[Greenpants]

The way I see it, it's the incessant stimuli you get through these apps. There's just no point where the screen stays quiet, stimulus free. Moving elements capture our attention naturally, especially when the entire screen keeps moving. The endless scroll element just makes sure that the stimulus keeps getting renewed the moment you're done with it.

Instead, a scroll should give you a break before heading into the next video. I'm willing to bet this would help severely with addiction. People are then forced to reconsider whether they actually want to play the next video. "Done" should not always lead to "here's the next stimulus". That's what's addictive. The brain isn't made to break out of that loop easily.

[TripleFFF]

The problem with using scrolling as a metric is it assumes satisfaction with the content presented and ignores the fact that, on certain apps, many scroll miles go into skipping around articles or ads or reposts to get to the content you want, and imo a punishment for seeking more content while also diluting said content with forced ads at an alarming ratio is not indicative of addiction but scarcity of satisfaction and engaging content

[Noumenon72]

If you continue scrolling, that shows you think that the content presented is valuable enough that scrolling past some misses is worth it. A good scroll like TikTok carefully metes out the ads so that half of them you don't mind and the other half you enjoy. If you find a site whose scroll makes you feel this way, just stop scrolling and don't try to ban the concept for everyone else.

[King-Aaron]

What I'm about to say is going to sound very 'layman', and this is coming from someone who's been building UI's for like, 20 years.

This discussion makes me both laugh and feel sad, because we all know this is bad for us and gives us zero ROI for our time... and yet there's a whole thread developing here to justify the pattern.

I don't think I have a point on that, just that observation.

[iamnothere]

Hello, what right do you have to regulate the presentation of speech? If you regulate this format because it’s now considered harmful, what stops El Presidente from moving to ban “zines” because the format is “harmful to young minds” and used by “antifa”? What stops CA from moving to ban forums because threaded formats are suddenly considered “too addicting”? Maybe we should ban VR or first person shooter video games?

There is no allowable constitutional authority for actions like this. CA is literally overstepping the 1A limits of the Constitution here.

[tzs]

I doubt that this will run into any 1A issues. It will probably pass the test for allowable time/place/manner restrictions.

• It is content neutral.

• The government can probably show a significant government interest in reducing the harms infinite scroll often leads to.

• It is narrowly tailored. It achieves the goal without burdening more speech than is substantially necessary to achieve the goal. Arguably it doesn't burden any speech since every word you can have on an infinite scroll page you can have on a paginated site.

• There are alternate channels. The speakers still can get their message across. In this case they can get it across to the exact same audience in the exact same place. They just have to stick in page breaks.

[iamnothere]

Time/place/manner restrictions typically apply to public property. These are private websites.

While the court has once or twice extended protections to people using private property as a public forum, to my knowledge they have never done so with time/place/manner restrictions.

[7402]

"No loud music between 10pm and 7am." That's on private property when it can be heard by others. Laws have all kind of restrictions on the time/place/manner of self-expression when what is being expressed has a negative effect on others. What you can't do is have laws that would say loud opera after 10pm is OK but loud Country & Western isn't.

[iamnothere]

“No writing at home between 10pm and 7am.” Would that be allowed? I imagine you agree the answer is “no”. What, specifically, is the difference? Because the answer lies there.

Hint: the physical world is very different from the virtual world, and has different limitations.

Hint #2: if I crank up the amp to 1000db and shout into it, it’s obviously not a question of speech anymore. This is obviously an extreme example (the energetic release just destroyed the planet), so dial it back to where it’s reasonable and concerns are balanced. Are you still facing actual physical discomfort? Did you dial it back enough?

Hint #3: is my nighttime writing keeping you awake in your home?

[ToValueFunfetti]

Speaking as someone who agrees with you, it's much better to just make your point than to lay it out in hints like this. It's condescending and annoying. No offense intended, just a note.

[tpdly]

These are private websites accessible over the public internet, to be clear. Also, there are known relationships between the intelligence community and the big platforms, lets not pretend they have free reign.

Should/do we allow foreign propaganda radio stations? If we accept that the government can (and very much does) impose itself on content platforms for "national security", what exactly is the difference between deliberately insidious information warfare, and collateral damage from market incentives?

I agree that its better to find solutions that involve protections instead of restrictions though. I think it means forced decoupling of indices/curation from advertising. This would make advertising funded addiction feeds compete with paid feed applications.

[iamnothere]

> Should/do we allow foreign propaganda radio stations?

How do you define this? Is it foreign owned? Noncitizens are not guaranteed the same rights, especially citizens of hostile foreign powers.

> If we accept that the government can (and very much does) impose itself on content platforms for "national security"

Why should we accept this?

> what exactly is the difference between deliberately insidious information warfare, and collateral damage from market incentives?

None, both are concepts not found in the Constitution (if you’re talking about domestic speech by citizens) and both are protected by 1A.

I don’t care in the slightest about your fearmongering national security nonsense.

[seanhunter]

Courts already do lawfully regulate the “presentation of speech” as you’re calling it. Say facebook was to present each post surrounded by pornography for example. That’s clearly a “presentation of speech” in your framing. However courts have decided that it is possible to regulate the circumstances under which that would or would not be ok and 1A arguments have not prevailed in that case.

[iamnothere]

That’s more likely to be publication in itself, not presentation, but regardless porn is one of the very few areas where the courts still listen to speech arguments. However, the remaining decisions allowing (limited) regulation of porn rely on complicated, twisted reasoning—it’s clear that the justices don’t like touching this subject and feel that there are still constitutional issues here that may eventually need to be resolved via amendment. Usually this involves classifying porn in some other context, so it’s no longer “just” speech. Then the non-speech part can be regulated. Whenever they do this, they like to draw a very tight line biased towards favoring speech wherever possible, and they have consistently made it clear that they are not looking for more areas to do this kind of tightrope walking.

[coldbrewed]

We already do limit harmful speech, at presence it's limited to speech and will immediately cause harm (the whole "shouting fire" thing) and the demonstrable addiction properties can be reasonably shown as harmful.

It's also telling that only corporations seem to be the ones demanding the right to infinite scroll; what's the scenario where an individual can only express themselves and their ideas through implementing infinite scroll on a social media?

We draw lines in the sand all the time for the sake of public safety, I'd like to hear a specific case of harm here.

[iamnothere]

“Shouting fire” was a bad decision denying the right to protest the draft, and it’s since been overturned. (Thankfully, as we may need that right soon!)

The First Amendment is clear: there shall be no law abridging freedom of speech. Courts have bent around that in the past, in earlier eras, but they were wrong to do so. Their mistakes have mostly been corrected although there’s still a few left.

The document that governs this country spells it out: it can’t be done. Public safety be damned. There’s no public safety exemption in the Constitution. If you want it done, pass an amendment. There’s a process for it.

I personally dislike infinite scroll, but I dislike the camel’s nose in the tent even more. No speech laws.

[coldbrewed]

Hang on, let's go back - clarify for me how we're calling an addictive feature in a product built by the wealthiest corporations on the planet a matter of individual free speech? Precisely whose free speech would be harmed here?

Seriously, this diffusion of individual liberties into corporations has no presence in the constitution, and courts have fabricated this wholesale. There is no idea, no concept, no notion that infinite scroll provides. We regulate the size, location, and brightness of billboards; is this also a matter of speech?

[iamnothere]

Oh is this law’s scope limited to only the world’s largest corporations, and not smaller competitors, new entrants, individual developers, or nonprofits? I didn’t realize that.

Oh is the presentation of text and images not “speech” because it’s “addictive”? I didn’t realize that.

Your strategy with billboards is more clever than I’ve usually seen from you lot; I’ll give you credit for that. A billboard is actually a physical structure. The message on the billboard is the speech. If I stopped here you’d have a “gotcha”; the software must be like the billboard! But no, because first of all, code is speech, and secondly, the layout of items on the screen and how they interact is also just speech. It’s just graphic and UX design! There is no physical structure here. You’re attempting to regulate the presentation of information—design.

[EPWN3D]

The 1A jurisprudence, to my understanding, basically results in the courts virtually never finding that the government has a legitimate, competing interest in limiting political speech.

But courts are willing to find that certain speech that is apolitical can be limited (the previous "fire in a crowded theatre" example). Basically the courts have recognized 1A established freedom of speech to protect political dissent and political ideas. Porn, for example, has limitations that would never apply to political ideas.

[coldbrewed]

Isn't it fascinating that the people making the most extensive use of infinite feeds and A/B testing for maximum user engagement are also the massive platforms with dominating network effects and captive audiences? It's like _specifically regulating large social media conglomerates with outsized impact, capacity for harm, and demonstrated propensity to maximize user addiction might provide an ideal balance of societal improvement without harming smaller actors_.

Re, source code: you can print out an implementation of your infinite feed and put it on GitHub. Go nuts. That's your freedom of speech. Likewise, I can write DDoS control software and clients. However I can't run said software as a service because that specific act is illegal. Same thing applies to the application feeds we're discussing; hosting content and offering software as a service has different semantics.

If you think that UX is a matter of free speech then I have an illuminated freeway sign running at 3000 nits to sell you.

We can have nice things. We can push corporations to act in pro-social manners. We can put individuals at a better footing with respect to large corporations while ensuring the liberty of individuals and small businesses. This libertarian idea that we cannot constrain obviously harmful behavior from massive corporations without immediately turning into an authoritarian both flies in the face of historical precedent and basic reason.

[inigyou]

There's the constitution (basically a piece of toilet paper with scribbles on it) and then there's the actual reality of how the country operates, and the actual reality is that speech is restricted in many ways.

I must also mention that courts are not Congress and states are not Congress. The first amendment does not say "there shall be no law" - that is your poor paraphrasing - it says "Congress shall make no law"

[iamnothere]

Well just throw it all out the window then, if we’re not going to pay attention to the constitution. First things first, let’s make a law to ban you.

If you’re just going to pick and choose what rights you apply, then it’s not much of a governing document, is it? Is this just “Parliament is Sovereign” with extra fluff? Might makes right?

[inigyou]

Might has always and will always make right and there's nothing you can do about it. That's why we aim to make rightful organizations mighty.

[inigyou]

btw zines are already illegal in the USA. 30 year sentence. https://culture.org/art-and-culture/thirty-years-for-a-box-o...

[initatus]

Funny. You're citation never says what he was sentenced for, specifically.

[iamnothere]

That specific case is why I brought this up, no they aren’t illegal, this is Making Shit Up and exaggerating beyond what actually happened. But if people like you got your way, they could be made illegal.

[post-it]

I disagree. Looking forward to reading your amicus brief.

[htek]

First they came for the infinite scroll, and I said nothing...

That was a little hyperbolic. The government already can regulate "speech" to some extent in limited, targeted ways, as this is. For example: they can (and increasingly will) require ADA accessibility standards on web and mobile sites and apps-- even private sector-- that deal with the public.

[iamnothere]

Can they? Why haven’t they enforced this yet?

It may be that this isn’t as settled as you think when speech concerns are present. The existence of alternative accessible formats, or sufficient assistive technology in the marketplace, may be just as compliant. It’s likely that these will be favored over mandating changes that affect design or presentation, given the Court’s prior decisions on balancing speech concerns in other areas.

[inigyou]

Someone would have to sue the website to get the ADA enforced

[somenameforme]

While I would agree, I think many are missing the even more fundamental issue. Even if you get rid of every single predatory thing imaginable, social media itself is full of incessant stimuli, FOMO and other features that make it destructive for everybody, but especially young people. For instance image crafting is going to harmful for everybody, because many adults have a tendency to engage in keeping up with the Joneses, but for children it's especially harmful because of much greater personal insecurities and proclivities towards envy.

And things like image crafting are not even necessarily intentional or malicious. Somebody who posts a pic of their filet mignon dinner probably isn't posting much in the way of their microwaved leftovers mashed up in a bowl. And adults already get mistaken perceptions of others because of this bias, let alone children.

[iamnothere]

Don’t give them any ideas or they’ll start working to outlaw “inducing envy in others”