[eggy]

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 respecting their ability to make their own choices? If we're worried about addictive patterns, those exist everywhere—streaming platforms, social feeds, gaming, even email notifications. My concern isn't whether TikTok's format is uniquely dangerous. It's whether we trust adults to manage their own media consumption, or if we need regulatory guardrails for every compelling app. I'd rather see us focus on media literacy and transparency than constantly asking governments to protect us from ourselves.

You can't legislate intelligence...

[wackget]

You are not acknowledging the fact that the companies producing these addictive apps are very much doing it intentionally. They are specifically making it as engaging as possible because that's how they make money. And they have billions of dollars to sink into making their products as irresistable as possible.

The average person has zero chance against all-pervasive, ultra-manipulative, highly-engineered systems like that.

It is, quite simply, not a fair fight.

[TheOtherHobbes]

That's not wrong, but it's a selective take. The entire economy operates like an addiction machine, using proven psychological techniques to modify individual and collective behaviours and beliefs.

It's not just social media. It's gaming, ad tech, marketing, PR, religion, entertainment, the physical design of malls and stores... And many many more.

The difference with social media is that the sharp end is automated and personalised, instead of being analysed by spreadsheet and stats package and broken out by demographics.

But it's just the most obvious poison in a toxic ecosystem.

[enaaem]

Every country in the world already does tons of intervention combatting addiction. There are already bans and restrictions on gambling, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes etc… Wether we consider social media addiction to be harmful and how to do it is a good question to be asked, but intervention into harmful addiction is generally uncontroversial.

[Thiez]

Note that gambling is currently the only recognized non-substance-related addiction in the DSM-5. As a society we speak of things like 'tiktok addiction', 'gaming addiction', 'food addiction' and 'porn addiction' but none of these are real recognized disorders. That is not to say that certain behaviors cannot be maladaptive and hard to quit, but this is not enough to make something an addiction - we don't call hypochondria a 'cleaning addiction' even though it might look like one.

[wat10000]

There's a big difference in terms of frequency and availability.

Physical design of stores gets you when you're shopping, then it's done. Organized religion tends to get its hooks into you once or twice a week. Marketing, PR, ads, all sporadic. Social media is available essentially 24/7 and is something you can jump into with just a few seconds of spare time.

If more traditional addiction machines are a lottery you can play a few times a week, social media is a slot machine that you carry with you everywhere you go.

[GorbachevyChase]

I don’t know what personal religious experience you’re speaking from, but my church is a little more oriented toward helping people overcome addictions and personal failings. If you’re in Europe, then I think the messaging in the mosques about consuming alcohol are pretty strict. I can’t speak from firsthand knowledge.

[swiftcoder]

> personal failings

I'm sure your specific church is lovely, but depending on the church, "personal failings" may include such gems as "being gay", depression, autism, PTSD, poverty...

[wat10000]

Well sure, they don't want the competition. Churches have naturally evolved to use techniques that keep people coming back. The ones that don't do that die out.

[cess11]

Are you sure churches are a natural phenomenon rather than a cultural one?

[forgetfreeman]

"The entire economy" here being a pseudonym for marketing and advertising?

[finghin]

Though capitalism is to blame for plenty of problems, I don't agree with this take, and I see it repeated quite often.

Economies, capitalist or otherwise, are very much defined by needs and wants. (With this, I presume, you agree already.)

But addiction is another topic altogether from everyday needs and wants like oil, aspirin, or cinema tickets.

[pardon_me]

Manufactured consent, planned economies, controlled economies, imbalance of wealth or power, tariffs, subsidies, tax breaks, lobbying, ad networks, tracking, algorithmic content delivery, AI generation, asymmetric access to information, social effects, requirements to live despite inaccessible resources for basic needs, government control, private property but no free land available, and international trade laws, are a few things that come to mind which very much go against the idea that we are living in anything like the model of capitalism we learn about in school.

2026 is not based on wants and needs except in isolated situations. We are at the hypernormal point of manufacturing problems to sell solutions, because there's very little rent or work left to extract from assets. Lives of excess are maintained by depriving others of necessities. The intense control and misdirection required to keep this somewhat stable is starting to be felt.

[Nasrudith]

Manufactured consent as a notion always felt like projection to me because of its advocates. As it was a notion pushed by people who insist they know "the interests" of people who are "voting wrong". All the while disregarding the fact that if we could rely on others knowing the interests of others better than others then aristocracy would be a superior system as the nobles being more educated would know the interests of the peasantry better.

[Thiez]

So do you believe that propaganda doesn't exist, or doesn't work, or that only ever accurately shows the truth? Because as I see it you must believe that people cannot be misled by propaganda to deny the possibility of manufactured consent.

[saubeidl]

Yup. It's capitalism that's the core problem. Social media is just a particularly nasty outgrowth.

[Quarrelsome]

its not necessarily "capitalism". Think about how Myspace was, or early Facebook, that was capitalism but didn't have the same issues.

Its the "lean startup" culture as well as books like "Hooked, how to build habit forming products" - Nir Eyal.

The dark lean startup pattern is where you break down the big picture rationale for the company. You extract metrics that contribute to the company's success (i.e. engagement) and you build a machine that rewards changes to the underlying system that improves those metrics.

If done successfully, you create an unwitting sociopathy, a process that demands the product be as addictive as possible and a culture that is in thrall to the machine that rewards its employees by increasing those metrics. You're no longer thinking about purpose or wondering about what you're doing to your users. You simply realise that if you send this notification at this time, with this colour button, in this place, with this tagline then the machine likes it. Multiple people might contribute a tiny piece of a horrifying and manipulative whole and may never quite realise the true horror of the monster they've helped build, because they're insulated by being behind the A/B test.

[Jensson]

> its not necessarily "capitalism". Think about how Myspace was, or early Facebook, that was capitalism but didn't have the same issues.

No thats exactly capitalism, capitalism ensures processes gets more and more efficient over time, as you say previous versions were less efficient at inducing addictive behaviors but capitalism ensured we progressed towards more and more addictive apps and patterns.

Capitalism doesn't mean we start out with the most efficient money extractor, it just moves towards the most efficient money extractor with time unless regulated.

This is well known and a feature, capitalism moves towards efficiency and regulation helps direct that movement so that it helps humanity rather than hurts us. Capitalism would gladly serve you toxic food but regulations ensures they earn more money by giving you nutritious food. Now regulations are lagging a bit there so there is still plenty of toxic food around, but it used to be much worse than now, the main problem with modern food is that people eat too much directly toxic compounds.

[Quarrelsome]

That's a type of capitalism. Quakers built plenty of capitalistic entities that were primarily interested in profit but cared more for the long term with more of an eye on social and spiritual purpose. Extractive capitalism doesn't get to pretend its all of capitalism, we just assume that because its been active throughout our entire lifespan.

US hegemony has permitted and encouraged shareholder primacy, hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts in order to facilitate the growth of its markets. However we'd be blinkered to assume that this is the only way capitalism can be. Its a choice we make and we deserve this outcome where we've enslaved a generation of children to be eye-balls for ad impressions for silicon valley startups.

We could make other choices but then we'd be personally less rich and see less growth. Do we really think those extra zeros in very few people's portfolio's are worth this macabre world we've created?

[prewett]

You're not describing capitalism, you're describing managerialism with a manager-evaluation function of profit.

Managers do not need to be evaluated by EPS, but when you are a public company with diffuse shareholders (who are the actual "capitalists", and who include any of use with a 401k or pension), that's an easy one for people to agree on. Also, when your society gives up on the restraints of (in our case) Judeao-Christian values and say "we're just overgrown apes", well, then you get HBS style of management, because there's nothing restraining acting "because we can". I think we have a spiritual crisis more than an economic system crisis.

[_DeadFred_]

Early Facebook's behavior was what they wanted to do/be. But upon exposure to what others were doing Facebook chose to adopt patterns/techniques that repulsed them originally because Facebook didn't want to be out competed (so Capitalism). Capitalism/competition is what led their behavioral change.

Go back to the recent removal of lead article discussed here. In Capitalism government regulation has to level the playing field or else all players will stoop to poisoning society/the world because if they don't then someone else will gain and advantage. Even hyper rightwing Rayliner agreed Government intervention is the ONLY way to prevent Capitalists from injecting poison into their products if that poison gives a competitive advantage.

What leaded gas was to the boomers brains social media is to current youths' brains.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46865275

[SirMaster]

>The average person has zero chance against all-pervasive, ultra-manipulative, highly-engineered systems like that.

So you are saying I am not an average person because I have the willpower to simply not install the TikTok app or watch short form video on any platform?

Has the bar for the average person really sunk this low?

[tvink]

If only you could reach out of your own experience and ponder what might cause otherwise reasonable people to do so. Young people peer pressure, current marketing landscape, you're forced there if you want to make money as a creative, so many reasons. Great, you can live your life without. Can you live your life without assuming everyone has the privilege of your situation?

[integralid]

You also probably don't use heroin. Everyone knows it's a bad idea and yet for some reason we have very severe punishments for people that distribute it. Why?

Because addictive things are addictive, and addicted people suffer, and everyone can get addicted if their guard slips.

We prefer to regulate highly addictive things instead.

[D-Machine]

    > You also probably don't use heroin. Everyone knows it's a bad idea

About 1–12 months after using heroin, only 23%–38% become addicted [1]. Occasional and controlled heroin users do in fact exist and are documented [2]. And, most famously, the use of heroin by American soldiers during the Vietnam war was largely situational [3].

So what "everyone knows" here is not very impressive. I still very strongly believe you'd be a fool or at least reckless to try heroin, but it really isn't the bogeyman people want it to be.

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...

[2] https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/3906/

[3] https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.64.12...

[xeckr]

>only 23%–38% become addicted

Wow, only Russian roulette with 2 bullets odds?

[D-Machine]

Yup, hence why only a reckless person or fool would try it.

But, since only a minority of people get addicted to heroin (i.e. the evils of heroin are overstated), and since no one is actually seriously arguing that viewing TikTok is as risky (23-38% chance after exposure) as trying heroin, or has as bad side effects, I think it reveals that comparisons to heroin use in arguments against TikTok are hyperbolic and disconnected from reality, by empirical data.

[wasmainiac]

I don’t get it, is this some kind of gotcha?

Have you walked down the skid row of any large city? Heroin and well other drugs now are a problem, saying otherwise is delusional. Those people need help.

[D-Machine]

    > I don’t get it, is this some kind of gotcha?

Only for people who think comparing TikTok to heroin is some kind of gotcha.

    >Have you walked down the skid row of any large city? Heroin and well other drugs now are a problem, saying otherwise is delusional. Those people need help.

For sure. Two minutes from where I live, at a main intersection, they hang emergency Naloxone injection kits, in public, where anyone can grab them, on the trees and walls of buildings. I presume so addicts can save each other in cases of accidental overdoses.

Of what relevance was this all to TikTok again? And why are we comparing scrolling a phone app to literal actual heroin? Even when, empirically and factually, heroin is in fact not addictive for the majority of people?

Comparisons between TikTok and heroin are deranged and simplistic, but this is made all the more embarrassing when you realize that a dance with heroin is in fact more likely than not to just be... not the thing everyone is afraid of?

[zapzupnz]

Congratulations, you've won the "Works on My Machine" award, except for self-control instead of software. Well done. Everyone's very impressed.

[Jensson]

> So you are saying I am not an average person because I have the willpower to simply not install the TikTok app or watch short form video on any platform?

Yes, since more people use Tiktok than not. The average person is also fat today, so this shouldn't come as a surprise to you.

People didn't grow fat and addicted to screens due to changes to themselves, its due to companies learning how to get people to eat more and watch more since the they make more money.

[foobar_______]

Maybe? I really don't know. I don't want to believe it but the data and just looking around in public and seeing the scroll addition seems to indicate otherwise?

[rzz3]

And I’m so glad they did. Tiktok has brought so many positive changes to my life, and it never would have happened if they hadn’t built a product so good that it’s literally addictive. I don’t want the government to be my parent.

Additionally, Instagram and Facebook have tried their best to make their products as addictive as possible, yet their recommendation algorithm is so absolutely terrible (not to mention their ads) that I barely stay on the platform for five minutes when I use it.

[Noumenon72]

What the TikTok algorithm does for me: surfaces exercises for all my joint problems, finds people exploring local sites and reporting on local issues, helps me discover new music, reveals how we treat prisoners, shows me what it's like to do jobs from sitcom writer to oil rig tech

What Europe does for me: Makes me click "Accept cookies"

[Quarrelsome]

> What Europe does for me: Makes me click "Accept cookies"

that's only because the implementation of the law is poor and advertisers drag their heels in having it as a brower-level setting. Not helped by the fact that advertisers run one of the biggest browsers and fund one of the next biggest.

[bondarchuk]

It's also very much an exercise in framing, though. Making your media as engaging as possible is the basic imperative of any media company. But choosing to call this specific instance of it "addictive" has everyone up in arms.

[horsawlarway]

To the framing issue - I can frame an alternate lens through which we balance enrichment against engagement.

Media can enrich people - expose them to new ideas, new stories, different views and opinions. This expands worldview and generally trends in the same direction as education.

Media can also be engaging - Use tools that make it compelling to continue viewing, even when other things might be preferable, on the low end: cliffhangers and suspenseful stories. on the high end: repetitive gambling like tendencies.

I'd argue if we view tiktok through this lens - banning it seems to make sense. Honestly, most short form social media should be highly reviewed for being low value content that is intentionally made addictive.

---

It's not society's job to cater to the whims of fucking for-profit, abusive, media companies. It's society's job to enrich and improve the lives of their members. Get the fuck outta here with the lame duck argument that I need to give a shit about some company's unethical profit motives.

I also don't care if meth dealers go bankrupt - who knew!

[bondarchuk]

I fundamentally don't think governments should do a careful cost-benefit analysis of everything in society and then ban it if it falls on the wrong side. Just on basic principles of personal freedom. That's why the "addiction" framing is so important, because it implies that citizens don't have agency, and so justifies the authoritarian intervention.

PS if we apply your analysis to video games they surely would have been banned too.

Edit: by the way I remember back in the day we searched for "addicting flash games" and it was seen as a positive ;p

[munk-a]

It is completely unreasonable for a society to do a careful cost-benefit analysis of everything in society - it's completely reasonable for a society to identify highly harmful things (especially those that hijack our brains through direct chemical or emotional addiction) and police those, or, as per Portugal's approach, make available societal supports to allow people to better cope with that addiction. The later isn't very reasonable to expect in a world of rising austerity due to financialization so the former seems more realistic.

[bondarchuk]

"Hijack our brains" - exactly what I mean by pretending people don't have agency. Who gets to decide what counts as hijacking and what is just normal culture? Anything is "hijacking" to some extent - boy bands hijack teen girl brains, the BBC created Teletubbies to hijack toddler brains, heck any artistic representation is a hijack to the extent that it is interpreted by your brain at least partially as something other than what it really is i.e. some colours on a flat surface. The point is a new form of culture, communication and coordination is emerging and the old powers are shitting their pants.

(Fully agree on the Portugal approach though. The difficult to accept answer is that if people are choosing a shit life of scrolling 10 hours a day maybe we should do the actual hard work of improving the kind of life open to them.)

[xp84]

I remember that website, it was called addictinggames.com and I remember finding that bad grammar offensive. (I was obviously a lot of fun at parties.)

[jonners00]

With social media, the cost benefit analysis doesn't deliver marginal results, just less stark/concentrated results. Drink driving is self evidently bad even though 99 times out of 100(?) it does no harm, because one time out of a hundred its consequences are catastrophic. Social media on the other hand is harming essentially 100% of the population in initially milder ways - even if you don't use it you're forced to live in a dumbed down society where wealth and power is becoming concentrated in the hands of those who pedal digital dopamine and in a democracy being undermined by disinformation. Of course 'initially milder harm' is step one in frog boiling.

[bondarchuk]

> * even if you don't use it you're forced to live in a dumbed down society where wealth and power is becoming concentrated in the hands of those [...] *

Exactly the same applies to TV but where is all the handwringing about that? Remember those stats about people watching 7 hours of TV a day? Those people need some serious help too. What's happening is clearly just the old mass-media-supported order refusing to yield power to new media used by younger people. Governments couldn't care one bit about false information[1], nor about zoomers getting brainrot, it's all about controlling the flow of information.

[1] ("disinformation", another nice example of framing which ignores the fact that people have agency)

edit: the system is escaping my asterisks automatically now, anyone know how to get italics now?

[programjames]

> Making your media as engaging as possible is the basic imperative of any media company.

Not so. I think your logic is that engagement often leads to dollars, and the "basic imperative of any company" is to make dollars. There are pro- and anti-social ways to do this. You can create better art for your video games, or you can insert gambling mechanisms. You can spend more time designing your cinematic universe, or you can put a cliffhanger after every episode. You can make a funny skit, or you can say, "wait for it... wait for it... you can't believe what's about to happen!" Optimizing for engagement, for the sake of engagement, is necessarily anti-social. It's trying to redirect attention towards your media without actually making the user experience better in any way.

Legally, the basic imperative of any company is to make dollars, as long as it is prosocial. You should not expect the government to turn a blind eye to scam centers or disfunctional products. The same applies to the media landscape.

[xeckr]

There's an AI behind the video feed optimized for keeping your attention for as long as possible. That is quite different from making your media more engaging.

The logical endpoint of optimizing AI for viewer retention is something that you literally cannot look away from.

[bondarchuk]

There's billions of dollars of psychology research behind mass entertainment for decades, too.

>* The logical endpoint of optimizing AI for viewer retention is something that you literally cannot look away from. *

Sure, but this was always already the logical endpoint of entertainment media. Infinite Jest was written in the 90s, no tiktok needed.

[xeckr]

True, though stochastic gradient descent replaces all that human guesswork with predictable scaling laws. The hyperstimuli of the tomorrow will be nothing like what we recognize today as entertainment.

[svara]

Everything's on a spectrum, but there's a point where you're so far along on the spectrum that it makes sense to call it something else.

See, "quantity has a quality of its own".

Sometimes you have to leave the theoretical view aside and just look out the window. How are people using this? Is it hurting them? What can we do about it?

I don't like blanket bans, but putting TikTok and, say, a publishing company marketing novels, in the same category because they strive for an audience, doesn't clarify anything. It just confuses the discussion.

[bondarchuk]

I don't know man. It all reminds me very much of people trying to ban rock n roll back in the day.

[svara]

I hear you, and that's where my mind goes first on this issue too.

But with social media, many of the people most into it, when asked, will say they wish it didn't exist.

A lot of kids feel they have to be on it, but wish it didn't exist.

People sound and behave more like actual drug addicts than just mere fans of a medium around social media.

[Lerc]

I don't think we should allow any form of abusive software, addictive, dark patterns, bait-and-switch. They all need to be robustly regulated.

At the same time I don't think you can demonstrate harm without good evidence.

Making money can not be used as a criteria unless you want to draw the conclusion that no company can turn a profit and be ethical at the same time. It would amount to demanding an outcome that you don't believe us possible.

I think considering overly broad criteria, like say, infinite scroll applied selectively to a few is just arbitrarily targeting candidates for reasons unstated outside the criteria.

The rules need to be evidence based, clear, specific, and apply to all.

Cracking down on ticktok while The Guardian has a bunch of dark patterns. Or the NYT, who is reporting on this while at the same time attracting people with online games that have an increasingly toxic user interface.

Tiktok may suck, but so do a lot of other businesses that escape scrutiny. I worry the harms attributed to TikTok are magnified to allow them to be a whipping boy drawing the focus allowing systemic issues to persist.

[eggy]

There was significant awareness and negative sentiment toward advertising long before Marshall McLuhan became prominent in the 1960s. Some of the stuff from 1900 to 1930 is interesting. I realize there is a lot at work here with multi-faceted attacks on the senses, but advertising was intentional too, and I am not sure if just making things illegal that are hard to educate people on is the right tack.

[yibg]

Where does a desirable product or experience end and addictive begin though? Pretty much all products or services sold are designed to be desirable. Some things are physically addictive (nicotine, opioids etc), so those are a bit more clear. But when we're talking about psychologically addictive, where do we draw the line between what's ok and what's not?

If my restaurant's food is so good people are "addicted" to it, that's a good thing. If it's about applying psychological patterns to trigger the addictive behavior that applies to a large swath of marketing.

[IanCal]

You really must be able to understand the difference between liking a thing and being addicted to a thing?

If not it’s probably worth just starting with basic definitions of addiction.

[Thiez]

The DSM-5 acknowledges only gambling as a diagnosable behavioral addiction. Being addicted to a thing means substance addiction, not TikTok or games or internet.

[IanCal]

The dsm-5 is not the only way we use words, but even there it clearly can define between liking gambling and being addicted right?

[Thiez]

Sure, I just think we if we're going to pathologize activities with intent to pass laws we ought to at least stick to a science-based approach. Right now there is no basis to conclude that even a single person is addicted to TikTok, since no such diagnosis exists.

The word 'addicted' is used informally in all kinds of contexts where it's a wild exaggeration. Just like people say they have OCD or autism when they sort something, or say they are hypochondriacs when they wash their hands more often than average. Of course people who actually have these conditions might do the same, but a lot of the time it's just perfectly neurotypical people using hyperbole and/or a flawed understanding of psychiatry.

Let's wait until psychiatrists agree on the existence of TikTok addiction and come up with a set of diagnostic criteria. Until such time we should take the existence of such addictions with a grain of salt, and refrain from moral panic.

[moi2388]

Do they though?

I’d love to think of myself as an exceptional individual because I don’t use Facebook or TikTok, but most likely I’m not exceptional at all, and other people could also just not use TikTok.

[luxuryballs]

The government could spend effort on making a documentary and funding a study on brain scans and a little campaign to show everyone the damage and educate rather than just wielding the ban hammer. Especially because it’s often possible that they can have a different motive for ban hammering even if the reason given is valid.

[trcf23]

And it’s also mostly targeting children/teenagers. As a parent you can add limitations on cinema, binging series. You can’t on TikTok.

I’m quite glad that there is a form of control preventing a company from a different part of the world that don’t really care about the mental health or wellbeing of my kids to creep into their life like that…

As a parent, it’s not a fair fight and I should not have to delegate that to another private company

[luxuryballs]

This strikes me as potentially a hardware problem more than a software problem.

[trcf23]

Probably a bit of both but I don’t know any other hardware that is that addictive…

Social network are not necessarily bad, even for teens. The issue here is the effort to make any user into a scrolling machine combined to a medium always in your pocket.

[forgotaccount3]

> They are specifically making it as engaging as possible because that's [how they make money.] ... what people want.

Fixed that for you.

Your argument is basically the same as saying that Banana Ball should be banned because they are intentionally making the experience as fun as possible, because that's how they make money.

[mrpandas]

You're suggesting that it doesn't matter what children are exposed to / become addicted to because companies should be able to sell what children want? So there's no limits to that in your mind? Should every child be given cocaine because they ask for it? They're certainly given candy, right? You must believe there's no difference between cocaine and candy, I can assure you there is a difference and show you evidence to the contrary, if you're that dense.

[anthonypasq]

sigh... he is saying that addictiveness itself is not a justification to ban something. exercising is addictive to some people, sex is addictive, reading is addictive for some people. everything worth doing in life is addicting.

what matters is the negative consequences of doing something. so the justification for banning tiktok is that it destroys childrens attention spans for life and lets them get propagandized by a hostile foreign government, NOT that its addictive.

[krapp]

Tiktok hasn't been around long enough for the claim that it "destroys childrens attention spans for life" to make any sense.

And children get propagandized by hostile foreign governments everywhere online. And by their own government. The premise that TikTok was somehow more dangerous in this regard than Facebook or Twitter or even Discord is based entirely on sinophobia.

[anthonypasq]

i thought we were done with all the phobia shit. these scare words have absolutely zero power

[darkhorse222]

Yeah! Or cigarettes!

[stronglikedan]

I hate this age of zero personal accountability. It's so easy to just not doomscroll, but I should be allowed if I want to.

[saithir]

It's also super easy not to use hard drugs, yet that's not a reason to stop restricting them.

If something's harmful it should be controlled.

[landl0rd]

I find it pretty hypocritical that the same people who push for e.g. legal marijuana would go for banning social media apps. Don't get me wrong, I use neither and think both are mentally, physically, and morally corrosive. I would not care to have either present in the community where I live, nor for my future children to use them.

That does not mean it is the province of the state to ban them.

[rzz3]

To give them some credit, they support both positions because they were told to support them by the same people and never put much thought into it.

[Quarrelsome]

weed isn't designed to be addictive. You'll find most people would be cautious about legalising heroin, meth or crack.

[yibg]

Weed isn't designed to be anything, but it certainly is addictive in the same sense that social media is. There is no physical addiction (which is also true for TikTok), but there are definitely people that are hooked on it.

[saubeidl]

Personal accountability is contrary to human nature.

We are primates dominated by our primitive urges.

[wasmainiac]

did you see what happened when we tried to decriminalise hard drugs in Vancouver? Feel good for yourself that you have the discipline to have self control, other do not and need help.

You are free to not use TikTok yourself, no one is stopping you.

Also drug decriminalisation is very nuanced, I’m not 100% against it, I’m just pointing out just that open drug use spiked after.

[dylan604]

> Also drug decriminalisation is very nuanced, I’m not 100% against it, I’m just pointing out just that open drug use spiked after.

Was that spike a true spike in new users, or existing users just coming out of the shadows?

[amarant]

I don't like this narrative. I'm a person, and HN is the only social media I use.I tolerate this one because I find the addictiveness off-putting, but unlike other social media HN doesn't engage in that much.

I'm not some sort of prodigy or anything, just a random schmuck. If I can do it, anyone can. People just really like blaming others for their own vices instead of owning up to having a vice.

HN is a vice too. One of many that I have. And they're all mine. I've chosen them all. In most cases knowing full well that I probably shouldn't have.

[afavour]

> If I can do it, anyone can.

Right, but they don't. Not to mention a significant portion of the target market are children whose brains are still developing.

Smoking is a vice. Anyone can stop smoking any time they want. But it was still incredibly popular. Government regulation put warning labels everywhere, tightened regulation to ensure no sales to children, provided support to quit. And then the number of people smoking plummeted. Society is better off for it.

"Anyone can do it" is an ideological perspective divorced from lived reality.

[dinfinity]

Exactly. It's not that the producers or distributors (of food, content, etc.) are not malicious/amoral/evil/greedy. It's that the real solution lies in fixing the vulnerabilities in the consumers.

You don't say to a heroin addict that they wouldn't have any problems if those pesky heroin dealers didn't make heroin so damn addictive. You realize that it's gonna take internal change (mental/cultural/social overrides to the biological weaknesses) in that person to reliably fix it (and ensure they don't shift to some other addiction).

I'm not saying "let the producers run free". Intervening there is fine as long as we keep front of mind and mouth that people need to take their responsibility and that we need to do everything to help them to do so.

[programjames]

Doesn't the government try to ban heroin?? You have to live in the real world, not your ideal world, and in the real world people are not perfectly rational agents. They make mistakes. Each and every mistake could have been avoided if the individual just had a stronger will, was a little smarter, a little more prudent, or took a little more time to think, but just because mistakes can be avoided and some people are better at avoiding them than others does not change the fundamental issue: drugs, tobacco, gambling, and TikTok are trying to increase the rate at which mistakes are made. Wouldn't you rather live in a society where they aren't out to get you?

I think there's an argument that can be made, like, "well maybe 10% of the time people consuming alcohol is a mistake, but I just use it recreationally. The government shouldn't prohibit all drinking!" And sure. If it is really the case that people would take the same actions even if they had more time to think things through and were in a good mental state, the government should probably not be intervening for the 10% of the cases that doesn't hold. But you have to draw the line somewhere.

[dinfinity]

> I'm not saying "let the producers run free". Intervening there is fine as long as we keep front of mind and mouth that people need to take their responsibility and that we need to do everything to help them to do so.

[programjames]

> You: It's that the real solution lies in fixing the vulnerabilities in the consumers.

> Me: Just because mistakes can be avoided and some people are better at avoiding them than others does not change the fundamental issue: drugs, tobacco, gambling, and TikTok are trying to increase the rate at which mistakes are made. Wouldn't you rather live in a society where they aren't out to get you?

[dylan604]

> If I can do it, anyone can.

This is such a normie perspective and shows just how unfamiliar you are with addiction. Yes, some people can avoid becoming addicted. Yes, some addicts can break the habit and detox and stay clean. At the same time, a larger number of addicts can detox but relapse in a relatively short time. There are also addicts that have not yet admitted they have a problem, and there are addicts that are okay with being an addict. Just because you have the emergency stop button that you can hit does not mean everyone else is the same way. Your lack of empathy is just gross

[TheOtherHobbes]

You haven't chosen anything. That's the point - the illusion of choice and agency.

If you can't stop cold at any time if/when you decide to, you don't have the agency to make a free choice.

[amarant]

I can though, that's the whole point. I chose to quit Facebook and Reddit. I chose to stop drinking alcohol. I chose to keep smoking weed. Some choices are better than others, from certain perspectives, that doesn't make them any less my choices!

[CJefferson]

That feels like it applies to so many things we make illegal, scams of all kind, snake-oil medical sellers, baby powder full of asbestos. Sure, people can handle all of these things, but we've decided, as a society, it's better not to allow them.

So then the question is, is it better to let these things happen, as a society?

[amarant]

False equivalence. Unless you can point to an instance where tiktok claims to cure cancer or erectile dysfunction with their recommendations.

To be clear: I don't like these addictive recommendation engines. That's why I avoid them. Some people do like them. I don't want to take their fun vice away from them. I also don't want them to take my fun vices away from me!

Yes it'd probably be better for my health if I stopped with a few of them. I don't care. I like it. It's my health, and I'm an adult. If I can choose my vices, why shouldn't others be allowed to? Will they make choice I wouldn't have? Of course! That's the point! It's THEIR choice!

This logic does not apply to scams or firearms, there's no informed consent in getting shot. It also doesn't apply to asbestos baby powder(wtf?)

Getting scammed is not a choice. Scammers lie to you. Recommendation engines never claim to do anything other than recommend stuff you're likely to interact with based on previous behaviour. They give you exactly what's on the package label. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want something like that, but I also don't understand why people eat surströmming. I say let them, anyway. I can put up with the stink, it's not the end of the world.

[CJefferson]

Question, do you have the same feeling about heroin? That people should be allowed to take things which are known to be highly addictive and bad for them?

[amarant]

Sure! They do anyway, or did you think heroin disappeared since it was banned?

It does need to be regulated. Doing it well will be difficult in a lot of places. I'd suggest modeling heroin sales after Nordic alcohol market: there's a single state-owned company that has a legislated monopoly, and no profit goals whatsoever. This makes it available, you can know that it's not mixed with anything cheap and deadly, and you also avoid anyone trying to push people to buy something that is quite obviously bad for them. I'm not saying it's an ideal situation that people do heroin, it is _quite_ destructive. But people do it anyway so let's make the best of that situation.

The harsh truth of reality is that people will make bad choices no matter what you do. Thinking you can ban something out of existence is naive and harmful. Best you can hope for is the entity selling drugs not using peer pressure to push it on kids who were only looking for weed. Which is what we have now if that wasn't clear.

To be perfectly clear, I do not encourage anyone to inject heroine, it's a terrible idea! Don't do it! But I'm realist enough to realise that some people are going to anyway, bans and common sense be damned,and I want to make that bad choice as safe as possible for them. I do not condone throwing drug addicts under the bus as we currently do, pretending that they're less than human and that they have no place in our society. I don't think the "outcast" status has ever helped anyone quit, in fact I'm quite sure it makes it harder. For example in Sweden being under the influence is illegal, so you could get in trouble for seeking help with your addiction. No wonder the druggies hide!

Well out of sight != Out of mind. At least not for me.

[Quarrelsome]

> just a random schmuck

if you've even on this website you're a tiny niche of the population. You like text? Check out the weirdo over here... oh wait that's all of us.

[piekvorst]

What's illegal about intentionally making money for being addictive? "Unfair"? Maybe. But not illegal.

[Supermancho]

> 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?

Spoiler: There is no line. Societies (or more accurately, communities) attempt to self-regulate behaviors that have perceived net-negative effects. These perceptions change over time. There is no optimal set of standards. Historically, this has no consideration for intelligence or biology or physics (close-enough-rituals tended to replace impractical mandates).

[mtoner23]

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

[dmix]

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.

[mrighele]

Even most liberal societies tend to ban addictive things. Alcohol, smoking, gambling, drugs, they are regulated almost everywhere, in one form or another.

I think that algorithmic social media should be likewise regulated, with at the very minimum ban for minors.

Note that my focus here on the "algorithmic" part. I'm fine with little or no regulation for social media where your feed is just events in chronological order from contacts that you are subscribed to, like an old bullettin board, or the original Facebook.

Also, I think we should consider companies that provide algorithmic social media responsible for what they publish in your feed. The content may be user generated, but what is pushed to the masses is decided by them.

[wackget]

It's way more complex than "no self control". Social media is addictive by design and is peddled at such scale that it is literally impossible to ignore. It's also backed by billions upon billions of dollars.

Pitting the average person up against that, then blaming them for having "no self control" once they inevitably get sucked in is not a remotely fair conclusion.

[SirMaster]

People keep saying this and yet, I have never used any of these short form video services or really any social media outside of desktop websites like hackernews and reddit. Even on reddit I just subscribe to a few niche and mostly technical subreddits. It seems extremely easy to ignore it all.

[EinigeKreise]

Considering the median amount of time people spend on social media daily, it sure does not seem to be so easy for the average person (as was implied in the comment you replied to). I've got a pretty good self control when it comes to the common vices, but I can't see why that would generalise to everyone else.

[morshu9001]

It's easy for you and me. At the same time, it doesn't seem right to make a business of intentionally going after the people who get addicted to this, like flavored cigs meant to appeal to teenagers. And these social media companies have a paper trail of internal research on user engagement.

But I'm still wary of the motives behind these bans because they seem to be about controlling information, not addiction.

[direwolf20]

You've learned they're bad for you. What if you grew up with it from the age of 3? You'd grow up with a dependence on it and no chance to see that it's bad.

[halestock]

> 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?

[techterrier]

or cigarettes?

[arethuza]

Or drugs?

[haugis]

Or coffee?

[direwolf20]

Cigarettes are drugs

[Frieren]

> 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.

Europe wants to ban algorithmic recommendation. You attack a straw-man: banning all the content from creators. If you have any valid argument you should bring them to the discussion instead of creating imaginary enemies.

Banning harmful design patterns is a must to protect citizens even if it ruffles the feathers of those profiting from their addiction.

[Permit]

> You attack a straw-man: banning all the content from creators.

They didn't say this.

[mylifeandtimes]

> A subset of the population doesn't have self control?

please fix this to

A subset of the population who has not yet reached the age of consent

I think society broadly accepts that there are different expectations for children and adults; the line is currently officially drawn somewhere around 18-21 years old.

[7tflutter7]

But in Europe you can drink at 14. Age of consent is also 14.

So, no, there is no official line at 18-21. Especially in the EU.

[Quarrelsome]

> But in Europe you can drink at 14. Age of consent is also 14.

That is hilariously general. You're conflating a lot of different nations there. In practice; its different depending on the nation, consent is usually 16 and alcohol is ~18.

[7tflutter7]

I was referring to Germany, the largest EU nation. But sure let's look at percentages.

40% of the EU has age of consent 14 or lower. (Germany, Italy, Portugal, etc.) 78% of the EU has it at 15 or lower (France, Sweden, Denmark, etc.)

No 'official line' at 18-21.

[dfxm12]

The videos are the entertainment, not the endless recommendation algorithm.

Additionally, this is not about self control. The claim is that the algorithm is designed to exploit users. Insiders (including a designer of infinite scroll!) have admitted as much going back years: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959

We should be uncomfortable with companies spending huge amounts of money to research and implement exploitative algorithms. We did something about cigarette companies advertising to kids. This action is along those lines.

[haugis]

I see what you're saying, but I would much rather my 9-year old spends an hour on TikTok than an hour smoking Marlboros.

[hollerith]

The choice would not be so clear-out to me. I'd have to think about it.

[hollerith]

"clear-cut"

[dfxm12]

I would much rather people not break things down into false dichotomies. Also, we should strive to give our children at least "good" options, and not settle for "less bad".

[Juliate]

When most of the market using it is abusive, and a source of abuse, preventing the abuse to continue while it's being investigated, or better apprehended by the population/generations at large, makes sense.

[D-Machine]

Hard not to think of the "hard times create strong people, strong people create good times, good times create weak people, weak people create hard times" meme here.

[unethical_ban]

I prefer my water with extra PFAS and my sports bets 10x leveraged. It's my "choice"!

[ekjhgkejhgk]

The thing is, people who live in Europe actually like that companies aren't allowed take advantage of people in every way concievable.

I have an ideia, if you don't like regulation that protects people why don't you fuck off to your own country and advocate for it in whatever dystopian hellhole you came from?

[the_sleaze_]

See:

1. The reactions to banning drunk driving: "It's kind of getting communist when a fella can't put in a hard day's work, put in 11 to 12 hours a day, and then get in your truck and at least drink one or two beers."

2. Mandatory seatbelts: "This is Fascism"

You're going to balk at just about anything that comes down the line - I guarantee it.

[https://www.unilad.com/news/us-news/americans-react-drink-dr...] [https://www.history.com/articles/seat-belt-laws-resistance]

[rglullis]

The "subset of the population" is not small, and there is no easy way to protect the most vulnerable.

> it's a wildly popular form of entertainment with millions of creators sharing their lives

I don't think we should be rewarding those who make a living by creating "content" that serves for nothing but a dopamine rush, and you can bet that those who who put it in the effort to create valuable content would prefer to have one less channel where they are forced to put out content just to satisfy the algorithm overlords.

[krapp]

It shouldn't be the job of governments to decide what content has value and what doesn't.

[rglullis]

It's not about the content, but the format and the economic pressure that corporations exert over everyone.

If you want to distribute short videos on a website that let's you choose what you want after search and deliberately clicking on a button to play it, by all means feel free to do it. But the current Tik-Tok mechanism removes all agency and are an extreme version of mind pollution.

[micromacrofoot]

how do you feel about self control in the face large companies that are spending billions of dollars to intentionally trick you into not having it?

you can't even be aware of what they're doing, because the algorithms they're using to do it are black boxes

youtube algorithms have shown evidence that they've lead to radicalization

would you not draw a line on any of this?

[candiddevmike]

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.

[bibimsz]

what would you rather people pay attention to?

[travoc]

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

[embedding-shape]

One way is criminalizing the victims, another is going after the platforms. I'm willing to wager a bet on who will be the ones receiving the enforcements here :)

[wolvoleo]

Yeah like X was raided in France 2 days ago. For different reasons by the way. I do think the enforcement will be focused on the platforms too.

[direwolf20]

X France was raided for creating and distributing child porn, not for being addictive

[embedding-shape]

He meant that as an indicating on how they're enforcing things. If the whole "arrest the victim" thing was as grand-parent "joked about", they wouldn't go after X France, but instead whoever was viewing the content instead.

[bibimsz]

why do you feel like you need to control other people's habits and behaviors.

[D-Machine]

Has been really surprising to see HN increasingly turning pro paternalistic censorship and control, and increasingly skeptical about individual agency over the years.

[permo-w]

And yet consistently the arguments you hear against regulation are these "let's pretend there's no such thing as nuance, how can we ever regulate an extreme case of something when we don't regulate minor cases?" arguments that act like no law has ever successfully regulated a nuance and improved people's welfare. Should we also allow heroin in baby food because cliff-hangers are allowed in films? Don't restrict my personal freedom to choose to be addicted to heroin from day 1!

I'm not saying these feeds are as bad as heroin for your health, but the difference in addictiveness between cliff-hangers in film and tiktok on your phone is about as big, and I equally think nicotine should be heavily regulated for similar reasons

[D-Machine]

Yes the argument quality has become poor too, and there is less nuance than before.

And like obviously society benefits from some paternalism for things like this, and we really do need to see good, concrete recommendations be proposed.

Imagine if HN were discussing the merits of things like "interrupt every X minutes of infinite-scrolling with reminders / popups / forced X/10 minute breaks" or other actual concrete, balanced solutions to such problems. This would introduce the nuance and make things interesting again.

But it is increasingly the case I find I need to look elsewhere for such discussions.

[permo-w]

I absolutely get what you're saying in theory--discussions about how and why are far more valuable than dialectic no yes no yes no yes debates--but in practice for this case, I feel like those how why conversations would perhaps feel a bit redundant? I think almost anyone on the site could quite easily come up with an effective legal method for reducing the addictiveness of short form videos. The issue lies more in the action/inaction of regulators than the makeup of the actions they should take. Then again, this is all recreational anyway, so why not see who can optimise for the absolute best method?

I also wonder if these discussions are going on, just further down the thread

[Etheryte]

You could make the same argument about sugary beverages, that you can't legislate intelligence, yet every country that has imposed a considerable sugar tax has seen benefits across the board. This of course omits a lot of nuance, but the main takeaway remains the same. We all have that monkey brain inside us and sometimes we need guardrails to defend against it. It's the same reason we don't allow advertising alcohol and casinos to kids, and many other similar examples. (Or at least we don't allow it where I'm from, maybe the laws are different where you're from.)

[afarah1]

>every country that has imposed a considerable sugar tax has seen benefits across the board

Is there strong evidence for that? The first study that pops up if I search this suggests otherwise, that it could increase consumption of sugar-substitutes and overall caloric intake. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tjnut.2025.05.019

>we need guardrails to defend against

There is no "we". You say that I and others need it, and you want to impose your opinion by taxing us.

[loglog]

Your link is _not_ about a country that _actually_ imposed a sugar tax.

[Etheryte]

This is honestly a very silly take. You could make the same counterargument about any tax of any kind, or really any law of any kind. Like it or not, we do need both taxes and laws to function as a society.

[afarah1]

And for most it would be a valid point. Nozick makes the best case for this.

[dlcarrier]

To that end, there's no logical reason entertainment exists at all. There's a biological advantage to finding community members entertaining, but anything that broadcasts that entertainment to another community is just exploiting human nature.

By the logic of the court decision, anything that is entertaining should be banned, from movies to TV shows to any news that makes any analysis whatsoever.

[kranke155]

You should be able to pick your own algorithm. It’s a matter of freedom of choice.

[maxehmookau]

So I choose an entirely chronological one, containing only that content created by my close friends and family.

Except, I'll never be given that choice.

[direwolf20]

The EU thinks you should. It's required for very large online platforms under the Digital Markets Act.

[hahn-kev]

Yeah, I think that's the new thing these days. Companies have always been trying to make things addictive, but now they can target each and every individual. I wonder if we had strong privacy laws, if it were illegal for TikTok to have this private information about you.

[gtowey]

It's not about banning design patterns. It's about removing the harmful results they produce.

Can you imagine if gambling were allowed to be marketed to children? Especially things like slot machines. We absolutely limit the reach of those "design patterns".

[7tflutter7]

This argument falls apart in the EU though. Where it's legal for 14 year olds to drink alcohol.

[morshu9001]

That's not because EU countries want people to make their own decisions, it's because not so many people in EU think alcohol is bad for kids.

[direwolf20]

And that's because they're much more responsible with alcohol. Americans get introduced to alcohol as a rebellion from oppression the moment they go to college. Germans have it with dinner with their parents sometimes when they're 12. It's like how Facebook got boring when your parents were on it.

[morshu9001]

I don't get that impression from Europeans. Also I've had wine at home since I was 12, but still ended up getting completely wasted the first time I had alcohol in college. Pretty sure anyone who's interested in that will do it at some point, and that's the only way to outgrow it.

[rkomorn]

Anecdata, but I don't remember my high school friends in Europe being much more (if at all) responsible with alcohol than my US friends were when I went to college there.

They just started getting blackout drunk 3 years earlier.

[seydor]

The best way for tiktok to respond to this , is to add some "cooling down" delay between videos. The EU commision will boast about this achievement, but effectively tiktok users will spend MORE time on their app.

[direwolf20]

You presume a tiktok user is there to watch a set number of videos, so a delay makes them stay longer. I counter they stay until they're bored.

[GorbachevyChase]

I don’t think the addictive argument is being made in good faith. Any platform with an infinite scroll feed and titillating content is intentionally made to be like a slot machine. Just keep swiping and maybe you’ll get that little dopamine hit. The idea that TikTok is dangerous, but Twitter, Instagram, porn, alcohol, and Doritos are fine doesn’t come across as an internally consistent argument. I think that the reality is that those who have an actual say in legislation perceive these platforms as a mechanism of social control and weapon. Right now the weapon isn’t in the “right“ hands.

[direwolf20]

All of those things are regulated in the EU, and the EU is better for it.

[derektank]

My preferred solution would be to subsidize tools that allow people to better identify and resist compulsive behaviors. Apps like Opal and Freedom that allow you to monitor your free time and block apps or websites you have a troubled relationship with would probably see more use if everybody was given a voucher to buy a subscription. Funding more basic research into behavioral addictions like gambling, etc (ideally research that couldn’t be used by casinos and sports gambling apps on the other side). Helping fund the clinical trials for next Zepbound and Ozempic.

[hollerith]

>I had to go to the theater to see movies, but that didn't make cliffhangers and sequels any less compelling.

The argument against tiktok (and smartphones in general) is not that experiences above a certain threshold of compellingness are bad for you: it is that filling your waking hours with compelling experiences is bad for you.

Back when he had to travel to a theatre to have them, a person was unable to have them every free minute of his day.

[enaaem]

Gambling mechanics are also banned for certain ages and in some countries for everyone. We don’t say that it’s just a game, and people should just control themselves. Without going into the specifics of this case, design pattern intervention have existed for a long time and it has been in most cases desirable.

[morshu9001]

And there are grey areas for gambling that have been settled on, like how video game "loot boxes" were recently reconsidered as gambling in some places (besides just being stupid).

[direwolf20]

You know it's stupid because you grew up immersed in the message that gambling is bad. Humans don't know that innately. The target audience for these platforms doesn't know it yet. The target audience is still growing up, immersed in whatever message the platform wants to send.

[morshu9001]

I meant that digital collectibles are stupid

[direwolf20]

Like Pokémon?

[morshu9001]

Yeah those. The other example I had in mind was csgo skins.

[Juliate]

> 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.

[andrei_says_]

I'm skeptical about banning sales of tobacco and alcohol products to children because children may (over)use them.

Also do we trust adults prescribed oxytocin to manage their use?

We are speaking of weaponized addiction at planetary scale.

[croes]

> You can't legislate intelligence...

That’s why we ban harmful things.

[Refreeze5224]

You can regulate power imbalances though, which is what every individual has versus a multinational with vast resources.

[turtlesdown11]

I'm also skeptical about banning products like opium or methamphetamine, just because people might overuse them.

[WarcrimeActual]

I'd go as far as saying every film ever made should have to have a concrete ending and stand on it's own. I am however much less into "freedoms" as I get older and see people become crackheads for apps and the worst form of capitalism possible where market breaking hoarders and resellers get rich denying people both necessities and wants in equal measure. I'm also radical enough to think that it should be illegal to own more than one house, more than one car for every licensed member of a household, and reselling anything for profit. I guess put simply, I hate resellers. I hate hanging threads, and I hate people that design things to constantly leave people wanting or "needing" more.

[thisislife2]

The only reason the US and Europe are targeting TikTok is because they don't own the platform. Facebook and WhatsApp (owned by Meta) are responsible for so much hate politics and social unrest around the world (Facebook and Genocide: How Facebook contributed to genocide in Myanmar and why it will not be held accountable - https://systemicjustice.org/article/facebook-and-genocide-ho... ). Amazon, Google and Microsoft helped the Israelis conduct the genocide in Gaza with their AI tools (UN Calls Out Google and Amazon for Abetting Gaza Genocide - https://progressive.international/wire/2025-08-26-un-calls-o... ). But all that's OK.

[plagiarist]

The US government would have to demonstrate improving people's lives to get votes if they couldn't campaign entirely on hate politics. Obviously they prefer the hate politics and ragebait attention algorithms. That way they can funnel billions of dollars to themselves and their buddies instead of wasting it on services supporting US citizens.

[morshu9001]

Yeah, I don't like the reason either. They should've just banned TikTok day 1 as reciprocity with China banning our sites. Instead it was allowed until it started promoting wrongthink.

[direwolf20]

The US government banned tiktok because it was the only major platform that didn't censor information and footage of the Gaza genocide, but I don't think the same reason applies to Europe.

[zbentley]

> 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.

[wackget]

> It's whether we trust adults to manage their own media consumption

HA!

[ripped_britches]

> You can’t legislate intelligence

Au contraire

[swiftcoder]

> Now we binge entire Netflix series and that's fine

I mean, that's specifically fine because we have ample evidence to suggest it's just kind of a shit way to watch shows, and Netflix continually taking their own business model out back and shooting it doesn't really warrant government intervention

[nunez]

More and more businesses are shifting their operations and outreach to IG and TikTok, so deciding how to live in a society is increasingly becoming "live under a rock" or "enter the casino and hope to not get swallowed up by the slop".

[cvoss]

> people might overuse them ... cliffhangers and sequels

I once heard some try to understand pornography addiction by asking if it was comparable to a desire to eat a lot of lemon cookies. To quote Margaret Thatcher, "No. No. No."

> Where do we draw the line

Just because it's hard to find a principled place to draw the line doesn't mean we give up and draw no line. If you are OK with the government setting speed limits, then you're OK with lines drawn in ways that are intended to be sensible but are, ultimately, arbitrary, and which infringe on your freedom for the sake of your good and the public good.

> trust adults

Please do not forget the children.

> You can't legislate intelligence

Your implication is that people who are addicted to TikTok or anything else are unintelligent, dumb, and need to be educated. This is, frankly, an offensive way to engage the conversation, and, worse, naive.

[wasmainiac]

> didn't make cliffhangers and sequels any less compelling

Apples to oranges.

I can’t make meth in my basement as a precursor to some other drug then complain that my target product had a shitty design.

Real life experience shows that TikTok is harmfully addictive and therefore it must be controlled to prevent negative social outcomes. It’s not rocket science, we have to be pragmatic based on real life experience, not theory.

[direwolf20]

You're right about the pragmatism but I don't get the meth analogy.

[xp84]

I am just as uncomfortable with this banning of ideas, or to look at it another way, banning designing it this way simply because it’s effective. I assume this exact same design would not be made illegal if it were terrible at increasing engagement. However I also have to acknowledge that I already can’t stand what TikTok and its ilk have done to attention spans and how addictive they are even across several generations. People just end up sitting there and thumb-twitching while the algorithm pipes handpicked slop into their brains for hours a day. I really don’t want a world where everything is just like this, but even more refined and effective. So, it’s tough to argue that we should just let these sociopaths do this to everyone.

Arguably, the best reason for the government to care is that whoever controls this algorithm, especially in a future when it’s twice as entrenched as it is today, has an unbelievably unfair advantage in influencing public opinion.

[grayhatter]

> I'm skeptical about banning design patterns just because people might overuse them.

I used to be opposed, now I'm not. I strongly believe human specialization is the important niche humans have adapted, and that should be encouraged. Another equally significant part of human nature is, trust and gullibility. People will abuse these aspects of human nature to give themselves an unfair advantage. If you believe lying is bad, and laws should exist to punish those who do to gain an advantage. Or if you believe that selling an endless, and addictive substance should restricted. You already agree.

There's are two bars in your town, and shady forms of alcohol abound. One bar is run by someone who will always cut someone off after they've had too many. And goes to extreme lengths to ensure that the only alcohol they sell is etoh. Another one is run by someone who doesn't appear to give a fuck, and is constantly suggesting that you should have another, some people have even gone blind.

I think a just society, would allow people to specialize in their domain, without needing to also be a phd in the effects of alcohol poisoning, and which alcohols are safe to consume, and how much.

> 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?

Yes, the dopamine feedback loop of short form endless scrolling has a significantly different effect on the brain's reward system. I guess in line with how everyone shouldn't need to be a phd, you also need people to be able to believe the conclusions of experts as well.

> 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?

It's not as linear of a distinction. We don't have to draw the line of where we stop today. It's perfectly fine to iterate and reevaluate. Endless scroll large data source algorithm's are, without a doubt, addictive. Where's the line on cigarettes or now vapes? Surely they should be available, endlessly to children, because where do you draw the line?

(It's mental health, cigarettes and alcohol are bad for physical health, but no one (rhetorical speaking) gives a shit about mental health)

> If we're worried about addictive patterns, those exist everywhere—streaming platforms, social feeds, gaming,

I'd love to ban micro transactions and loot boxes (gambling games) for children.

> even email notifications.

reductive ad absurdism, or perhaps you meant to make a whataboutism argument?

> My concern isn't whether TikTok's format is uniquely dangerous.

Camels and Lucky Strike are both illegal for children to buy.

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

We clearly do. Companies are taking advantage of the natural dopamine system of the brain for their advantage, at the expense of the people using their applications. Mental health deserves the same prioritzation and protection as physical health. I actually agree with you, banning some activity that doesn't harm others, only a risk to yourself, among reasonably educated adults is insanely stupid. But that's not what's happening.

> I'd rather see us focus on media literacy and transparency than constantly asking governments to protect us from ourselves.

I'd rather see companies that use an unfair disparity of power, control, knowledge and data, be punished when they use it to gain an advantage over their consumers. I think dark patterns should be illegal and come with apocalyptic fines. I think tuning your algorithm's recommendation so that you can sell more ads, or one that recommends divisive content because it drives engagement, (again, because ads) should be heavily taxed, or fined so that the government has the funding to provide an equally effective source of information or transparency.

> You can't legislate intelligence...

You equally can't demand that everyone know exactly why every flavor of snake oil is dangerous, and you should punish those who try to pretend it's safe.

Especially when there's an executive in some part of the building trying to figure out how to get more children using it.

The distinction requiring intervention isn't because these companies exist. The intervention is required because the company has hired someone who's job is to convince children to use something they know is addictive.

[direwolf20]

etoh in this comment means ethanol, EtOH for short. The other bar sometimes serves methanol which makes people drunk but is severely toxic and makes people go blind.

[DaanDL]

What an unworldly remark. So, we should also not ban hard-drugs then?

[ElevenLathe]

Yeah, prohibition is a terrible policy for everyone except the cops, jailers (including private, for-profit jailers), government spooks, smugglers, arms dealers, hitmen, chain and shackle manufacturers, etc. who make a living from it. I'm taxed to pay some of the world's most odious people to stop a small percentage of the supply of these drugs. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the supply makes it through and causes untold suffering for addicts, often thanks to other (or the same) taxpayer-funded bad guys and an onramp provided by the legal pharmaceutical industry. In the impoverished countries where the supply comes from, all this revenue funds hellish slave/feudal economies where a small violent elite terrorize, torture, and kill working people. Even in the developed world, addicts are weaponized by others for all kinds of violence (drug gangs, human trafficking rings, etc.) and net-negative property crime (stripping copper from abandoned houses, stealing catalytic converters, etc.).

In short, banning hard drugs is very very obviously a losing policy that serves only to enrich the world's worst people at the expense of everyone else.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

> So, we should also not ban hard-drugs then?

Is this a serious question? Have you been asleep since 70s and are not aware on how the War on Drugs has been going?

[turtlesdown11]

There is a gulf of difference between banning hard drugs and criminalizing their use

[direwolf20]

Possession and use should not be illegal. If you believe in regulation of this style, only dealing should be illegal.

[sven_8127642]

Yes, many intelligent people DO think we should not ban any drugs/substances and that the best way to deal with them is instead regulate and set up societal structures and frameworks that support the issues around abuse.

The science tends to back these ideas up. Banning does not stop people from doing what they want.

Education and guard rails are always better than hard control.

[rektomatic]

are hard-drugs a design pattern?

[direwolf20]

Why should something not be banned just because it's a design pattern?

In fact hard drugs are a pattern. There's no molecular fragment that makes something a hard drug. It's a label we apply based on patterns. Not design patterns though since drugs are discovered not designed.

In fact we do ban design patterns of drugs. There used to be an industry of slightly altering an illegal drug so it would have the same effect without being the banned chemical. They banned this by banning design patterns: no tryptamines with psychedelic effects, etc.