The addictive design is in service of ads. Instead of regulating software, tax ad revenue to disincentivize building a business model around user profiling and tracking.
Vendors now cannot get X pounds with Y pounds advertising outlay to make Z pounds per unit of wares. To continue making Z money per unit of wares, with previous S pounds price charged to consumers per unit, add significantly more than reduction in Y advertising per unit to S to offset reduced "brand" "awareness".
No one buying shit anymore. People still buying shit elsewhere. GDP and tax revenues fall relative to others. Deflationary aspects. Market leaders complain through lobbying groups. Repeal. Back to square one.
Governments see reduction in tax income and GDP and repeal taxes. In UK: Signal "mansion" tax on properties valued above X price to collect recurring Y pounds total tax. Market adjusts valuations based on probability of tax. Number of houses still worth at least X now diminishes. Now cannot collect recurring Y pounds. "Mansion" tax delayed.
You have this complex system that has reached some sort of relative equilibrium based on say a set S of ten sorts of tax rates, along with a set F of factors (size millions), with the government's tax revenue R being one of those outputs. Then some guy in the government called G signals to the government and public that he can increase R by X by fiddling with a member of S, or maybe adding a member to S (of size say ten).
Is G stupid, or does he just lean towards retaining the public's affection, his relatively low salary, potential under the table payments and whatever networking opportunities his job provides? I lean towards the latter.
The downside to this is that services become class based again then.
Instagram is the same service for everyone, regardless if you are homeless or a billionaire, it is exactly because it is an ad based model. Same for google and facebook.
These models are "classless business" incarnate, and people absolutely hate them. It's part bewildering and part bemusing.