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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

#811

Post by ajam1507 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #742
xg15 wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but if we're talking about incentives and "primordial domino tiles" then compensated advertising is what createa the incentives for the whole attention economy and addictive design in the first place. Feel free to keep doing "pro-bono" advertising, but shareholders definitely wouldn't.

>compensated advertising is what createa the incentives for the whole attention economy Why would you not want to keep people engaged and even "addicted" in order to keep them as subscribers and make them upgrade to more expensive subscriptions?

Do you have a specific example of a subscription based platform that is as insidiously addicting as the ad supported ones?

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#812

Post by ajam1507 »

dahart wrote: post #797
fsflover wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why it wouldn't.

Even though I gave an example of a huge swath of advertising that isn’t “compensated”?

Surely you're just being pedantic by pointing out that platforms can advertise themselves without paying money to themselves. If those same advertisements were on another platform they would be compensated ads.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#814

Post by gchamonlive »

lich_king wrote: post #313
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.

I think that's revisionism. Social media existed before online advertising. Usenet was quite massive and vibrant, countless IRC servers were maintained by volunteers, web-based forums covered pretty much the same ground as Reddit does today. All supported by the goodwill of individuals, non-profits, and businesses such as ISPs that actively wanted the internet to be interesting because they were making money by selli…

You can't compare 2000s social media to what it's become today. It's orders of magnitude larger today both in terms of volume of data and cultural impact.

That's no revisionism. Infrastructure always costed money, but it was relatively inexpensive to develop a social network back then. Instagram had a team of 12 if I'm not mistaken before being bought. So it was easier back then to justify what was pocket change to corporations. The potential payoff was incredible.

But eventually the money printing machine needs to start printing money.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#815

Post by KolibriFly »

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…

The Commission seems to be saying: not without guardrails

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#816

Post by KolibriFly »

poncho_romero wrote: post #25

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.

The tricky part is defining harm without sliding into paternalism

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#817

Post by KolibriFly »

shevy-java wrote: post #556

Personally I don't like infinite scrolling - but the EU also needs to stop wasting time and energy on trying to micro-manage everything. We already had that disaster where pop-ups fly out "do you want to accept those cookies". That is just a usability nightmare. People are forced into extensions, just to stop wasting their time here. Also, while I dislike infinite scrolling, why should the EU regulate the design of a…

The Commission isn't (at least from what's published) saying "pagination must look like X" or "buttons must be Y pixels tall." They're saying platforms have to mitigate systemic risks tied to their design choices. That's more like regulating outcomes and incentives than dictating UI details

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#819

Post by gchamonlive »

b112 wrote: post #432
AmbroseBierce wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a very good response. I agree completely.

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

When I say regulation is freedom, I'm borrowing from dialectics. The only way we figured out how to move forward is to leave something behind.

So when you see regulation, the absence of a given right, let's say to carry a deadly weapon in public, you have to see this is the tailend of the synthesis of a long debate, where we agreed that the risks of arming the population outweighs the benefits of self protection.

So regulation is freedom because freedom is choice, and to choose is to leave something behind. Regulation is just the manifestation of the consequences of that choice.

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