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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

#501

Post by direwolf20 »

SirMaster wrote: post #212
wackget wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's way more complex than "no self control". Social media is addictive by design and is peddled at such scale that it is literally impossible to ignore. It's also backed by billions upon billions of dollars. Pitting the average person up against that, then blaming them for having "no self control" once they inevitably get sucked in is not a remotely fair conclusion.

People keep saying this and yet, I have never used any of these short form video services or really any social media outside of desktop websites like hackernews and reddit. Even on reddit I just subscribe to a few niche and mostly technical subreddits. It seems extremely easy to ignore it all.

You've learned they're bad for you. What if you grew up with it from the age of 3? You'd grow up with a dependence on it and no chance to see that it's bad.

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

#502

Post by direwolf20 »

wolvoleo wrote: post #120
embedding-shape wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way is criminalizing the victims, another is going after the platforms. I'm willing to wager a bet on who will be the ones receiving the enforcements here :)

Yeah like X was raided in France 2 days ago. For different reasons by the way. I do think the enforcement will be focused on the platforms too.

X France was raided for creating and distributing child porn, not for being addictive

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

#503

Post by direwolf20 »

maxehmookau wrote: post #192
kranke155 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be able to pick your own algorithm. It’s a matter of freedom of choice.

So I choose an entirely chronological one, containing only that content created by my close friends and family. Except, I'll never be given that choice.

The EU thinks you should. It's required for very large online platforms under the Digital Markets Act.

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

#504

Post by direwolf20 »

morshu9001 wrote: post #368
7tflutter7 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument falls apart in the EU though. Where it's legal for 14 year olds to drink alcohol.

That's not because EU countries want people to make their own decisions, it's because not so many people in EU think alcohol is bad for kids.

And that's because they're much more responsible with alcohol. Americans get introduced to alcohol as a rebellion from oppression the moment they go to college. Germans have it with dinner with their parents sometimes when they're 12. It's like how Facebook got boring when your parents were on it.

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

#505

Post by embedding-shape »

direwolf20 wrote: post #502
wolvoleo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah like X was raided in France 2 days ago. For different reasons by the way. I do think the enforcement will be focused on the platforms too.

X France was raided for creating and distributing child porn, not for being addictive

He meant that as an indicating on how they're enforcing things. If the whole "arrest the victim" thing was as grand-parent "joked about", they wouldn't go after X France, but instead whoever was viewing the content instead.

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

#506

Post by direwolf20 »

seydor wrote: post #316
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…

The best way for tiktok to respond to this , is to add some "cooling down" delay between videos. The EU commision will boast about this achievement, but effectively tiktok users will spend MORE time on their app.

You presume a tiktok user is there to watch a set number of videos, so a delay makes them stay longer. I counter they stay until they're bored.

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

#507

Post by direwolf20 »

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #256
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 don’t think the addictive argument is being made in good faith. Any platform with an infinite scroll feed and titillating content is intentionally made to be like a slot machine. Just keep swiping and maybe you’ll get that little dopamine hit. The idea that TikTok is dangerous, but Twitter, Instagram, porn, alcohol, and Doritos are fine doesn’t come across as an internally consistent argument. I think that the real…

All of those things are regulated in the EU, and the EU is better for it.

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

#508

Post by direwolf20 »

morshu9001 wrote: post #377
enaaem wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling mechanics are also banned for certain ages and in some countries for everyone. We don’t say that it’s just a game, and people should just control themselves. Without going into the specifics of this case, design pattern intervention have existed for a long time and it has been in most cases desirable.

And there are grey areas for gambling that have been settled on, like how video game "loot boxes" were recently reconsidered as gambling in some places (besides just being stupid).

You know it's stupid because you grew up immersed in the message that gambling is bad. Humans don't know that innately. The target audience for these platforms doesn't know it yet. The target audience is still growing up, immersed in whatever message the platform wants to send.

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

#509

Post by comboy »

D-Machine wrote: post #463
comboy wrote: post #341

I'm too late but I'm surprised HN crowd treats tiktok as some weaponized addiction machine. Youtube used to have a working recommendation system and it was usable too. Is it really bad to give me woodworking and learning chinese videos if that's what I'm interested in at the moment? If somebody is not interested in anything specific and just want to zone out, is it really different if he scrolls through tiktok or wat…

HN is becoming increasingly pro paternalism and censorship (largely invalidating the "Hacker" in its name). I'm not sure if this is natural / organic or some kind of astroturfing, but it sure is odd and doesn't really match the rest of the overall (historical) ethos of the site.

I've been wondering about that yesterday quite a bit, I've came to the conclusion that a big part is kind of anti-China sentiment on HN. I think the discussion would be quite different if we were talking about instagram reels/youtube shorts.

Plus there seem to be not many users, most crowd here gets dopamine elsewhere (like coding), tiktok seems to be mostly associated with brain-rot and not learning and diving into new topics.

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

#510

Post by direwolf20 »

thisislife2 wrote: post #87
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…

The only reason the US and Europe are targeting TikTok is because they don't own the platform. Facebook and WhatsApp (owned by Meta) are responsible for so much hate politics and social unrest around the world ( Facebook and Genocide: How Facebook contributed to genocide in Myanmar and why it will not be held accountable - https://systemicjustice.org/article/facebook-and-genocide-ho... ). Amazon, Google and Microsoft…

The US government banned tiktok because it was the only major platform that didn't censor information and footage of the Gaza genocide, but I don't think the same reason applies to Europe.
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