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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

#91

I gave a talk at PyData Berlin on how to build your own TikTok recommendation algorithm. The TikTok personalized recommendation engine is the world's most valuable AI. It's TikTok's differentiation. It updates recommendations within 1 second of you clicking - at human perceivable latency. If your AI recommender has poor feature freshness, it will be perceived as slow, not intelligent - no matter how good the recommen…

Great insight. Any thoughts on RisingWave?

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

#92

I gave a talk at PyData Berlin on how to build your own TikTok recommendation algorithm. The TikTok personalized recommendation engine is the world's most valuable AI. It's TikTok's differentiation. It updates recommendations within 1 second of you clicking - at human perceivable latency. If your AI recommender has poor feature freshness, it will be perceived as slow, not intelligent - no matter how good the recommen…

[flagged]

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

#93
post #5

I don't understand the legal side, but after gaining and kicking a Tiktok addiction during and after COVID, I believe it. I was there 4-8 hours a day and tried to scroll videos while washing dishes (and during nearly any other activity).

Is it worse than walking around 8 hours a day listening to music? Having headphones on while washing dishes and walking the dog? I think it is, but it's hard for me to articulate without getting into teleological judgments.

I have headphones on 24/7 and while outside, but if I didn't have them I wouldn't exactly mind, I'd probably widh I wouldn't have to hear the loud noises (cars, bus engine sound etc)

I feel like with Tikatok etc. its really just that your entire attention both audio and visual is stuck in that thing, it's not an auxiliary activity

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

#94
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…

> It's whether we trust adults to manage their own media consumption, or if we need regulatory guardrails for every compelling app

I think there's a wide regulatory spectrum between those extremes--one that all sorts of governments already use to regulate everything from weapons to software to antibiotics.

It's easy to cherry-pick examples where regulation failed or produced unexpected bad results. However, doing that misses the huge majority of cases where regulation succeeds at preventing harms without imposing problematic burdens on people. Those successes are hard to see because they're evidenced by bad outcomes failing to happen, things working much as they did before (or getting worse at a slower rate than otherwise might happen).

It's harder to point to "nothing changed" as a win than it is to find the pissed-off minority who got denied building permits for reasons they disagree with, or the whataboutists who take bad actions by governments as evidence that regulation in unrelated areas is doomed to failure.

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

#95
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…

Short form video has been a total break from previous media and social media consumption patterns. Personally I would support a ban on algorithmic endless short form video. It's purely toxic and bad for humanity

Your short form comment is in violation of EU Directive 20.29A. Agents have been dispatched to your home to collect your devices.

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

#96
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 real question is: where do we draw the line between protecting people from manipulative design and respecting their ability to make their own choices?

We do it for alcohol and cigarettes already: taxes, ads & marketing restrictions, health warning mandated communication.

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

#97
post #51

The press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_... > At this stage, the Commission considers that TikTok needs to change the basic design of its service. For instance, by disabling key addictive features such as ‘infinite scroll' over time, implementing effective ‘screen time breaks', including during the night, and adapting its recommender system. Most of these seem concretely doable,…

> Most of these seem concretely doable, and maybe effective. But the core of the addictiveness comes from the "recommender system", and what are they supposed to do there? Start recommending worse content? How much worse do the recommendations have to be before the EC is satisfied?

I agree with you, this is rather odd. And sort of missing the problem.

All apps are about attention. The percentage of the time spent using the app when it shows you your good content (Whatever it is that you're interested in) determines how addictive it is. And the percentage of time it's showing you bad content (Ads, 'screen time breaks', manual scroll time, more ads, loading screens, sponsor ads, filler content (youtube for instance is full of this), etc) counteracts the addictive properties because nobody likes it.

What's the end goal here? Right now TikTok is winning the attention economy race against the other apps because it's more focused on the user's preferred content. Is that what we want to reduce? To show more uninteresting other stuff on the screen? Like blank 'wait 5 minute' statics? Or just more ads?

I get that we don't want a generation of socially inept phone addicts, but this won't solve anything I fear. People will still want the good content, forcing the most customer friendly (it feels wrong to say that about TikTok) app to become more enshittified is a bewildering solution.

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

#98
post #5

I don't understand the legal side, but after gaining and kicking a Tiktok addiction during and after COVID, I believe it. I was there 4-8 hours a day and tried to scroll videos while washing dishes (and during nearly any other activity).

Is it worse than walking around 8 hours a day listening to music? Having headphones on while washing dishes and walking the dog? I think it is, but it's hard for me to articulate without getting into teleological judgments.

I would say it's slightly worse but they're both not great, as someone who was addicted to being fed something at all times, I was really avoiding every having to spend time with myself if that makes sense. That being said, it's mostly about intention. Are you excited to finally listen to that amazing album or audiobook on your walk after work? That's usually more healthy than when I would scroll on tiktok during my day to avoid feeling anything other than dopamine and avoid bad feelings. It's really about self awareness for me.

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

#99
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short form video has been a total break from previous media and social media consumption patterns. Personally I would support a ban on algorithmic endless short form video. It's purely toxic and bad for humanity

People are way too comfortable banning things these days. This is where the term 'nanny state' comes from. A subset of the population doesn't have self control? Ban it everyone. Even if it's a wildly popular form of entertainment with millions of creators sharing their lives, who cares we know better.

> A subset of the population doesn't have self control? Ban it everyone. Even if it's a wildly popular form of entertainment

Like gambling?

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

#100
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…

Short form video has been a total break from previous media and social media consumption patterns. Personally I would support a ban on algorithmic endless short form video. It's purely toxic and bad for humanity

Any good research papers on the impact of short form video on the human brain? This is a major cause for the attention crisis we're facing IMO.
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