This seems really messy. We regulate gambling because it's a specific thing, but how do you differentiate a non-addictive platform vs an addictive platform? (aside from this specific company... I mean in general). How do you "test" whether or not they're inherently addictive?
At least in this specific instance, they can look at the blast radius and make a determination. But this feels legally unsatisfying in the general case
It took decades to clearly define gambling enough to regulate it as we do now. Note that pinball was banned in major cities for decades because it was too similar to gambling devices.
And even with those definitions things weren't very clear. I used to work for financial traders here in Chicago. Every year there would be an unofficial snow futures market. It was a fancy way for all the traders and clerks to gamble on monthly snowfall at O'Hare.
But to my delight, the CME eventually created an actual, legal weather derivative for snow. What made one gambling and the other not? What makes any given bet a legitimate financial trade versus pure gambling? Let me know if you figure it out.
My point being that not having a clear definition won't stop us from grappling with the harms. Nor should it. Figuring out what new things really mean is always a messy process.
It's actually somewhat easy... If you are creating financial exposure to an event with no underlying risk to it, and the point is exposure itself, you are gambling.
In your snow example, those guys were gambling on snow for fun. The formal weather derivative - most weather derivatives have parties (usually players in the energy market, sometimes agriculture) who have real underlying risk and aren't entering those contracts to create risk for it's own sake. It's quite hard to get a market off the ground when there is no underlying risk - people purely speculating generally don't generate enough volume to achieve liftoff. Look at Kalshi and the volume on most bets - it's tiny.
Having "underlying risk" to something just means you invested in it before. So for you it's not a gambling as long as you... have gambled before in the other direction?
Buy bunch of call options? Gambling. Buy a bunch of put options for stock I already hold, somehow honorable investing.
It's all gambling. You can dress it to as having a social purpose, but that's not why most people do it - they want the numbers to go up. The stock market is exactly the same - middle class gambling.
> You can dress it to as having a social purpose, but that's not why most people do it - they want the numbers to go up.
Too cynical. This disqualifies basically anything you can do with money. If you put it in a bank to get interest you are solidly into the not-gambling end of the scale. And I don't think an index fund is that much more to the gambling side.
Not really. The question is are you working for your money or are you hoping the money will provide free rent for you. If the latter, you're gambling. The only reason it's relatively risk free is because the system has been thoroughly stitched up in favour of the rent seekers.
I'm confused by the ideas you're combining here. Do you think all forms of rent-seeking are gambling or just ones that involve money in a direct way?
The only risk in a bank deposit is up at the "societal collapse" level. Are you really so extreme as to say that's gambling, and if so isn't having money at all a form of gambling?
The point is largely around expectation. Sure, the base case of putting money in a bank is very safe, but the interest on that is not. Factor in inflation and its pretty easy to get negative returns on bank deposits.
If you fiddle with "investments" with the intent of making money without doing anything else, that's gambling.
Sticking money in the bank with the hope that it's still there next time you come back to it is not really gambling. You're just doing the default thing.
> Factor in inflation and its pretty easy to get negative returns on bank deposits.
But that applies to having money at all. That can't be enough to call it gambling.
> expectation, intent
I understand your argument here, but I disagree. Shifting to the bank that offers the best rate is good management, not gambling. Understanding how interest works and being motivated by interest to do bog-standard money storage doesn't turn that storage into gambling.
> without doing anything else
I don't understand how this connects at all. Maybe it reflects badly on you if you want to turn money into free income, but that doesn't make it any more or less of a gamble. It's a totally different axis.
> Not really. The question is are you working for your money or are you hoping the money will provide free rent for you. If the latter, you're gambling.
So putting money in my savings account is gambling, but investing in businesses is not.
> toeing the line
I'm not sure that phrase means what you intended to say here. From Wikipedia, [1]: "Toe the line" is an idiomatic expression meaning either to conform to a rule or standard, or to stand in formation along a line.
> What made one gambling and the other not? What makes any given bet a legitimate financial trade versus pure gambling?
Legally, it's whether the bet meets the legal definition of gambling as per the legislation applicable in your jurisdiction and any binding case law. There's no universal answer.
But from an ordinary language perspective, the difference is whether it involves an element of skill sufficient (at least in theory) to win in the long run if you possess that skill. For example:
Roulette - generally gambling
Blackjack - usually gambling these days, sometimes not if count counting is feasible
The examples don't hold in most jurisdictions (except for the stock market and if short sells are allowed).
All of the three categories are defined as gambling in pretty much all jurisdictions across the globe. However, they are classified as different types, e.g. roulette is closer to slots than poker is. Then poker can be "cash tables" vs "tournament". The main classifier difference is "game of chance" vs "game of skill", yet there are lots of nuances.
That entirely depends on the asset classes you invest in. Proper stonks? Sure, that's not gambling. But as soon as you enter the fun world of derivatives and daytrading...
That's fair. A lot of regulation seems to work this way: first you recognize a real harm, then spend years arguing over where exactly the boundary should be
This would include everything from my Spotify recommending new music that I like to my Netflix showing me similar shows. I'm a responsible adult. I want those things. I make use of them. They make my life better when I'm trying to listen to some music while I work on something or when I have exactly 2 hours of TV watching time in a week and don't want to waste it finding a new show. I do not want regulations coming along and making all of my products worse due to heavy-handed regulation.
Practically, it won't happen. These thought experiments are exercises where people imagine the websites they don't want other people using getting worse, while failing to imagine any way that it might negatively impact any site they use. Usually when I press the topic it turns into a game of whack-a-mole where the other people come up with more and more exceptions and specifics to these theoretical laws to reveal what they really have in mind, which is targeting some small handful of social media sites that they don't want other people to use. We see this with the age restriction laws where the comments come out in full force demanding ID checks and huge fines for Facebook and TikTok, but there are meltdowns whenever people realize that the regulations would be coming for their Discords, YouTube viewing, and Reddit access too.
I halfway imagine this whole exercise ending with some big show about warnings, where users who join TikTok or other websites have to click a big warning sign that says they might be addictive. If some countries start instituting laws against recommendations or personalize recommendations, the popularity of VPNs will continue to rise so people can simply use the products like they want instead of having to deal with nerfed versions to satisfy some country's laws.
Yes, anyone who has been looking for Spotify alternatives can readily tell how poor the music recommendation algorithms of competitors. I feel like the only comparative one is weirdly, youtube, since they simply have more data points and context to attach recommendations to.
Seems like you don't have to rule it out completely? "You might also like this show" is rather different than YouTube's "OMFG SHORTS WATCH THEM NOW" experience. Even if the line is fuzzy, I think many can agree some things are closer than others, and that's enough for some laws (there are plenty of other not-perfectly-testable laws out there as counterexamples).
> Seems like you don't have to rule it out completely?
This is what I was talking about in the second half of my comment: Every time I bring up the fact that these proposals would be overbearing, people start brainstorming infinite carve outs and exceptions that would exempt the products they use, but harm the products they don’t want other people using.
If these laws hit the books they’re not going to be neatly shaped to avoid the things you like and only impact the things you don’t.
While this is true in principle, my understanding is that the failure to carefully deliniate ahead of time, was why prohibition in the USA ended up being "all alcohol" rather than "just liquor".
> when I have exactly 2 hours of TV watching time in a week and don't want to waste it finding a new show.
Please please somebody explain this to me. I see it often, but fail to understand it.
The television is a tool for watching shows. The show is ostensibly the draw, and the television is the vehicle for watching it, no? So why do some people (lots of people actually) feel compelled to sit in front of the television to watch something? If there is no show that one wants to watch, why the compulsion to sit in front of the television?
I've spent countless nights in front of Netscape Navigator surfing from site to site. I'm fully aware how compelling the device-content system can be. But it's always been the content side, not the device side, that was compelling.
Sometimes the desire isn't to watch some specific show. It is to have the experience of sitting on the couch and watching something good on tv. This is why people channel surf, or scroll through netflix's collection. You want to have the experience of watching something. The goal is to be stimulated, to cure your momentary boredom.
I have the same experience with youtube, reddit and HN. I don't really know what I expect to see when I open the HN front page. If I knew, I'd navigate to that site directly. But I know I'll see something on HN. Maybe something that catches my eye.
Netflix is just the same. "I'm in the mood to watch a documentary. Let's see what they've got."
The primary activity is sitting and holding my partner. I can and do happily do that without secondary entertainment, but it doesn't take any concentration so why not add a show in to the mix.
> So why do some people (lots of people actually) feel compelled to sit in front of the television to watch something?
Because I have kids, an active life, and a lot of physical hobbies and activities.
And some times it’s 10PM, too early for bed, too tired from a busy day, and I’m looking to relax and enjoy a show with my wife for an hour.
I said two hours per week because that’s about how much it ends up being. The fact that this is attracting criticism and even a sister comment calling me “addicted” is bizarre. What even is the goal here? Shaming people for relaxing and enjoying things? Feeling a smug sense of superiority over others for their consumption choices during down time?
Is it lost on you that these criticisms are coming in the comments section of a social news site where people waste a lot of time?
No need to get defensive, not only did I not criticise you - I even commented that the phenomenon is common. I asked for someone to explain something I don't understand, and people explained. I'm a wiser person today.
There's a big difference between a completely optional "recommendations" area and a loop. If the recommended stuff happens automatically without you having to look for it, then it's a loop.
Yep - some emotional core of my being (not rational) hates ML recommendations.
I'm a happy paid user of Spotify and just ignore the recommendations (I'm not looking at a screen), and I use YouTube heavily with a browser plugin that hides recommendations (which kills the end of video loop). I get recommendations from people, and use the products for curation, bookmarking and subscriptions. They're good.
Whereas Instagram and TikTok are vacuous and useless to me - I can't make myself use them. I think my brain knows what's wrong with them, and makes a kind of disgust reaction very quickly.
I agree, there's a very low level, emotional difference between them. I'm not sure I could encode it in law, but it is different.
Cigarette packages have disgusting photos of carcenogenic lung autopsies to discourage you from smoking them, so Facebook and TikTok etc should have similar disgusting photos and vidoes of what happens to you if you use their product, that you have to watch every day before using it.
Sleep-deprived teenager autopsy: a teenager with enormous purple eye bags, phone surgically fused to their hand, lying face-down on a school desk at 3 AM.
Body-image filter ward: rows of teenage faces grotesquely stretched, pinched, inflated, beautified and looksmaxed until everyone looks like the same embalmed Instagram mannequin.
Doomscroll thumb: a gigantic swollen thumb with the fingerprint worn completely smooth from infinite scrolling. The tendon is labeled "ENGAGEMENT."
Facebook scam victim: an elderly person's wallet dissected on an autopsy table -- completely hollow, with a Facebook ad where the money used to be.
Algorithmic stomach contents: an autopsy tray containing "suggested for you": rage bait, diet videos, conspiracy sludge, influencer ads, and one photo from somebody you actually know.
Predator warning: a cute Instagram DM screen shown as an anglerfish -- friendly profile photo as the glowing lure, enormous teeth hiding behind it.
Facebook Hospital: a free to play educational game where you have to spend virtual currency for cures to the ailments Facebook gave you, like Bloaty Head from reading all the AI generated engagement porn.
Images on cigarette packages are of real patient and real impact and still smokers ignore it. A fake, stylized hypothetical image will have much lower impact.
> > “Do you use personal / behavioral data / usage to shape the user experience and recommendations, creating a reinforcing loop?”
> This would include everything from my Spotify recommending new music that I like to my Netflix showing me similar shows.
Spotify recommending music and Netflix recommending shows that are similar to what? To previously recommended music/shows. This is exactly the problem.
> I'm a responsible adult. I want those things.
This is a clear indicator that these things are addictive and are in fact gambling.
I’m beginning to think some people have forgotten what we’re supposed to be angry about and now we’re just angry at all things tech.
Spotify recommending new music to me or continuing to play music suggestions when my playlist runs out is in no way harmful. It improves my life. I lose nothing to it. I gain new exposure to music.
It’s fine. Let people enjoy things.
> This is a clear indicator that these things are addictive and are in fact gambling.
I assure you I am neither addicted nor am I gambling when I listen to new music on Spotify.
What are we even doing here? Is this some puritanical push against all things that people might enjoy?
Is it helping you find new music or is it feeding the same thing it has been feeding you in a reinforcement loop? Are you really searching or are you mindlessly taking what's on offer?
> Spotify recommending new music to me or continuing to play music suggestions when my playlist runs out is in no way harmful.
In both Netflix and Spotify any real discovery is quite well hidden, nearly all of the feeds you can get are algorithmically generated for you to consume what is beneficial to them. You get an interface pretending to offer you a choice and an algorithm behind, designed and fine-tuned by behavioral psychologists to get you coming back for more. An apparently it is doing it's job so well that you keep defending it.
The poster is implying the reinforcement at play is the problematic thing at issue, and they are assigning the word "gambling" to represent it, or so it looks like to me. I think you aren't parsing their meaning correctly because what they seem to be aiming for is extinguishing the automatic reinforcement.
You're claiming it's making your life better, ostensibly by a relative report of the hedonic response a newly introduced piece of music auto delivered to you by the recommendation algorithm invokes. The problem they hint at though is the passive nature involved. You aren't finding that new piece, it's getting pushed. That pushing incentivizes optimizing for continued engagement, an act children, intellectually and developmentally disabled individuals, as well as those in the throes of cognitive decline/impairment, are not at all well equipped to self-regulate against when pitted against paid behavioral psychologists designing maximally engagement encouraging interfaces.
The incentive, and the existence of predatible populations is the problem I take away from it. I can agree you should be free to opt-in mind, but I can also see the wisdom in a by default interface wherein engagement hacking is forbidden being the norm, and that norm coming with a minimally controversial algorithm boiling down to "chronological feed of known/subscribed to sources", followed by a link of some sort to open an interface to the recommendations.
Facebook/Insta/Shorts are absolutely not that non-engagement farming interface. Hell my grandmother toward the end was about driven mad by it, and it was all I could do to just try to remind her that just because the machine had it on offer doesn't mean she had to partake, but her community centric character made that a bit of an ordeal for her.
There is absolutely a pathological pattern to the way tech companies hunt for eyeballs to monetize, and it is a damn shame it's taken this long to start getting traction to even talk about it.
Okay but suppose you have an AI chatbot which takes in context from previous chats on what your interests are. So people just keep talking with the chatbot more and more as it gains more context. This would meet the criteria. It's not necessarily addictive though because you can stop talking with the chatbot at any time.
Maybe it's something to do with the text-based interface vs short form video. Short form video is better at activating the lizard brain
Law is about intent. It is not code, and it’s a mistake to think of law like code where you need to unit test and cover all edge cases.
In law, it is sufficient to show an intent to take actions that foreseeably caused harm. Specific laws, of course but you don’t need to cover hypotheticals that capture all abstract cases in order to to show a particular actor caused harm.
No matter how intelligent they make the AIs they work for openAI/Anthropic, not the users. Our future lies in open, local models, or we might aswell give up our computers altogether
> Okay but suppose you have an AI chatbot which takes in context from previous chats on what your interests are. So people just keep talking with the chatbot more and more as it gains more context. This would meet the criteria. It's not necessarily addictive though because you can stop talking with the chatbot at any time.
You can stop scrolling instagram "at any time", too.
Chatbots are actually a pretty poor but very relevant choice of example: they are already tuned with RLHF to be engaging and addictive to talk to. That's a huge reason why LLM psychosis is a thing, and it's a big reason why some people like using chatbots so much. They're designed to be addictive, just like facebook/instagram/tiktok are.
The problem with your examples is that it's a person lying to themselves. GP is acting as an objective third party and telling the truth about their hypothetical.
There are lots of things you really can stop at any time. I could stop eating peanut butter at any time, if I had a compelling reason.
I'm not sure about that example. I'm seeing non tech people getting very addicted to their customized chat bots. Companies are very primed to eventually nudge them to enshittify the content of the responses and it could get bad.
What I meant to say was, the standard for when we call something addictive is more hazy than that. In general, text based interfaces don't light up the brain in the same way. Psychologically it's a lot easier to walk away from a chatbot vs an infinite feed of short form video... potentially that difference could help find some kind of standard to determine addictiveness
Edit: I wonder if a hypothetical digital experience like the samizdat out of infinite jest is possible? I.e. a digital experience which hits the brain in the perfect way to produce addiction without a chemical basis
If I cut my leg off with a chainsaw, am I addicted to the chainsaw? I think what matters is the intent of the design. E.g. if they design the product to make you need more of it (while it has an actively detrimental effect)
For sunbathing in particular, do what Australia does:
- large scale public health campaigns on dangers of skin cancer. With a catchy song and slogan ("slip, slop, slap... Slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen, slap on a hat")
- schools make it compulsory for kids to have hats in summer
- regulate tanning salons, promote fake tans in preference to sunbeds
- doctors check people for skin cancers during regular checkups
And over just a few years, being very brown quickly gets associated with being reckless and unhealthy.
Stop using buzzwords instead of engaging in a discussion. Someone clarifying their position is not necessairly moving goalposts, they might have just not laid out fully their idea in the first place.
Suppose you have a video service which takes context from previous videos you watched to show you more videos you're interested in. Doesn't sound very addictive, does it? You described it in an innocuous way, but I can absolutely see that being a lead-in to a parasocial "relationship" or even AI psychosis.
> you can stop talking with the chatbot at any time.
> Do you use personal / behavioral data / usage to shape the user experience and recommendations? You do not get covered by Section 230.
If they get to exercise editorial powers, then it doesn't make sense for them to be protected from liability for choosing what to publish. If they just give you a giant firehose, then they're not doing anything editorially and they should not have any liability as clearly that's not _their_ speech.
So why leave out food industry which has provably caused health harm and killed people.
Leaving out the modern food industry but going after social media shows that this is just politics as the food industry wets the beak and greases the plan generously on both sides of the aisle.
It seems to me like Meta is being singled out here. It's likely not the start of a movement to change how we live and get rid of/diminish bad influences on our lives - because I don't think we wanna really do that - not for economic reasons and also values - we like our personal freedoms. This is simply targeting one company whose CEO is very disliked so we can all carry on with our lives and feel better about ourselves.
I do support restricting social media (not just Meta) in general for people under 18.
why do you think that implies leaving out the modern food industry, rather than suggesting that they, too, should be held accountable for flooding us with hyperpalatable foods to addict us? After all, they were literally engineered by the same people as Big Tobacco [1]
Mix this with "...of User-Generated Multimedia Content", and you might get closer.
This excludes music platforms, for example (although, Band Camp and Soundcloud might have some issues with that, admittedly).
A hammer doesn’t have a sensor to know how you are doing while you're hammering away, and it doesn't make the strike smoother to keep you hammering longer if you start seeming tired. Almost no products ever monitor you
But I can collect feedback about it compared to other hammers. If you really wanted to you could attach an IMU to the hammer and run a user study collecting such usage data. Then use that usage data to evolve the design for the next generation of the hammer you produce.
According to "Build things that last" author, 90% of the businesses evaluated are "customer first", meaning business listen to the customer and improve their produce based on that feedback.
voluntary feedback - things like "I wish the customer service was faster" - is not the same thing as measuring engagement time down to the millisecond and using that data to feed a presentation loop.
Engagement is measuring voluntary feedback. If you aren't engaged you typically either move to the next piece of content or close the app. These are the voluntary mechanisms you as a customer report how good the recommendation is.
Tobacco regulations don't regulate the general case, they regulate tobacco products. I think the same will apply to social media. There's no need to define an addictive platform anymore than there's a need to define an addictive substance. Instead all that you need to define is a social media platform. And that can be expanded/adjusted as necessary.
As for Meta itself, and proving their case - I can't imagine it'll be difficult. Whatever they get in discovery + endless testimony from various people that have worked there will already likely leave it beyond any reasonable doubt.
The best idea ive seen is if you decide what a user sees in an algorithm way (beyond “natural” ones like chronological) you are liable for the content - you are no longer a common carrier and can be sued for damages. That should be step 1.
A simple first step to me would be to update the DMCA so that platforms using engagement-maximizing algorithms lose their section 230 protections.
If you're targeting individuals with specific content algorithmically, you're hardly a dumb platform for user-generated content, and I would argue that it's well over the line that would classify you as a publisher.
In my humble opinion: anyone optimizing for "engagement" is trying to make a product inherently addictive.
Having a great product is not, but designing your product intentionally so people spend more time with it, than they wanted - intentionally not just let them write that one message, but distract them into other stuff - would qualify.
> Having a great product is not, but designing your product intentionally so people spend more time with it, than they wanted
So Netflix, Youtube, basically all ad based websites and social media should be hit with the same requirements no ? Even the news try to get engagement - it's usually not like they really care about honest and facts based reporting.
I don't think that's what most people want though. Most people are fine getting entertained and addicted. Even in China they allow them to watch 100 episodes of one minute micro dramas created by an A.I per day.
People hate boredom more than they hate becoming a zombie.
I am pretty sure most people do not want to become zombies. But entertainment is not the same as intentionally creating addictive mechanisms, the lines are blurry though.
> I am pretty sure most people do not want to become zombies
Well yeah they hate to think about themselves that way, but that's the life they choose. Now - would they like that choice to be taken away from that or substinatially reduced? Would they like to live without Netflix, Meta, Youtube, porn, junk food etc etc - or have these products completely transformed ? Seems like they wouldn't.
Agreed, why would we have lawyers and judges if it wasn't to adjudicate exactly this kind of delicate issues ? We're not in a procedural show where you can gotcha the judge with a logical backflip.
"Oh but your honor if you find me guilty then you must also shut down YouTube", he said with a confident smirk. As if it was not trivial to establish intent in the case of meta, who were probably high fiving while sharing reports titled "Basic methods to make teenage addiction go up".
NAL, but looks like they're alleging something like negligence & deception. Addictiveness is just the mechanism of harm, so doesn't require a strict general case: just actual harm and the prior knowledge thereof.
So like the general argument is "company X was causing material harm, knew they were causing harm, and actively decided to continue causing harm while covering it up."
It'd be similar to suing someone who sold a dangerous toy under the label "safe for all ages". The lawyers don't need to ban specific features (sharp edges, fast motors, etc.). They just have to argue the way it's put together harms kids, the company knew about it, and they kept lying about it anyway.
The remediations could therefore be case-specific. They don't need to ban infinite scroll in general, just ban Meta from applying it to their products, since it's known to be harmful in that context.
You can just be explicit. We already do this with controlled substances, maintain a defined regulatory schedule, and give a designated regulatory body a legally prescribed process for adding to it, removing them, or changing their classification.
But a substance is not a specific product or a corporation. Maybe you could call "infinite scroll" the substance, but then you're playing whack-a-mole with whatever new interface they cook up. But then we end up with a long list of "disallowed" software features which might not be inherently addictive
Regulating specific interfaces that have been shown to be addictive is the same as regulating specific classes of drugs. And it’s not like we have a plethora of variants of interfaces that have been equally discovered to be toxic. They are finite and enumerable as they come up.
If they have a set of characteristics that line up with social negatives, they should be disallowed or not permitted for persons under N years old (like for gambling or smoking). This doesnt solve the problem for adults of course, but its a good compromise.
I would very readily be in favor of outright banning infinite scrolling video feeds, even if its just for under 18s
Look at video games and you'll see the surface area of "addictive design" is basically infinite. People have gotten addicted to a huge variety of games, with not all that much in common.
You can still regulate the addictive features that are in common though. Paid Lootboxes for example. Isn't there some jurisdiction that already regulates those?
This, with a decent regulatory agency, wouldn't be that difficult to manage. We really could just say "infinite scrolling" and then add more things to the list as needed. We do it with firearms, medicines, drugs, vehicle parts, and about a million other things.
Those are relatively new and the president's children have financial interests in them, so they won't see any regulation any time soon. But it's certainly possible they will be regulated in the future... if we ever have a less-openly-corrupt government again.
It’s such a joke. But we also need to find ways to study and measure non-gambling digital platform addiction like 15 years ago. Thanks to algorithmic consumption, we’re nearing a whole generation of adults that have no idea how to navigate their societal agency and 3 trailing generations that had once learned and since forgot.
If we set the barrier to entry in prediction markets to an equivalent of an age/height check on entry, it would be well north of "yes, I am a mom-and-pop first time investor, I have never been here before, I know nothing except what some spammer told me and claude"
Somehow the "you can afford to lose your entire stake, you aren't leveraged, this isn't a con you fell into" is missing.
(thats aside from "you aren't an inside trader with privileged knowledge because of family ties to the WH, are you")
There are literally emails back and forth with Zuck where it's brought up that they're essentially making things as addictive as possible and it's bad for people, and he goes (to paraphrase) 'yeah, whatever. keep doing what you're doing'.
He said 'if you need info on people at Harvard just ask'. Called people who gave him information 'dumb fucks' (so, who's the next person on HN that's going to dare to reply to me that he was 'making a good point'? Do you see the Google founders saying that? Even as a joke?). Killed the competition of Instagram and Whatsapp. Copied every single Snapchat feature. Wants AI friend profiles for people. Hijacked emails https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433 . Free Basics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791198
It's hard to answer in general, but does it have to be answered in general? I could imagine supporting a policy that infinite scroll in particular is addictive and app developers can't use it without strong warning labels and time alerts.
100% yes. Remember, this is somewhat adversarial: Meta increases its products addictiveness year by year. Banning individual practices fails if the rate of that growth exceeds the impact of point solutions.
I do wonder about intent. Meta has spent 20 years paying its engineers and others vast amounts of money to Increase Engagement, and punishes those who fail to find ways to do so (over the past few years, by firing them). And it's worked! Engagement has increased greatly over the years, Meta survived the effective end of Old social media (you know, the stuff from your friends) and thrives in the new world of infinite content. Was the intent to _addict_ people? It doesn't have to be, to create a system people have become addicted to. Even if the harm is not intended, does that mean it cannot be regulated? Surely not! Let's ban infinite scroll for a start. The question of whether to punish Meta is quite separate from the question of how to reduce the harms of its products.
the engagement argument could be applied to every commercial service or product. anything that is sold is getting optimized for appeal/attraction/engagement/adictiveness.
There was a moment in time when Instagram use to show this disclaimer "You're all caught up with the posts". You could still scroll below that and it would show you algorithmic content as it always have if you choose to view it. However I don't see this feature anymore and it's gotten worse with pure infinite slop. I really appreciated that cause every time I opened the app, saw that disclaimer I would instantly close it and go about doing other things. I wish they just kept simple stuff like that around but I guess that doesn't help their metrics.
The distinction between punishment and prevention seems important here. Meta's intent might matter when deciding liability or penalties, but if a design pattern is demonstrably harmful, "we only wanted more engagement" isn't much of an argument against regulating it
have worked in analytics for a while. Engagement is a very broad category. Not all engagement metrics are toxic. For example, daily active users is healthy for a business to measure and is engagement. Commenting on Hackernews is engagement. Meta also has a wide range of engagement metrics - not all of which are problematic
I've never seen a NAXALT fallacy used for the concept of engagement metrics before.
It's not relevant to this discussion that in certain contexts, useful engagement metrics exist that supposedly aren't toxic, because it doesnt apply to the current context. We're clearly talking about the larger systemic issue of companies maximizing all engagement at all costs, and the consequences of such a policy.
I am old and used to use FB back when it was cool. Think 2010-14 period, and it was addictive even then even when it was just content from friends. Humans have deep need for connection with other humans and they will be addicted to anything that provides it given that modern society is increasingly isolated.
People are addicted to reddit, heck I know people who are addicted to Stocks app because they just need something to scroll.
Modern day addictions are complex and products are not the sole cause imo, they are just filling a void. Why that void exists needs to be answered. You remove Instagram and that time will be replaced by Reddit, tiktok or whatever product gives you some dopamine
People are lazy. If you give people an easy way to "fill that void" they will do so, even if it's detrimental to their long term health.
No social media? People will still find ways to socialize. It might not be as easy, but they will do it. Maybe you'll even see a resurgence in social clubs.
I'm delighted to see this headline because I've been comparing Facebook to cigarettes for more than a decade. The parallels are striking. Both industries knew their products were poisonous and intentionally hid that knowledge while intentionally engineering them to be as addictive as possible, and ended up marketing them directly to children.
I do wonder what’s going to happen in the future to addictive social media algorithms.
Feels like one of those things that’s so powerful, but skirts by because it doesn’t feel like it should be (like targeted advertising).
I really hope it gets legislated away or kneecapped to the point where it isn't so effective. With all the legislation coming out regarding kids and social media, I hope that people will start to draw a line to the fact that maybe adults shouldn't be hooked up to it too. I don't think all content recommendation algorithms should go away, but we need to dial down the intensity by an order of magnitude or two.
With the amount of money behind them, I regret to say I don’t think they’ll get legislated away. My best guess is that social shaming slowly dwindles their usage. It’s actively shameful to scroll at dinner among Gen Z, for example. The problem becomes using the apps alone at home.
Of course, but the users can’t be trusted to stay away from something designed to addict them.
Only real solution is regulation, although the how is still a big question mark.
I would ask, where is the line drawn between 'enjoyment and addiction.'
Is it the harm provided? Then what do we count as harm, and where is the line.
IE, There's no one stopping me from eating unhealthy, IE sugary foods, which are heavily addictive. I ride a motorbike, and I'd consider myself addicted to that, and it's got a high chance of harm, but we don't ban those. Ditto with gaming, social media, hobby XYZ.
I personally think the freedom to choose your vice is reasonable.
Instagram definitely doesn't have the option but youtube for instance does, there's a subscription tab that's collecting dust in most people's accounts.
I build a safari extension to do just this (block all content that isn't explicitly subscribed to by the user) and it's a remarkably better experience. This is my hot take that most people seem to disagree with: the vast majority of culture wars we are having today would not exist without content recommendation algorithms.
Ultimately, I think this is going to come down to proving exactly the extent of what Meta knew, and what they decided to do about it, and how that violated various laws.
I wager there is a foot gun component to this, in which Meta has tried to preemptively, either through gestures of goodwill or public reassurance or PR, institute various think tanks, work groups, and internal studies with an intent to alleviate the public's worry.
Those studies and workgroups actually could end up demonstrating that their products and algorithms and user interfaces, indeed, caused whatever this trial accuses them of doing. And if they didn't act according to what their internal data showed, I bet this is going to be the crux of the trial.
I’d bet that an exceptional legal team could make a pretty solid case based purely on the volume and testimony of behavioral psychologists on their payroll
> It could, for instance, do so on the grounds that it is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Act, which safeguards platforms from legal liability for content posted by third parties.
But then the platform decides what to show and to whom. It's not an impartial medium anymore, not since the engagement algorithms become a norm.
Meta employees reading this: whether you work in Reality Labs, ads, operations, ML compiler, LLMs, marketing, whatever. You're all complicit in the harm. Remember that.
At worst Suckerberg just pays money. So the issue is not being solved.
These US corporations operate outside the law - and they are protected by the orange king who is just too incompetent for anything other than pocketing away more money from the people, which is the only real skill he has.
Facebook causes Face Cancer: their interface and algorithm are so toxic that it causes users to React by scratching their eyes out because it hurts so much to look at and use.
This seems really messy. We regulate gambling because it's a specific thing, but how do you differentiate a non-addictive platform vs an addictive platform? (aside from this specific company... I mean in general). How do you "test" whether or not they're inherently addictive?
At least in this specific instance, they can look at the blast radius and make a determination. But this feels legally unsatisfying in the general case
It took decades to clearly define gambling enough to regulate it as we do now. Note that pinball was banned in major cities for decades because it was too similar to gambling devices.
And even with those definitions things weren't very clear. I used to work for financial traders here in Chicago. Every year there would be an unofficial snow futures market. It was a fancy way for all the traders and clerks to gamble on monthly snowfall at O'Hare.
But to my delight, the CME eventually created an actual, legal weather derivative for snow. What made one gambling and the other not? What makes any given bet a legitimate financial trade versus pure gambling? Let me know if you figure it out.
My point being that not having a clear definition won't stop us from grappling with the harms. Nor should it. Figuring out what new things really mean is always a messy process.
It's actually somewhat easy... If you are creating financial exposure to an event with no underlying risk to it, and the point is exposure itself, you are gambling.
In your snow example, those guys were gambling on snow for fun. The formal weather derivative - most weather derivatives have parties (usually players in the energy market, sometimes agriculture) who have real underlying risk and aren't entering those contracts to create risk for it's own sake. It's quite hard to get a market off the ground when there is no underlying risk - people purely speculating generally don't generate enough volume to achieve liftoff. Look at Kalshi and the volume on most bets - it's tiny.
Having "underlying risk" to something just means you invested in it before. So for you it's not a gambling as long as you... have gambled before in the other direction?
Buy bunch of call options? Gambling. Buy a bunch of put options for stock I already hold, somehow honorable investing.
No - it means you are exposed to - electricity / gas / oil prices. Or Wheat maybe?
It's all gambling. You can dress it to as having a social purpose, but that's not why most people do it - they want the numbers to go up. The stock market is exactly the same - middle class gambling.
> The stock market is exactly the same - middle class gambling.
Our entire society is based on being forced to gamble. If you don't invest your money in some capacity then inflation will eat you alive.
> You can dress it to as having a social purpose, but that's not why most people do it - they want the numbers to go up.
Too cynical. This disqualifies basically anything you can do with money. If you put it in a bank to get interest you are solidly into the not-gambling end of the scale. And I don't think an index fund is that much more to the gambling side.
Not really. The question is are you working for your money or are you hoping the money will provide free rent for you. If the latter, you're gambling. The only reason it's relatively risk free is because the system has been thoroughly stitched up in favour of the rent seekers.
I'm confused by the ideas you're combining here. Do you think all forms of rent-seeking are gambling or just ones that involve money in a direct way?
The only risk in a bank deposit is up at the "societal collapse" level. Are you really so extreme as to say that's gambling, and if so isn't having money at all a form of gambling?
The point is largely around expectation. Sure, the base case of putting money in a bank is very safe, but the interest on that is not. Factor in inflation and its pretty easy to get negative returns on bank deposits.
If you fiddle with "investments" with the intent of making money without doing anything else, that's gambling.
Sticking money in the bank with the hope that it's still there next time you come back to it is not really gambling. You're just doing the default thing.
> Factor in inflation and its pretty easy to get negative returns on bank deposits.
But that applies to having money at all. That can't be enough to call it gambling.
> expectation, intent
I understand your argument here, but I disagree. Shifting to the bank that offers the best rate is good management, not gambling. Understanding how interest works and being motivated by interest to do bog-standard money storage doesn't turn that storage into gambling.
> without doing anything else
I don't understand how this connects at all. Maybe it reflects badly on you if you want to turn money into free income, but that doesn't make it any more or less of a gamble. It's a totally different axis.
> If you fiddle with "investments" with the intent of making money without doing anything else, that's gambling.
There are lot of value investors which sit at home do stock picking occasionally. They don't work for their money. I don't think they are gambling.
The only investors that fits your non gambling definition seems to be the active investors who take part in the companies. But most investors don't
> Not really. The question is are you working for your money or are you hoping the money will provide free rent for you. If the latter, you're gambling.
So putting money in my savings account is gambling, but investing in businesses is not.
I suspect I misunderstand your point completely.
It's certainly not well defined today; memecoins, prediction markets, sports betting, and more are all toeing the line of gambling.
> toeing the line I'm not sure that phrase means what you intended to say here. From Wikipedia, [1]: "Toe the line" is an idiomatic expression meaning either to conform to a rule or standard, or to stand in formation along a line.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line
It's possible I misinterpreted your statement though, and if so: apologies.
Prediction markets are 100% gambling. It's just synonym acrobatics.
I say this as someone who had a lot of fun GAMBLING during the World Cup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOptJl8Xkx0
Toeing the line? There is no underlying risk to any of that except the bet itself. Of course it is gambling.
Not in the eyes of law (in many or most jurisdictions that regulate gambling).
At some point it's going to catch up. Legislation is a very hard process.
> What made one gambling and the other not? What makes any given bet a legitimate financial trade versus pure gambling?
Legally, it's whether the bet meets the legal definition of gambling as per the legislation applicable in your jurisdiction and any binding case law. There's no universal answer.
But from an ordinary language perspective, the difference is whether it involves an element of skill sufficient (at least in theory) to win in the long run if you possess that skill. For example:
Roulette - generally gambling
Blackjack - usually gambling these days, sometimes not if count counting is feasible
Poker - not gambling
Stock market investing - not gambling
The examples don't hold in most jurisdictions (except for the stock market and if short sells are allowed).
All of the three categories are defined as gambling in pretty much all jurisdictions across the globe. However, they are classified as different types, e.g. roulette is closer to slots than poker is. Then poker can be "cash tables" vs "tournament". The main classifier difference is "game of chance" vs "game of skill", yet there are lots of nuances.
> Stock market investing - not gambling
That entirely depends on the asset classes you invest in. Proper stonks? Sure, that's not gambling. But as soon as you enter the fun world of derivatives and daytrading...
That's fair. A lot of regulation seems to work this way: first you recognize a real harm, then spend years arguing over where exactly the boundary should be
“Do you use personal / behavioral data / usage to shape the user experience and recommendations, creating a reinforcing loop?”
Roughly that.
This would include everything from my Spotify recommending new music that I like to my Netflix showing me similar shows. I'm a responsible adult. I want those things. I make use of them. They make my life better when I'm trying to listen to some music while I work on something or when I have exactly 2 hours of TV watching time in a week and don't want to waste it finding a new show. I do not want regulations coming along and making all of my products worse due to heavy-handed regulation.
Practically, it won't happen. These thought experiments are exercises where people imagine the websites they don't want other people using getting worse, while failing to imagine any way that it might negatively impact any site they use. Usually when I press the topic it turns into a game of whack-a-mole where the other people come up with more and more exceptions and specifics to these theoretical laws to reveal what they really have in mind, which is targeting some small handful of social media sites that they don't want other people to use. We see this with the age restriction laws where the comments come out in full force demanding ID checks and huge fines for Facebook and TikTok, but there are meltdowns whenever people realize that the regulations would be coming for their Discords, YouTube viewing, and Reddit access too.
I halfway imagine this whole exercise ending with some big show about warnings, where users who join TikTok or other websites have to click a big warning sign that says they might be addictive. If some countries start instituting laws against recommendations or personalize recommendations, the popularity of VPNs will continue to rise so people can simply use the products like they want instead of having to deal with nerfed versions to satisfy some country's laws.
Yes, anyone who has been looking for Spotify alternatives can readily tell how poor the music recommendation algorithms of competitors. I feel like the only comparative one is weirdly, youtube, since they simply have more data points and context to attach recommendations to.
And that ability to recommend what you want is the harm being decided.
Seems like you don't have to rule it out completely? "You might also like this show" is rather different than YouTube's "OMFG SHORTS WATCH THEM NOW" experience. Even if the line is fuzzy, I think many can agree some things are closer than others, and that's enough for some laws (there are plenty of other not-perfectly-testable laws out there as counterexamples).
> Seems like you don't have to rule it out completely?
This is what I was talking about in the second half of my comment: Every time I bring up the fact that these proposals would be overbearing, people start brainstorming infinite carve outs and exceptions that would exempt the products they use, but harm the products they don’t want other people using.
If these laws hit the books they’re not going to be neatly shaped to avoid the things you like and only impact the things you don’t.
While this is true in principle, my understanding is that the failure to carefully deliniate ahead of time, was why prohibition in the USA ended up being "all alcohol" rather than "just liquor".
The television is a tool for watching shows. The show is ostensibly the draw, and the television is the vehicle for watching it, no? So why do some people (lots of people actually) feel compelled to sit in front of the television to watch something? If there is no show that one wants to watch, why the compulsion to sit in front of the television?
I've spent countless nights in front of Netscape Navigator surfing from site to site. I'm fully aware how compelling the device-content system can be. But it's always been the content side, not the device side, that was compelling.
Sometimes the desire isn't to watch some specific show. It is to have the experience of sitting on the couch and watching something good on tv. This is why people channel surf, or scroll through netflix's collection. You want to have the experience of watching something. The goal is to be stimulated, to cure your momentary boredom.
I have the same experience with youtube, reddit and HN. I don't really know what I expect to see when I open the HN front page. If I knew, I'd navigate to that site directly. But I know I'll see something on HN. Maybe something that catches my eye.
Netflix is just the same. "I'm in the mood to watch a documentary. Let's see what they've got."
The primary activity is sitting and holding my partner. I can and do happily do that without secondary entertainment, but it doesn't take any concentration so why not add a show in to the mix.
> So why do some people (lots of people actually) feel compelled to sit in front of the television to watch something?
Because I have kids, an active life, and a lot of physical hobbies and activities.
And some times it’s 10PM, too early for bed, too tired from a busy day, and I’m looking to relax and enjoy a show with my wife for an hour.
I said two hours per week because that’s about how much it ends up being. The fact that this is attracting criticism and even a sister comment calling me “addicted” is bizarre. What even is the goal here? Shaming people for relaxing and enjoying things? Feeling a smug sense of superiority over others for their consumption choices during down time?
Is it lost on you that these criticisms are coming in the comments section of a social news site where people waste a lot of time?
No need to get defensive, not only did I not criticise you - I even commented that the phenomenon is common. I asked for someone to explain something I don't understand, and people explained. I'm a wiser person today.
GP is addicted and can’t see it.
2 hours of TV per week is addicted?
> I want those things. I make use of them.
Can you opt out of those features? If not, how do you know you want those things or if you are just being manipulated into using them?
> Can you opt out of those features?
Kind of, by using a different software.
There's a big difference between a completely optional "recommendations" area and a loop. If the recommended stuff happens automatically without you having to look for it, then it's a loop.
So Spotify is a loop (it automatically plays the next recommended song)
True. I feel like "primary attention" should be a part of it too.
Yep - some emotional core of my being (not rational) hates ML recommendations.
I'm a happy paid user of Spotify and just ignore the recommendations (I'm not looking at a screen), and I use YouTube heavily with a browser plugin that hides recommendations (which kills the end of video loop). I get recommendations from people, and use the products for curation, bookmarking and subscriptions. They're good.
Whereas Instagram and TikTok are vacuous and useless to me - I can't make myself use them. I think my brain knows what's wrong with them, and makes a kind of disgust reaction very quickly.
I agree, there's a very low level, emotional difference between them. I'm not sure I could encode it in law, but it is different.
Ok then at the very least allow for a toggle to turn those algorithmic “recommendations” on and off
Cigarette packages have disgusting photos of carcenogenic lung autopsies to discourage you from smoking them, so Facebook and TikTok etc should have similar disgusting photos and vidoes of what happens to you if you use their product, that you have to watch every day before using it.
Sleep-deprived teenager autopsy: a teenager with enormous purple eye bags, phone surgically fused to their hand, lying face-down on a school desk at 3 AM.
Body-image filter ward: rows of teenage faces grotesquely stretched, pinched, inflated, beautified and looksmaxed until everyone looks like the same embalmed Instagram mannequin.
Doomscroll thumb: a gigantic swollen thumb with the fingerprint worn completely smooth from infinite scrolling. The tendon is labeled "ENGAGEMENT."
Facebook scam victim: an elderly person's wallet dissected on an autopsy table -- completely hollow, with a Facebook ad where the money used to be.
Algorithmic stomach contents: an autopsy tray containing "suggested for you": rage bait, diet videos, conspiracy sludge, influencer ads, and one photo from somebody you actually know.
Predator warning: a cute Instagram DM screen shown as an anglerfish -- friendly profile photo as the glowing lure, enormous teeth hiding behind it.
Facebook Hospital: a free to play educational game where you have to spend virtual currency for cures to the ailments Facebook gave you, like Bloaty Head from reading all the AI generated engagement porn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M
Images on cigarette packages are of real patient and real impact and still smokers ignore it. A fake, stylized hypothetical image will have much lower impact.
> > “Do you use personal / behavioral data / usage to shape the user experience and recommendations, creating a reinforcing loop?”
> This would include everything from my Spotify recommending new music that I like to my Netflix showing me similar shows.
Spotify recommending music and Netflix recommending shows that are similar to what? To previously recommended music/shows. This is exactly the problem.
> I'm a responsible adult. I want those things.
This is a clear indicator that these things are addictive and are in fact gambling.
> This is exactly the problem.
What problem, exactly?
Helping me find new music to enjoy?
I’m beginning to think some people have forgotten what we’re supposed to be angry about and now we’re just angry at all things tech.
Spotify recommending new music to me or continuing to play music suggestions when my playlist runs out is in no way harmful. It improves my life. I lose nothing to it. I gain new exposure to music.
It’s fine. Let people enjoy things.
> This is a clear indicator that these things are addictive and are in fact gambling.
I assure you I am neither addicted nor am I gambling when I listen to new music on Spotify.
What are we even doing here? Is this some puritanical push against all things that people might enjoy?
> Helping me find new music to enjoy?
Is it helping you find new music or is it feeding the same thing it has been feeding you in a reinforcement loop? Are you really searching or are you mindlessly taking what's on offer?
> Spotify recommending new music to me or continuing to play music suggestions when my playlist runs out is in no way harmful.
In both Netflix and Spotify any real discovery is quite well hidden, nearly all of the feeds you can get are algorithmically generated for you to consume what is beneficial to them. You get an interface pretending to offer you a choice and an algorithm behind, designed and fine-tuned by behavioral psychologists to get you coming back for more. An apparently it is doing it's job so well that you keep defending it.
Yes. It's like the prohibitionists. They couldn't see any problem that couldn't be solved by banning alcohol.
The poster is implying the reinforcement at play is the problematic thing at issue, and they are assigning the word "gambling" to represent it, or so it looks like to me. I think you aren't parsing their meaning correctly because what they seem to be aiming for is extinguishing the automatic reinforcement.
You're claiming it's making your life better, ostensibly by a relative report of the hedonic response a newly introduced piece of music auto delivered to you by the recommendation algorithm invokes. The problem they hint at though is the passive nature involved. You aren't finding that new piece, it's getting pushed. That pushing incentivizes optimizing for continued engagement, an act children, intellectually and developmentally disabled individuals, as well as those in the throes of cognitive decline/impairment, are not at all well equipped to self-regulate against when pitted against paid behavioral psychologists designing maximally engagement encouraging interfaces.
The incentive, and the existence of predatible populations is the problem I take away from it. I can agree you should be free to opt-in mind, but I can also see the wisdom in a by default interface wherein engagement hacking is forbidden being the norm, and that norm coming with a minimally controversial algorithm boiling down to "chronological feed of known/subscribed to sources", followed by a link of some sort to open an interface to the recommendations.
Facebook/Insta/Shorts are absolutely not that non-engagement farming interface. Hell my grandmother toward the end was about driven mad by it, and it was all I could do to just try to remind her that just because the machine had it on offer doesn't mean she had to partake, but her community centric character made that a bit of an ordeal for her.
There is absolutely a pathological pattern to the way tech companies hunt for eyeballs to monetize, and it is a damn shame it's taken this long to start getting traction to even talk about it.
Okay but suppose you have an AI chatbot which takes in context from previous chats on what your interests are. So people just keep talking with the chatbot more and more as it gains more context. This would meet the criteria. It's not necessarily addictive though because you can stop talking with the chatbot at any time.
Maybe it's something to do with the text-based interface vs short form video. Short form video is better at activating the lizard brain
Law is about intent. It is not code, and it’s a mistake to think of law like code where you need to unit test and cover all edge cases.
In law, it is sufficient to show an intent to take actions that foreseeably caused harm. Specific laws, of course but you don’t need to cover hypotheticals that capture all abstract cases in order to to show a particular actor caused harm.
You’ve not already noticed that the end of every consumer-facing LLM chat always includes an invitation for just one more turn to keep the loop going?
No matter how intelligent they make the AIs they work for openAI/Anthropic, not the users. Our future lies in open, local models, or we might aswell give up our computers altogether
> Okay but suppose you have an AI chatbot which takes in context from previous chats on what your interests are. So people just keep talking with the chatbot more and more as it gains more context. This would meet the criteria. It's not necessarily addictive though because you can stop talking with the chatbot at any time.
You can stop scrolling instagram "at any time", too.
Chatbots are actually a pretty poor but very relevant choice of example: they are already tuned with RLHF to be engaging and addictive to talk to. That's a huge reason why LLM psychosis is a thing, and it's a big reason why some people like using chatbots so much. They're designed to be addictive, just like facebook/instagram/tiktok are.
"You can stop smoking at any time"
"You can stop gambling at any time"
As much as I may agree with you, you need a different argument.
I don't see why.
The problem with your examples is that it's a person lying to themselves. GP is acting as an objective third party and telling the truth about their hypothetical.
There are lots of things you really can stop at any time. I could stop eating peanut butter at any time, if I had a compelling reason.
I'm not sure about that example. I'm seeing non tech people getting very addicted to their customized chat bots. Companies are very primed to eventually nudge them to enshittify the content of the responses and it could get bad.
> It's not necessarily addictive though because you can stop talking with the chatbot at any time.
You can also stop taking drugs at any time. Or stop drinking. Or stop smoking. Or stop doomscrolling.
What I meant to say was, the standard for when we call something addictive is more hazy than that. In general, text based interfaces don't light up the brain in the same way. Psychologically it's a lot easier to walk away from a chatbot vs an infinite feed of short form video... potentially that difference could help find some kind of standard to determine addictiveness
Edit: I wonder if a hypothetical digital experience like the samizdat out of infinite jest is possible? I.e. a digital experience which hits the brain in the perfect way to produce addiction without a chemical basis
> What I meant to say was, the standard for when we call something addictive is more hazy than that.
If you as a person engage with a product to a degree where it causes demonstrable, measurable harm to yourself or your life, you are addicted.
If I cut my leg off with a chainsaw, am I addicted to the chainsaw? I think what matters is the intent of the design. E.g. if they design the product to make you need more of it (while it has an actively detrimental effect)
> If I cut my leg off with a chainsaw, am I addicted to the chainsaw?
If you repeatedly willingly do so despite the harm, then yes.
But you still did it. If I sunbathe every day without sun cream, whom do we regulate? Assuming people have no ability to choose.
For sunbathing in particular, do what Australia does:
- large scale public health campaigns on dangers of skin cancer. With a catchy song and slogan ("slip, slop, slap... Slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen, slap on a hat")
- schools make it compulsory for kids to have hats in summer
- regulate tanning salons, promote fake tans in preference to sunbeds
- doctors check people for skin cancers during regular checkups
And over just a few years, being very brown quickly gets associated with being reckless and unhealthy.
In other words, regulate and educate
You have moved the goalpost.
Stop using buzzwords instead of engaging in a discussion. Someone clarifying their position is not necessairly moving goalposts, they might have just not laid out fully their idea in the first place.
Suppose you have a video service which takes context from previous videos you watched to show you more videos you're interested in. Doesn't sound very addictive, does it? You described it in an innocuous way, but I can absolutely see that being a lead-in to a parasocial "relationship" or even AI psychosis.
> you can stop talking with the chatbot at any time.
doubt. Lonely people will get addicted.
I think a better take is:
> Do you use personal / behavioral data / usage to shape the user experience and recommendations? You do not get covered by Section 230.
If they get to exercise editorial powers, then it doesn't make sense for them to be protected from liability for choosing what to publish. If they just give you a giant firehose, then they're not doing anything editorially and they should not have any liability as clearly that's not _their_ speech.
This - one hundred times this.
No matter what the “algorithm” is, at some point it’s a choice of what to put in front of the user - a publishing choice.
Unless the rules are solely determined by myself and deterministic (no selection or choice on the platform end) then they are publishers.
And liable.
So why leave out food industry which has provably caused health harm and killed people.
Leaving out the modern food industry but going after social media shows that this is just politics as the food industry wets the beak and greases the plan generously on both sides of the aisle.
In fully supportive of prosecuting wrongdoing in the food industry.
But it seems strange to use belief in widespread wrongdoing in the food industry to oppose punishing wrongdoing in the tech industry.
Is it just nihilism? All industries are corrupt, therefore prosecute none of them?
It seems to me like Meta is being singled out here. It's likely not the start of a movement to change how we live and get rid of/diminish bad influences on our lives - because I don't think we wanna really do that - not for economic reasons and also values - we like our personal freedoms. This is simply targeting one company whose CEO is very disliked so we can all carry on with our lives and feel better about ourselves. I do support restricting social media (not just Meta) in general for people under 18.
why do you think that implies leaving out the modern food industry, rather than suggesting that they, too, should be held accountable for flooding us with hyperpalatable foods to addict us? After all, they were literally engineered by the same people as Big Tobacco [1]
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/19/addiction...
Unlike big tech, which would never do that.
Mix this with "...of User-Generated Multimedia Content", and you might get closer. This excludes music platforms, for example (although, Band Camp and Soundcloud might have some issues with that, admittedly).
But isn't that just product design and Improvement?
I think you have to figure out when this is in service of the user's intentions or not, and that's where it gets tricky.
Apparently you can't trust users revealed preferences and have to use something else.
What product does not listen to how users use the product to design the first or later version of a product?
A hammer doesn’t have a sensor to know how you are doing while you're hammering away, and it doesn't make the strike smoother to keep you hammering longer if you start seeming tired. Almost no products ever monitor you
But I can collect feedback about it compared to other hammers. If you really wanted to you could attach an IMU to the hammer and run a user study collecting such usage data. Then use that usage data to evolve the design for the next generation of the hammer you produce.
Most products don't spy on you?
According to "Build things that last" author, 90% of the businesses evaluated are "customer first", meaning business listen to the customer and improve their produce based on that feedback.
voluntary feedback - things like "I wish the customer service was faster" - is not the same thing as measuring engagement time down to the millisecond and using that data to feed a presentation loop.
Engagement is measuring voluntary feedback. If you aren't engaged you typically either move to the next piece of content or close the app. These are the voluntary mechanisms you as a customer report how good the recommendation is.
Tobacco regulations don't regulate the general case, they regulate tobacco products. I think the same will apply to social media. There's no need to define an addictive platform anymore than there's a need to define an addictive substance. Instead all that you need to define is a social media platform. And that can be expanded/adjusted as necessary.
As for Meta itself, and proving their case - I can't imagine it'll be difficult. Whatever they get in discovery + endless testimony from various people that have worked there will already likely leave it beyond any reasonable doubt.
The best idea ive seen is if you decide what a user sees in an algorithm way (beyond “natural” ones like chronological) you are liable for the content - you are no longer a common carrier and can be sued for damages. That should be step 1.
> beyond “natural” ones like chronological
So a mail s/w that pushes up mail that it deems important?
No, because mail programs can be configured by the user to turn off any algorithms that try to be smart.
A simple first step to me would be to update the DMCA so that platforms using engagement-maximizing algorithms lose their section 230 protections.
If you're targeting individuals with specific content algorithmically, you're hardly a dumb platform for user-generated content, and I would argue that it's well over the line that would classify you as a publisher.
How do you distinguish engagement maximization and usability maximization?
In my humble opinion: anyone optimizing for "engagement" is trying to make a product inherently addictive.
Having a great product is not, but designing your product intentionally so people spend more time with it, than they wanted - intentionally not just let them write that one message, but distract them into other stuff - would qualify.
> Having a great product is not, but designing your product intentionally so people spend more time with it, than they wanted
So Netflix, Youtube, basically all ad based websites and social media should be hit with the same requirements no ? Even the news try to get engagement - it's usually not like they really care about honest and facts based reporting.
Yes please.
I don't think that's what most people want though. Most people are fine getting entertained and addicted. Even in China they allow them to watch 100 episodes of one minute micro dramas created by an A.I per day. People hate boredom more than they hate becoming a zombie.
I am pretty sure most people do not want to become zombies. But entertainment is not the same as intentionally creating addictive mechanisms, the lines are blurry though.
> I am pretty sure most people do not want to become zombies
Well yeah they hate to think about themselves that way, but that's the life they choose. Now - would they like that choice to be taken away from that or substinatially reduced? Would they like to live without Netflix, Meta, Youtube, porn, junk food etc etc - or have these products completely transformed ? Seems like they wouldn't.
Agreed.
https://zerodha.tech/blog/user-disengagement/
How would you prove this? What if the product was not intentionally designed to be engaging but ends up being more engaging than TikTok?
Check for the targets of the dev teams. What gets them promotion. Right now they openly optimize for 'engagement".
Agreed, why would we have lawyers and judges if it wasn't to adjudicate exactly this kind of delicate issues ? We're not in a procedural show where you can gotcha the judge with a logical backflip.
"Oh but your honor if you find me guilty then you must also shut down YouTube", he said with a confident smirk. As if it was not trivial to establish intent in the case of meta, who were probably high fiving while sharing reports titled "Basic methods to make teenage addiction go up".
NAL, but looks like they're alleging something like negligence & deception. Addictiveness is just the mechanism of harm, so doesn't require a strict general case: just actual harm and the prior knowledge thereof.
So like the general argument is "company X was causing material harm, knew they were causing harm, and actively decided to continue causing harm while covering it up."
It'd be similar to suing someone who sold a dangerous toy under the label "safe for all ages". The lawyers don't need to ban specific features (sharp edges, fast motors, etc.). They just have to argue the way it's put together harms kids, the company knew about it, and they kept lying about it anyway.
The remediations could therefore be case-specific. They don't need to ban infinite scroll in general, just ban Meta from applying it to their products, since it's known to be harmful in that context.
You can just be explicit. We already do this with controlled substances, maintain a defined regulatory schedule, and give a designated regulatory body a legally prescribed process for adding to it, removing them, or changing their classification.
But a substance is not a specific product or a corporation. Maybe you could call "infinite scroll" the substance, but then you're playing whack-a-mole with whatever new interface they cook up. But then we end up with a long list of "disallowed" software features which might not be inherently addictive
Regulating specific interfaces that have been shown to be addictive is the same as regulating specific classes of drugs. And it’s not like we have a plethora of variants of interfaces that have been equally discovered to be toxic. They are finite and enumerable as they come up.
If they have a set of characteristics that line up with social negatives, they should be disallowed or not permitted for persons under N years old (like for gambling or smoking). This doesnt solve the problem for adults of course, but its a good compromise.
I would very readily be in favor of outright banning infinite scrolling video feeds, even if its just for under 18s
Look at video games and you'll see the surface area of "addictive design" is basically infinite. People have gotten addicted to a huge variety of games, with not all that much in common.
You can still regulate the addictive features that are in common though. Paid Lootboxes for example. Isn't there some jurisdiction that already regulates those?
This, with a decent regulatory agency, wouldn't be that difficult to manage. We really could just say "infinite scrolling" and then add more things to the list as needed. We do it with firearms, medicines, drugs, vehicle parts, and about a million other things.
A trial is also the wrong venue. It isn't illegal to make an addictive website.
Instead lawmakers should be making new laws.
> We regulate gambling because it's a specific thing
Except when it's called "prediction markets" and therefore it isn't.
Those are relatively new and the president's children have financial interests in them, so they won't see any regulation any time soon. But it's certainly possible they will be regulated in the future... if we ever have a less-openly-corrupt government again.
It’s such a joke. But we also need to find ways to study and measure non-gambling digital platform addiction like 15 years ago. Thanks to algorithmic consumption, we’re nearing a whole generation of adults that have no idea how to navigate their societal agency and 3 trailing generations that had once learned and since forgot.
If we set the barrier to entry in prediction markets to an equivalent of an age/height check on entry, it would be well north of "yes, I am a mom-and-pop first time investor, I have never been here before, I know nothing except what some spammer told me and claude"
Somehow the "you can afford to lose your entire stake, you aren't leveraged, this isn't a con you fell into" is missing.
(thats aside from "you aren't an inside trader with privileged knowledge because of family ties to the WH, are you")
There are literally emails back and forth with Zuck where it's brought up that they're essentially making things as addictive as possible and it's bad for people, and he goes (to paraphrase) 'yeah, whatever. keep doing what you're doing'.
He said 'if you need info on people at Harvard just ask'. Called people who gave him information 'dumb fucks' (so, who's the next person on HN that's going to dare to reply to me that he was 'making a good point'? Do you see the Google founders saying that? Even as a joke?). Killed the competition of Instagram and Whatsapp. Copied every single Snapchat feature. Wants AI friend profiles for people. Hijacked emails https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433 . Free Basics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791198
List goes on. Socio.
> But this feels legally unsatisfying in the general case
What if I told you that judicial outcomes are often nondeterministic?
It's hard to answer in general, but does it have to be answered in general? I could imagine supporting a policy that infinite scroll in particular is addictive and app developers can't use it without strong warning labels and time alerts.
> does it have to be answered in general?
100% yes. Remember, this is somewhat adversarial: Meta increases its products addictiveness year by year. Banning individual practices fails if the rate of that growth exceeds the impact of point solutions.
> It's hard to answer in general, but does it have to be answered in general?
Maybe not? Maybe if enough minors experience harm from a platform, that's enough to restrict it for minors.
Nit: Prediction markets are gambling and we dont regulate that.
Who is “we”? They’re absolutely regulated in most of the world. Smarkets has a UK and Irish gambling license.
I'm sure the companies marketing research divisions have very clear definitions.
We just use those.
Let’s start with banning algorithmic personalized feeds. That seems to be the common determinator of the bad apples.
I find it very convenient for music discovery for example. Maybe start by making it opt in and give parents control over their children's feeds?
I do wonder about intent. Meta has spent 20 years paying its engineers and others vast amounts of money to Increase Engagement, and punishes those who fail to find ways to do so (over the past few years, by firing them). And it's worked! Engagement has increased greatly over the years, Meta survived the effective end of Old social media (you know, the stuff from your friends) and thrives in the new world of infinite content. Was the intent to _addict_ people? It doesn't have to be, to create a system people have become addicted to. Even if the harm is not intended, does that mean it cannot be regulated? Surely not! Let's ban infinite scroll for a start. The question of whether to punish Meta is quite separate from the question of how to reduce the harms of its products.
the engagement argument could be applied to every commercial service or product. anything that is sold is getting optimized for appeal/attraction/engagement/adictiveness.
Addicts are your most loyal and exploitable customers.
Things will keep getting worse in the US as long as the current nothing is anti-competitive policies endure.
There was a moment in time when Instagram use to show this disclaimer "You're all caught up with the posts". You could still scroll below that and it would show you algorithmic content as it always have if you choose to view it. However I don't see this feature anymore and it's gotten worse with pure infinite slop. I really appreciated that cause every time I opened the app, saw that disclaimer I would instantly close it and go about doing other things. I wish they just kept simple stuff like that around but I guess that doesn't help their metrics.
The distinction between punishment and prevention seems important here. Meta's intent might matter when deciding liability or penalties, but if a design pattern is demonstrably harmful, "we only wanted more engagement" isn't much of an argument against regulating it
I agree. Our policy going forward needs to be as precise as a scalpel.
have worked in analytics for a while. Engagement is a very broad category. Not all engagement metrics are toxic. For example, daily active users is healthy for a business to measure and is engagement. Commenting on Hackernews is engagement. Meta also has a wide range of engagement metrics - not all of which are problematic
I've never seen a NAXALT fallacy used for the concept of engagement metrics before.
It's not relevant to this discussion that in certain contexts, useful engagement metrics exist that supposedly aren't toxic, because it doesnt apply to the current context. We're clearly talking about the larger systemic issue of companies maximizing all engagement at all costs, and the consequences of such a policy.
For anyone else not understanding the reference: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/NAXALT
I am old and used to use FB back when it was cool. Think 2010-14 period, and it was addictive even then even when it was just content from friends. Humans have deep need for connection with other humans and they will be addicted to anything that provides it given that modern society is increasingly isolated.
People are addicted to reddit, heck I know people who are addicted to Stocks app because they just need something to scroll.
Modern day addictions are complex and products are not the sole cause imo, they are just filling a void. Why that void exists needs to be answered. You remove Instagram and that time will be replaced by Reddit, tiktok or whatever product gives you some dopamine
People are lazy. If you give people an easy way to "fill that void" they will do so, even if it's detrimental to their long term health.
No social media? People will still find ways to socialize. It might not be as easy, but they will do it. Maybe you'll even see a resurgence in social clubs.
I'm delighted to see this headline because I've been comparing Facebook to cigarettes for more than a decade. The parallels are striking. Both industries knew their products were poisonous and intentionally hid that knowledge while intentionally engineering them to be as addictive as possible, and ended up marketing them directly to children.
I do wonder what’s going to happen in the future to addictive social media algorithms. Feels like one of those things that’s so powerful, but skirts by because it doesn’t feel like it should be (like targeted advertising).
I really hope it gets legislated away or kneecapped to the point where it isn't so effective. With all the legislation coming out regarding kids and social media, I hope that people will start to draw a line to the fact that maybe adults shouldn't be hooked up to it too. I don't think all content recommendation algorithms should go away, but we need to dial down the intensity by an order of magnitude or two.
With the amount of money behind them, I regret to say I don’t think they’ll get legislated away. My best guess is that social shaming slowly dwindles their usage. It’s actively shameful to scroll at dinner among Gen Z, for example. The problem becomes using the apps alone at home.
Can we just ban algorithms for content and go back to chronological feeds circa 2004 Facebook?
Or maybe ban all content that the user isn't explicitly subscribed to.
Those both have problems too, I'm sure.
I think the major issue is, people still have the option of those older forms of feeds, people just don't like them.
New social media competitors (ie Tiktok) have won users by having even more powerful algorithms rather than other options.
Of course, but the users can’t be trusted to stay away from something designed to addict them. Only real solution is regulation, although the how is still a big question mark.
I would ask, where is the line drawn between 'enjoyment and addiction.'
Is it the harm provided? Then what do we count as harm, and where is the line.
IE, There's no one stopping me from eating unhealthy, IE sugary foods, which are heavily addictive. I ride a motorbike, and I'd consider myself addicted to that, and it's got a high chance of harm, but we don't ban those. Ditto with gaming, social media, hobby XYZ.
I personally think the freedom to choose your vice is reasonable.
How? The 2 feeds on my IG account: "posts" and "reels" show content of people that I do not follow.
Instagram definitely doesn't have the option but youtube for instance does, there's a subscription tab that's collecting dust in most people's accounts.
NewPipe even has the subscription feed pretty centered
Chronological feeds tend to be gameable by growth hacking. Still better than a lot of things.
One of the tricky things for me is feed aggregation for balancing subscriptions between people who post a lot and people who don't.
It also might be interesting if video recommendations were curated feeds by the creator.
I build a safari extension to do just this (block all content that isn't explicitly subscribed to by the user) and it's a remarkably better experience. This is my hot take that most people seem to disagree with: the vast majority of culture wars we are having today would not exist without content recommendation algorithms.
Ultimately, I think this is going to come down to proving exactly the extent of what Meta knew, and what they decided to do about it, and how that violated various laws.
I wager there is a foot gun component to this, in which Meta has tried to preemptively, either through gestures of goodwill or public reassurance or PR, institute various think tanks, work groups, and internal studies with an intent to alleviate the public's worry.
Those studies and workgroups actually could end up demonstrating that their products and algorithms and user interfaces, indeed, caused whatever this trial accuses them of doing. And if they didn't act according to what their internal data showed, I bet this is going to be the crux of the trial.
Yeah, the internal research could be far more damaging than the existence of the harmful effects themselves
I’d bet that an exceptional legal team could make a pretty solid case based purely on the volume and testimony of behavioral psychologists on their payroll
> It could, for instance, do so on the grounds that it is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Act, which safeguards platforms from legal liability for content posted by third parties.
But then the platform decides what to show and to whom. It's not an impartial medium anymore, not since the engagement algorithms become a norm.
What's the gist of this case? Making social media addictive isn't a felony AFAIK. Big Tobacco has never been convicted of it either.
The case appears to be about them purposely knowing the impact of what they were doing and exploited it at the cost of children's mental health.
Meta, good reminder to buy diversified funds and not whatever hot company. (-29% - 1 year)
Fidelity zero is compelling, in a retirement account.
FZROX (Fidelity Zero) is relatively highly concentrated in Meta (1.7%) (because Meta is a large chunk of the US stock market).
If nothing, at least 'Social Reckoning' movie will get some blockbuster success due to the timing.
Investors not panicking seems rational. Companies this large can survive astonishingly large fines...
Meta employees reading this: whether you work in Reality Labs, ads, operations, ML compiler, LLMs, marketing, whatever. You're all complicit in the harm. Remember that.
Even those working on React? Asking for a friend
Absolutely! :D
At worst Suckerberg just pays money. So the issue is not being solved.
These US corporations operate outside the law - and they are protected by the orange king who is just too incompetent for anything other than pocketing away more money from the people, which is the only real skill he has.
Facebook causes Face Cancer: their interface and algorithm are so toxic that it causes users to React by scratching their eyes out because it hurts so much to look at and use.