their friends? That's the gotcha with social networks, once you grow big enough, it is really hard for people to move off of it.

Still, funny how you ignored IRCs/forums that I mentioned. Those were used by MANY people, and could scale infinitely. You are literally arguing against something that has already happened.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#429

Post by ozgrakkurt »

memish wrote: post #323
ktm5j wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you're not the type of person who's struggled with addiction, but it can do awful things to you. Yes, including being addicted to scrolling social media. It screws with your head to the point where you don't know how to live in the moment anymore. IMO it's a feature that's not valuable enough to justify the fact that it contributes to poor quality of life for people who can't put it down.

Would you ban alcohol and video games and Netflix?

Alcohol would have been definitely banned if it was feasible

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#430

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

tokyobreakfast wrote: post #239
gchamonlive wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infrastructure costs money. There's no way around it. I'm all up for banning ads. But there should be another viable business model to replace it.

HTTP Error 402: Payment Required was created for a reason. Maybe we need to rethink micropayments.

Project Xanadu will be ready any decade now.
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