It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling, but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it. The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do.

My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent, but after thinking on it more I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". Everything I thought of would have some way or workaround that could be found, and equally would have terrible consequences on situations where this is actually quite valuable. IE if you disallow infinite scrolling, what page sizes are allowed? Can I just have a page of 10,000 elements that lazy load?

Regardless of your take around whether this is EU overreach, I'm glad they're not implementing strict laws around what you can/can't do - there are valuable situations for these UI patterns, even if in combination they can create addictive experiences. Still, I do think that overregulation here will lead to services being fractured. I was writing about this earlier this morning (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005367), but the regulated friction of major platforms (ie discord w/ ID laws) is on a collision course with the ease of vibe coding up your own. When that happens, these comissions are going to need to think long and hard around having a few large companies to watch over is better than millions of small micro-niche ones.

Also, while I dislike infinite scrolling, why should the EU regulate the design of a website? I don't like this idea as a principle. This clearly comes from overpaid bureaucrats. I am not at all saying the EU should not become stronger, in the face of a very hostile and abusive USA - but the focus by these bureaucrats is wrong. Those micro-regulations will not get rid of US dominance in the software sector.

Genuinely curious about the actual data on this.

Does anyone have a link to a reputable, sizable study?

I'm interested to see what measures people will use to get around the increasingly bizarre restrictions. Perhaps an official browser extension for each platform that reimplements bureaucrat-banned features?

Is ticktock addictive because of it's design, or is it addictive because it brings thousands of people and experiences and emotions right to you? Probably both, but it's hard to separate one from the other. Apps are not opium, it's not as clear cut.

Instead of micromanaging technology and culture they should make sure that society is kind, that there is slack in the system, that people don't have reason to want to flee their real lives, that those hurt by new technology get support.

Of course truly malicious dark patterns and fraud should be punished. But that feels like a different category.

Keep in mind that in Europe, TikTok is still run by the original owners with China connections - unlike the new "American TikTok" after the owner change in the US.

The US legislature only seemed to discover its concern about addictive behavior when foreign actors or pro-palestinian content were involved, but had no problem with YouTube or Facebook doing the same stuff.

I seriously hope it's different in the EU but wouldn't bet on it.

One is arbitrarily banned by unelected bureaucrats. The other is fine.

We blame social companies for failing to raise our children the way we think they should.

They're not alone in this by any means, America has also opened their doors for all forms of gambling like Kalshi which now even sponsors news networks of all things.

The EU has this disconnect with the things they push, which makes sense considering their size and the speed at which it moves. One example that comes to mind is how they're both pushing for more privacy online while also pushing for things such as chat control which is antithetical to privacy.

Does social media need regulating? Yeah. Is infinite scrolling where they should be focusing? Probably not, there's more important aspects that should be tackled and are seemingly ignored.

Whatever happened to freedom?

What is next? Sex? Sex is addictive we should put a limit, ban after 33. How about chess? Running? Partying? Gambling?

Making heroes out of social media users was not something expected in my lifetime. Imagine facebook users bragging how they managed to jailbreak their locked down feeds. That's a comical future

If you don't do it this way to apply for everyone, then any good actor products will be crushed by profitmaxxing competitors. Or any good actor executives and workers will be pushed out by profitmaxxing shareholders.

Legislators need to be careful to keep requirements tight and manageable, but it's better to limit negative externalities than outright ban something. Banning infinite scroll or any particular pattern is nonsense, but restricting addictive design (e.g. TikTok) and algorithm weaponization (e.g. TikTok) is very sensible.

I guess we don’t let people have hard drugs even if sometimes they just need to escape their painful life. And maybe this could fall under that logic. But we do let people drink themselves, which serves the same purpose. And if I had to choose, I think doomscrolling is more at the level of Drinking, and less at the level of Heroin. So I would actually be fine with an age limit for doomscrolling after which, you have a hands off approach.

There’s a finite (albeit vast) amount of content to serve up.

They avoid to mention the rest of social media platforms, which happen to be US based. It seems they choose a single quick and easy China-based target more like an experiment to decide for the rest. The key point is when: either the current kids will experience it or those that are not yet born.

I'm curious how they plan to pretend to enforce this. Will you need a loisence to implement infinite scroll?

Though if it applies to the YouTube, seems annoying when trying to find a video to watch. I usually trigger a few infinite scrolling loads to look for videos.

And I assume they'd have to specify a maximum number of items per page, or else devs could just load a huge number of items up front which would technically not be infinite scrolling but enough content to keep someone occupied for a long time.

Wondering about a technical solution I couldn't find anything besides fold out explanations and links to explain jargon. Neither would really bridge the gap.

One obvious theory was to keep track of what the user knows and hide things they don't need or unhide things they do. This is of course was not acceptable from a privacy perspective.

Today however you could forge a curriculum for countless topics and [artificially] promote a great diversity of entry level videos. If the user is into something they can be made to watch more entry level videos until they are ready for slightly more advanced things. You can reward creators for filling gaps between novice and expert level regardless of view count.

Almost like Khan academy but much slower, more playful and less linear.

Imagine programming videos that assume the reader knows everything about each and every tool involved. The algorithm could seek out the missing parts and feed them directly into your addiction or put bounties on the scope.

Trackers have much more effective techniques than "cookies", kids trivially bypass verification, and designers will make a joke of tell me you have infinite scrolling without telling me you have infinite scrolling. When you are facing trillions of dollars of competition to your law, what do you think is going to happen?

Maybe if there was an independent commission that had the authority to rapidly investigate and punish (i.e. within weeks) big tech for attempting engagement engineering practices it might actually have some effect. But trying to mandate end user interfaces is wasting everyone's time putting lipstick on a pig.

All just to remove navigation clicks no one minded and reduce server loads, in exchange for users suffering laggy lazy loading (or, what a hate-inducing pattern!) inability to preload, print, search or link.

What about video games? We need session limits of 30mins, kids get too addicted to it.

In fact we're going to put a timer in every bedroom so that if you have sex with your wife for too long we'll fine you because it can turn into a real addiction.

> We use cookies and other technologies to store and access personal data on your device

Evidently you don't value privacy.

Feeds should be heavily regulated, effectively they are a (personalized!) broadcast, and maybe the same strictures should apply. Definitely they should be transparent (e.g. chronological from subscribed topics), and things like veering more extreme in order to drive engagement should be outlawed.

This isn’t about addiction, it’s about censorship. If you limit the amount of time someone can spend getting information, and make it inconvenient with UI changes, it’s much harder to have embarrassing information spread to the masses.

Amazingly, the public will generally nod along anyway when they read governmental press releases and say “yes, yes, it’s for my safety.”

>"Social media app TikTok has been accused of purposefully designing its app to be “addictive” by the European Commission, citing its infinite scroll, autoplay, push notification, and recommendation features."

All of these have immediate and easy replacements or workarounds. Nothing will substantially change (for the better; maybe it does for the worse, even).

Moreover, "purposefully designing something to be addictive" (and cheap to make) is the fundamental basis of late stage capitalism.

It's not the union's business what adults spend their time on. Porn, for example, is far more addictive than TikTok, are we going to see porn bans next?

Dirty little dictators.

The union had YEARS to invest into renewables, nuclear, modern arms (cheap drones and cruise missiles built inside the union in new, purpose built factories, not bought in pitiful numbers from the US) after Russia invaded Ukraine and what did they do? Fucking nothing. Individual countries dumped the little of their aging stocks they had and that was about it. The EU could be totally independent from russian energy and swarming with hundreds of thousands of drones by now, just by reallocating the existing funds from nonsense into action.

hopefully AI will wake them up and save us from all this nonsense

They talk about how great Europe is, how they like their 1-2 hour coffee/smoke breaks... These kind of moves give me that same vibe.

But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? Why isn't the opposite happening?

My hypothesis is that these kind of popular policies are short sighted. They are super popular, they use intuition and feeling. But maybe there is something missing. The unadulterated freedom has led people to enjoy these platforms. Obviously it affects the economy. So much so, even the US military has moved from Europe to Asia.

I don't typically like fiction, but it seems "I, Robot" was spot on about Europe. (Maybe mistaking new Africa for Asia)