A lot of adults need this too. The addictive apps are very well designed, while most blockers are either too easy to ignore or too annoying to keep using.

I built a small iOS blocker because I had the same problem. Making it strict enough to actually work without making people hate it is the main challenge.

They are bad for everyone and if you’re willing to regulate them, make them illegal to be used on anyone.

HN having pages instead of a feed or endless list is one of the things I really like about it.

Social networks in general should be banned for underage people, that's the thing. And the social network itself should be liable for verifying the age its users, like a nightclub is liable for people who enter it. No bullshit operating system age verification, that's, trust me, totally intended to protect kids and not to spy on you.

Recently I stopped scrolling reddit/being logged in and watching YouTube videos. Since it's just endless... and it's crazy. It feels unsettling, I'm bored/antsy since I'm not doing something. So I've been trying to use this time to not multi task eg. I used to have a YouTube video playing and then scroll reddit at the same time. Now it's like, listen to music/work on a computer or watch something only. Also starting to make me seek real socialization too like go to a coffee shop or something even though unfortunatley I live in the suburbs so I'd have to drive to a coffee shop.

The only stuff I look at too is this site or some entrepreneurial specific site for motivation.

(Just to clarify my point: it's not *all* bad of course, but a lot of precious time is wasted)

Which makes it also a matter of also parents and grandparents setting bad examples.

It also makes no real sense to me.

Nothing against US mega-corporations paying fins, mind you, but I equally do not trust the EU bureaucrats either. There has to be a limit to both what politicians can do, what corporations can do and what bureaucrats can do, while retaining a democratic base system at all times. If you go against addictive design, then why not against ALL ads? I don't want to see any ads. Ublock origin made me change my mind here - I literally see no reason as to why I would ever want to burden my brain cells with irrelevant content.

This is a bit different to website layout though. I equally fail to see why the EU should meta-regulate what is permissive in regards to design and what is not. Why would I have to accept any random EU bureaucrat here? If a user interface sucks, I'd rather expect ublock origin to kill it off. This could also be community maintained. No need for the EU to waste taxpayers money. After the EU wants to sniff for age data and then also declared its holy war against VPNs, I do not trust anything coming from Brussels. Even less so with Ms. Leyen in charge - can't the anti-corruption offices in Germany get rid of such lobbyists?

Don’t get me wrong, if I had my way TikTok wouldn’t exist for anyone, adults included. It’s just so strange to me that so many parents hand their 7 year olds unrestricted access to TikTok and expect someone else to keep their kid safe.

The web was already getting bad with ads and popups, but the EU's sloppy legislation loopholes somehow encouraged all websites to show cookie popups (and never remember my selection), so the experience is even worse.

Like adults spending their hours scrolling through infinite feed is somehow beneficial to the society?

You could consider unlimited scroll a dark pattern and block that, just like you'd want to block making it near impossible to cancel a service. That's testable and clear.

But "addictiveness" is just too wide a net and unenforceable (or rather, selectively enforceable).

And then the idea that the EU claims their own age verification app is the most private and most secure app in the world, yet it's already been hacked is laughable[1].

I'm very exhausted at out-of-touch and technologically illiterate politicians declaring mission accomplished on these things.

I understand that the free venture capital backed market has failed humanity in many respects. If we want solutions to the _human_ problems technology causes then yes, we need some regulations. But once again, this is just sloppy, lazy, bad law. Not based on evidence, not based on any standards, and not clear at all.

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-brussels-launched-age-che...

If you don't provide better alternative, the "kids" (and please, stop using "kids" as excuse because everybody can see through it now) will just stick on these platforms because, believe or not, these platforms are much MUCH safer than the alternatives.

How about, let's see the real problem here: 24% of EU children at poverty risk or social exclusion (2024), see https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d.... That's not just a statistic about children, it's also about their parents.

Do you know that if you go outside, then there's this huge risk of having to PAY for stuff you don't actually need to live? Like transportation to go to place that don't bring you wealth, like drink that you drink even you're not that thirsty, like movie tickets just so it will not be too awkward after all the dialogue options are exhausted? Does these politicians just somehow forgot all of these costs money, in this economy that they helped to create?

And that is not to mention the REAL risk, such as drugs the bad ones, rude or crazy drivers, unpleasant adults who's only life purpose is to earn enough money to keep them going a little bit longer, just to name a few.

..... ORRRR, you can just stay in your conformable home, sit on your soft and warm sofa/couch, and swipe your life away on TikTok or Instagram for free, safely.

You see the problem here?

I'm really sick and tired of these politicians putting up this act pretending to "love children", when in the reality what they do is putting up easy patches to hide the real problem, which is poverty and inequality, that's the real problem.

STEM or verifiable educational content only. Have a review team and an AI that moderates content. No politics, no stupid dances, no monetization of content, no slop, and only credentialed people can post on certain topics (ie a delivery driver shouldn't make posts on theoretical mathematics).

I have a hard time understanding this.

We have plenty of adults with terrible social media addiction that is destroying their lives, and nothing being done about it.

They have to restore interop with noscript/basic html web engines (past/present/and future).

Then, they have to be carefull with their file formats, for instance you never give "carte blanche" to such a disgusting format like PDF, you are very careful at defining a, as simple a possible, subset of it (with some internal software for validation).

It took me like five years to realize it was really not good idea for a small B2B business to spend a part of the limited resources in that. I needed several experiences to understand that in many cases good customer relationship and reliable system is much more important. But it wasn’t until recently that I started thinking like “wait, if it tricks the users into doing something they’re unwilling to do, isn’t it unethical?”

It makes me wonder how little we think about the ethics and the consequences of our investment. It’s not like we understand it’s unethical but do it anyway for profit. We simply don’t care how unethical it can be, not even slightly, until the evidence of the harmful effects are not negligible after years and decades.