Is your argument that unless we can make a law that is perfect and covers every conceivable use case of coercive design, then we shouldn't bother to make a law that covers any of them?
I'm pretty sure the point being made is that things like this are very difficult to actually encode into law in such a way that it doesn't cause significant damage downstream. Like, take the age verification/estimation laws that are going around. We see the big companies actively encouraging it because the laws will (ironically) benefit big tech rather than harming them in any substantial manner: companies like Meta have the money and resources to implement them. But everyone who isn't a super big powerful company will be harmed because they will be unable to comply (or will find it incredibly costly to do so).
Because the point applies to the subject of this thread too, that's why. People think that all of this is super easy to just ban by fiat (law) but the problem is that the "simple" solutions oftentimes have harmful downstream effects that must be considered. For example, let's hypothetically say that we ban "addictive algorithms". What even counts as an "addictive algorithm"? Does my Mastodon home timeline count as an "addictive algorithm"? How about the Bluesky feed? Does the HN home page count as one? (Someone could (reasonably!) make this argument too, given that HN does dynamically update it's home page depending on rankings of submissions to end-users, even if such an update requires a page refresh.) So what I was trying to say (and the reason I brought up age verification/estimation) is that if we take the simple path we're going to catch a bunch of entities up in the ban that we... Probably shouldn't be banning. But you are also going to suffer a lot of pain trying to (not) cause this problem too.
But we're not talking about banning addictive algorithms, we're talking about banning endless scrolling. You're trying to straw man by bringing in completely different examples.
Edit: rereading the article, they want to ban "psychologically exploitative features intended to maximize engagement that foreseeably lead to compulsive use." It seems like it's pretty straightforward to apply that logic to your hypotheticals.
No my point is that none of these are by themselves even coercive design, there’s no distinction between a smooth or pleasant UX experience and a coercive design without context.
But this isn't about banning those things, it's about banning endless scrolling.
edit: I get that you're trying to provide counterexamples to be able to say "here's something that _could_ be construed as coercive/addictive design, so the law is going to end up banning those" - but that's the whole reason we have courts to interpret these laws. If you can reasonably conclude that a 100ms delay is helpful for user input - then it's probably not addictive design! That's the whole reason courts exist, because there is always going to be ambiguity; laws are not algorithms.