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The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

politico.eu

431–440 of 979 posts

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#431

[flagged]

Because it impacts me, and I don't want it to impact me anymore?

Not because I use these products, but because I have to live in a society with these people, and if they are unhappy and angry, that impacts me directly, through various second-order effects.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation is freedom? Peace is war, too, I guess.

Regulation took away your freedom when it took asbestos out of your house right? Please be serious.

Viewing this thread, and the back and forth of it, I need to say something.

Advertising sucks in this thread too.

By that I mean, people are not speaking plainly, and it is almost ingrained into our societies now. We "sell" our position in a discussion, a debate.

For example, regulation does curtail freedom. Completely.

However, lack of regulation can harm people. Significantly.

Thus, regulation does not give people more freedom, it can however reduce harm.

In democratic nations, often judges will weigh these two things, when determining if a regulation passes the muster. In my country, we have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and often judges will determine if a challenged regulation is of sufficient, required public good, whilst not overtly reducing freedom of the individual.

This is a mature conversation.

Advertising is not.

A primary example I've seen in the US, is people calling immigrants "undocumented" on one side, and "criminals" on the other. This is, of course, a reduction in nuance, and designed to advertise a position merely with the words used. And it is a societal sickness.

An illegal alien is just that, and using that term confers no judgement, for it is simply fact.

There was a time when politics were not first and fore in terms of the use of language. The current trend to be "touchy feely" over use of language, and find great offense at the use of language, does nothing other than stop debate. Reduce discussion. Cause schism instead of collaboration.

And there are those around us, which prefer that.

Don't feed them.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#433
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can definitely imagine the Soviet Union making arbitrary rules about which genocides were recognized and ‘protected’, and which were not.

But can you imagine a Soviet court declaring a law to be in violation of human rights?

Yes, much like the EU, they would regularly over-ride the ‘opinions’ of their subordinate states.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#434
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain I can’t even have a meal at a restaurant, get groceries or go to IKEA without someone trying to sell me lottery tickets. They really need to regulate that.

Is your country allowed to ban it even if the EU in general allows it?

Allowing something isn't the same as enforcing it to be allowed. If there's regulation, like with ending roaming charges between countries, then it's required to be followed simultaneously across the EU. If there's a directive, like the Working Time Directive, goals of legislation are set out and each member state is required to introduce legislation that implements it. There's also decisions (for one country for one issue), recommendations and opinions (obviously non binding).

There's also the Court of Justice which is the highest court, but only in EU matters. National courts can refer cases to it, or the commission/member states can bring cases against other member states, if they believe they are not following EU law. This would mean either they are not following a regulation, or that the state has not fully/correctly implemented a directive into their own national laws.

As I understand it, there's no specific regulation or directive aimed at gambling itself. There's things tangentially related (data protection, anti money laundering etc). But since there's no regulation or directive saying "gambling must be allowed", there's nothing stopping a member state banning it completely if they so wish.

The only point in which the EU might step in would be if the law was somehow discriminatory or inconsistent (e.g. we ban all foreign gambling sites, but not our own, we ban lottery tickets but not state run casinos, etc).

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#435
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…

If you want to ban something, then ban free social media. There has to be a minimum charge like 100$ or something a month (keep it tax free for all I care), to access any social media service with more than a 1000 members.

How does one start a new social media network in that world? Cover the $100 fee, essentially making it free to use? It would kill any competitors from being created, at least until inflation makes $100 worthless.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's what case law is for. Modelling the zillion little details. One party claims something breaks a law another claims it doesn't, and then we decide which is true. The only alternative is an infinitely detailed law.

Case law, also known as common law, is a British legal tradition. Most of the EU does not follow the common law tradition. There may be supreme courts, but the notion of binding precedent, or stare decisis as in the US legal system does not exist. Appeal and Supreme court decisions may be referenced in future cases, but don't establish precedent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent > The equivalent doctrine under…

Yeah I'm really glad we don't have common law where I live. It makes the law way too complicated by having all these precedents play a role. If the law is not specific enough we just fix it.

Also it breaks the trias politica in my opinion. Case in point: the way the Supreme Court plays politics in the US. It shouldn't really matter what judge you pick, their job is to apply the law. But it matters one hell of a lot in the US and they've basically become legislators.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Netflix (even before they introduced ads) optimized for watch time. Higher watch time = higher retention for subscriptions (even when prices go up).

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#438
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…

Show HN isn’t advertising in the sense they are addressing: paying a website for space to promote something. There’s no payment taking place with Show HN. If no payment can be made, websites have to find another revenue model besides advertising, and don’t have an incentive to keep users addicted and endlessly consuming.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#439
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…

Define "advertising". I feel this might be hard to do.

For example is my blog talking about Windows considered as Advertising? What about my blog discussing products we make? What about the web site for my local restaurant?

If I add my restaurant location to Google maps, is that advertising? Are review sites?

If I'm an aggregator (like booking.com) and I display the results for a search is that advertising?

I assume though you meant advertising as in 3rd party advertising. So no Google ad words, no YouTube ads etc. Ok, let's explore that...take say YouTube...

Can creators still embed "sponsored by" scenes? Can they do product placement?

Your suggestion is, unfortunately, not implementable. Leaving aside the merit for a moment, there's just no way that any politician can make it happen. Google and Facebook are too big, with too much cash to lobby with. And that's before you tell everyone that the free internet is no more, now you gotta pay subscriptions.

And, here's the kicker, even if you did force users to pay for Facebook and Google, it's still in their interest to maximize engagement...

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation is freedom. Think of ads powering the web as current day's lead in gas.

Regulation is freedom? Peace is war, too, I guess.

Can you think of a singe freedom you enjoy that isn’t in one way or another supported by some form of regulation?
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