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This is article is so hard to follow.

The very aggressive bits are linked to articles supposedly backing their point with more substance, but those are same level think pieces who reference other think pieces who are based on misconceptions, and we never hit any solid ground.

For instance:

> The videos are in autoplay and shown in an endless scroll. These are features known for triggering addictive behavior and there were legislative plans in the United States to ban them.

Following “triggering addictive behavior” goes to thenextweb.com’s rant on autoplay.

which posits autoplay is “hijacking your thought process”, with a link to a medium post

Which on autoplay, explains that “Another way to hijack people is to keep them consuming things, even when they aren’t hungry anymore”, linking that analysis on the age old debunked Brian Wansink‘s bowl of cereal experiment.

So many other of these very assertive declarations have 3 to 5 levels of redirection to finally hit some disappointing justification. The general message being vaguely consensual, it’s hard to see what this piece is actually bringing to the table.



Autoplay and endless scroll are also features in Google shorts and Reels, so if that is the case you are making, then you need to go after them as well


Was there ever any serious discussion about regulating addictive social media by banning auto play?

That would definetly be an escalation if governments start regulating social media product features, and TikTok definetly wouldn’t be the first!


That’s an interesting point.

Up until now I feel we didn’t reach anything near that because in the generic case autoplay can be disabled (might be by default ?) in browsers, as it’s an overall obnoxious feature.

The case left are specific apps, and for Netflix or other traditional video streaming platforms, proving it’s against the user’s interests would be super tough (even proving it has addictive effects wouldn’t be enough, as the user could be willingly requesting these addictive effects)

Social media could be a separate case, as culturally we put it in a different bucket, but then limitations would probably only apply to specific demographics (basically kids younger than 13 or 18 ?) and clear those older on liberty of choice grounds.

I think the viewer would need to be directly losing money or being in physical harm to see any kind of regulation on these features.


Forced breaks from the intermittent reinforcement loop of online casinos has been used with some success in reducing addictive behavior. This seems analogous to having breaks in auto play.


https://www.norsk-tipping.no/kundeservice/spillevett/obligat...

One such implementation. (Link in Norwegian)


> Was there ever any serious discussion about regulating addictive social media by banning auto play?

There were some "attempts" in browsers like firefox but they are poorly implemented and do not work in 90% of the cases.


disabling by default is hardly banning.


If we regulated that then we'd have to regulate marketing, advertising, propaganda.

And nobody wants that./s


I think all the arguments "For" TikTok are smoke and mirrors since it boils down to it has a ton of information on its user, TikTok is Mega Big Chinese corp now, and CCP has full control over any corp in China, and have shown they will use that power (see Jack Ma) to do whatever they like. TikTok is the biggest honeypot and information dragnet by a foreign nation in our (USA) history by a huge margin. That's the only "against" that I need to say we need to shut down TikTok in America. There are currently a ton of other options people can move to.


I’m not afraid of the CCP. I will possibly never go to China. I’d shit my pants if the NSA, CIA, or DIA were interested in me and gathering all data on me.

I can’t imagine China or CCP being a danger to 95%+ of westerners. While the vast majority should be weary to some degree of their own security and defense apparatuses having too much data on them.


Reels and YT Shorts are atrocious. This isn't necessarily an argument to keep it unbanned, but it's comparing the Lada to a Ferrari.


>TikTok is the biggest honeypot and information dragnet by a foreign nation in our (USA) history by a huge margin. That's the only "against" that I need to say we need to shut down TikTok in America.

As you can imagine, people in other countries are observing this development with great interest.




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