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The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

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Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#771

Post by direwolf20 »

mqus wrote: post #623
NeutralCrane wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying someone for promoting your product or message. I don’t think it’s all that complicated. Talking about your own product on the internet is fine. Paying to promote your message wouldn’t be. TikTok and Reddit and Instagram aren’t trying to keep people endlessly scrolling because they are free-speech fanatics. It entirely comes down to “more time in app = more revenue”. Take away that monetization method and you t…

But what if I rent a space on your website that I can fill however I want? And then, coincidentally, I praise my products on that rented space. How is that different from... other hosting offers?

Judges and juries are people with common sense, not robots you can easily trick. What did you advertise to clients? It would still be legal to host someone else's content; it would have to be clearly marked as theirs. None of this nonsense where newspapers rent out sections of their website and brand name to advertising companies (IIRC Forbes Business is this — a completely different company renting a sub–URL and sub–brand)

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#772

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

chickensong wrote: post #461
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we must decide if we cripple freedom to protect the weak Well, we do want to protect the weak (that's a function of society, after all), and I'm totally okay with removing infinite scrolling from social media apps (or "crippling freedom" as you put it). I don't see any significant benefit it provides to individuals or society. Indeed, it has a negative impact on both. So it sounds like a win/win.

It's not that infinite scrolling is good, I'm just not a fan of the legal solution because it sets precedent and is yet another law. I'm not an anarchist, I think some laws are needed, but I want society to be more engaged and responsible for our collective future, not helpless and dependent on laws and government to save us from ourselves.

> I'm just not a fan of the legal solution because it sets precedent

The precedent for "creating a law against an ongoing problem which is bad for societies and individuals and has no redeeming qualities" was set thousands of years ago.

> I want society to be more engaged and responsible for our collective future

Unfortunately, some members of society resist that, like here. Companies have thusfar failed to eliminate the 'infinite scroll' dark pattern out of engagement and responsibility for our collective future. "Plan A" has failed. So now we try "Plan B".

This isn't to say that we shouldn't strive for everybody to be more engaged and responsible for our collective future. Just that the appeal to decency doesn't always work (e.g. here).

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#773

Post by braiamp »

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?"

You can't. You don't need to specify how to comply with the law, just that generally a goal must be met. That's good lawmaking there, since it's flexible enough to catch all future potential creatives way to break it. I remember someone comment about how working at MSFT as a compliance officer, dude was going around saying that it's not the letter of the law that must be followed, but the spirit of thereof. They rolled over him and released the product nonetheless. Almost immediately came the EU investigation and that crap had to be reversed an put in accordance to what the stated goal of the law is.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#774

Post by direwolf20 »

tokyobreakfast wrote: post #78
ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just stop using heroin. Just stop eating fast food. Just stop going to the casino. Just don't smoke anymore. We know plenty of things are quite bad for us, and yet we find them difficult to stop. Somewhat famously difficult to stop. I think telling people, "just don't..." trivializes how difficult that is.

It's a phone. Put it in the trash. You will not go through physiological withdrawal symptoms. The amount of people in here right now clamoring for legislation to keep them away from electronics which they themselves purchased is mind-bogglingly insane.

The fact that you had to prefix "withdrawal symptoms" with the modifying adjective "physiological" means you are perfectly well aware there are withdrawal symptoms and other problems with your plan.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#775

Post by direwolf20 »

tokyobreakfast wrote: post #96
happytoexplain wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unrealistic.

It's unrealistic to not install TikTok? Laws are not created to be malleable about the population's trivial mental illnesses. We don't need new laws on the books because some people are incapable of turning their phones off. They have addictive personalities and will fulfill this by other means, while everyone high-fives claiming success.

Actually, yes. Phones come with pre–installed apps which can't be uninstalled. Some of them come with TikTok pre–installed.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#776

Post by iso1631 »

dwedge wrote: post #616
kerkeslager wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's drop the charade where you pretend you don't know what advertising is. You're smarter than that, and your playing dumb act would be more persuasive if you didn't ask leading questions that clearly show you know the answers. This isn't a good faith argument. I mean are you really asking whether creators embedding "sponsored by" scenes is an ad as if you don't know? C'mon, don't insult your readers with this nons…

I agree with you but I also agree with the person you wrote to. There's a section in Naomi Klein's No Logo about banning advertising, and what that would actually mean in effect. It essentially comes down to not allowing, for example, different cereal brands to have different designs because then the design of the box becomes a kind of advertising. It might sound nit picking, and it absolutely is, but if we banned In…

> It's much like how in the UK they banned advertising for tobacco, and years later had to expand it so that supermarkets cannot even show the products visibly because the brand has their own inherent advertising that's visible if you can see it.

So they got rid of 90% of adverts, then adjusted it to get that upto 99%

Meanwhile you're saying "lets use brainwashing to get 8 year olds hooked because we might not get 100% on the first attempt"

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#777

Post by foxygen »

andsoitis wrote: post #709
kaibee wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage/compute/etc were orders of magnitude more expensive at the time, so the fact that it was 3-4 million is uh, pretty impressive? You could host a Matrix server for your 1,000 closest friends for basically no money.

You're absolutely right compute, network, and storage have continued to decrease in cost and accessibility. The scale issue is enabling billions of consumers. It takes time and effort and skill. It turns out that there are relatively skilled people who are willing to give their time and resources freely relative to billions of consumers in the market.

You know IRC isn't just one giant server serving every single user, right? Same for Mastodon. There were/are many different servers. Again, you are arguing against reality. IRCs/Forums have existed for decades, with hundreds of thousands of active users, with no problem whatsover. Scaling to billions is easy, since with more people using it, more people would be interested in hosting a server.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#778

Post by foxygen »

mrtksn wrote: post #483
foxygen wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

No I am not moving the goalposts, the alternative shouldn’t just exist it should actually do the job and by doing the job, I don’t mean that if people made the effort to use it, it can do the job. I mean people should be using it. Also, no people are not stupid and its not their fault for not using it.

You are completely ignoring the impact that having billions of dollars at your disposal to spend on keeping users addicted to your platform can have. There is no way a free platform can compete with X/Instagram/TikTok, even if such platform had a better product(which they do btw). Just look at Whatsapp/iMessage, both are terrible apps, there are MANY better options, with way more features, and somehow they are still the most used messaging apps in the Western.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#779

Post by fatherwavelet »

andybak wrote: post #205
saidinesh5 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not saying legislation is a good solution but you seem to be making a poetic plea that benefits the abusers. Only if you believe everyone else has no agency of their own. I think most people outgrow these things once they have something more interesting in their lives. Or once they're just bored. Back when this thing was new, everyone was posting pictures of every food item they try, every place they've been to…

I don't believe people have no agency. But I do believe we overestimate our own agency. Or more importantly society is often structured on the assumption that we have more agency then we actually do.

We have agency but it is almost trivial to hijack.

Setting up the argument between agency/no agency misses the point IMO.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#780

Post by throw0101c »

atwrk wrote: post #756
throw0101c wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Advertising = compensating someone to promote a product / company. So basically all full-time Youtubers who do in-video ad reads, including, but not limited to: MKBHD, Linus Tech Tips, Veritasium, Smarter Every Day, minutephysics, Computerphile, Tom Scott, Patrick Boyle, The Plain Bagel, Sailing La Vagabonde, Sailing SV Delos, Gone with the Wynns, etc .

There is no fundamental right to a particular business model. This wouldn't mean this type of content would disappear - for every single business producing such content there's a bunch of people doing the same for free. And then there's patreon et al., and funding for education etc.

> This wouldn't mean this type of content would disappear - for every single business producing such content there's a bunch of people doing the same for free.

For some definition of "same" which may or may not mean "equal" (in the sense of quality, quantity, etc).

It brings to mind some rich people running for public office and putting forward the idea because they're rich they can't be influenced/lobbied or something. Or the general public sometimes complaining about politicians giving themselves raises: well, if you only pay peanuts you're going to get monkeys running things (more than already).

There is more opportunity for different types of people and channels to happen because the money allows people to recompensed for their time/effort. Free only scales so far when you have rent/mortgage, groceries, kids, a partner you may wish to spend time with, etc, to worry about.

> And then there's patreon et al.,

Except for MKBHD and Linus Tech Tips, all (most?) the channels I listed have Patreon, and still find it necessary to in-video ads because it's not enough.

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