531–540 of 979 posts
I hope this goes through. Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive. It isn't a fair fight and the existence of infinite feeds is bad both for people and democracy. Regulating consumer products that cause harm to millions is nothing new.
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>"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’ll probably be crucified for this but I think the free w/advertising model is not fundamentally evil, and gives poor people access to lots of shit that they otherwise wouldn’t have, keeps the rest of us from death by 1,000 monthly subscriptions.
Addiction is a precursor to poverty. If we accept the domino theory of "online advertising -> addictive design" then the fundamental evil becomes clear. Holding people in poverty in order to profit from their time and attention.
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>The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes" This is not such an unusual thing in law, as much as us stem-brained people want legal systems to work like code. The most famous example is determining art vs pornography - "I know it when I see it" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it )
"I know it when I see it" notoriously does not work in law, either. Instead, we have the Miller test.
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…
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…
The wording is vague enough so they canm milk american/chinese companies for fines in a few months. EU being sad again
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…
I’ll probably be crucified for this but I think the free w/advertising model is not fundamentally evil, and gives poor people access to lots of shit that they otherwise wouldn’t have, keeps the rest of us from death by 1,000 monthly subscriptions.
Lets say I'm reading a laptop review. Show me adds from the laptop manufacturer or of websites that sell said laptop. People reading the review are likely in the market for a laptop so it makes sense to show it. At most you could probably narrow it down to the country so a German doesn't get shown a Best Buy ad but thats as far as I would go.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ll probably be crucified for this but I think the free w/advertising model is not fundamentally evil, and gives poor people access to lots of shit that they otherwise wouldn’t have, keeps the rest of us from death by 1,000 monthly subscriptions.
> gives poor people access to lots of shit that they otherwise wouldn’t have Addiction is a precursor to poverty. If we accept the domino theory of "online advertising -> addictive design" then the fundamental evil becomes clear. Holding people in poverty in order to profit from their time and attention.
It's interesting how there may be an implicit assumption that imposing more rules on tech will lead to positive outcomes. From my perspective, technology is like reality itself: very difficult to control, with countless ways to achieve the desired result while circumventing the rules. And what's the actual result? Just look at the market capitalization of European companies compared to US companies... Or maybe it jus…
How many days before the only legal social media in the EU is the official government run platform?