Death Of Doom Scrolling? EU Moves To Kill Infinite Scrolling On Social Media

[RAMROD 117,202]

Doom scrolling is doomed, if the EU gets its way. 

The European Commission is for the first time tackling the addictiveness of social media in a fight against TikTok that may set new design standards for the world’s most popular apps. 

Brussels has told the company to change several key features, including disabling infinite scrolling, setting strict screen time breaks and changing its recommender systems. The demand follows the Commission's declaration that TikTok’s design is addictive to users — especially children. 

The fact that the Commission said TikTok should change the basic design of its service is “ground-breaking for the business model fueled by surveillance and advertising," said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, president of the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish civil society group.

That doesn’t bode well for other platforms, particularly Meta’s Facebook and Instagram. The two social media giants are also under investigation over the addictiveness of their design. 

The findings laid out a week ago mark the first time the Commission has set out its stance on the design of a social media platform under its Digital Services Act, the EU’s flagship online-content law that Brussels says is essential for protecting users. 

TikTok can now defend its practices and review all the evidence the Commission considered — and has said it would fight these findings. If it fails to satisfy the Commission, the app could face fines up to 6 percent of annual global revenue. 

It’s the first time any regulator has attempted to set a legal standard for the addictiveness of platform design, a senior Commission official said in a briefing to reporters.  

The Digital Services Act requires platforms like TikTok to assess and mitigate risks to their users. But these risks are vaguely defined in the law, so until now it had been unclear exactly where the regulator would draw the line. 

Two years after the TikTok probe was launched, the Commission has opted to strike at the heart of platform design, claiming it poses a risk to the mental health of users, particularly children. The Commission's other concerns with TikTok were settled amicably between the two sides.

https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-meta-facebook-instagram-brussels-kill-infinite-scrolling/

[Trxstan 1,679]

This is super interesting… essentially outlawing certain forms of UX/UI design… would love for this to get passed. The inventor of this UI himself said that he regretted designing it for its inhumanity.

[Gaga Scholar 232]

I hate this about eBay. I'll spend way too much time on there, just because the page keeps loading more and more search results. The crazy thing is that the results are repeating themselves after a certain point, so it's definitely not an "innocent" feature. 

[littlepotter 76,616]

This is honestly necessary in this day and age. Just last week I realized how much doomscrolling was wasting my time, and I can't believe it's been as easy as installing a time-limiting app for me to stop. It's not that I was addicted to it because I would have uninstalled that reminder app to keep scrolling. Turns out I would just completely go passive and scroll, and all I needed was a prompt to stop. 

[AsleepOnTheCeiling 6,974]

I don't completely disagree with the idea but there are a few flags coming to mind. I'm sure there are ways the UI/UX can be redesigned without outright limiting screen time. Tik Tok is known for the user-generated information that spreads, both good and bad. But it's allowed people to spread awareness and organize for causes they feel passionate about. Limiting that is akin to what the US tried to do but in a more covert way. 

[Ladle Ghoulash 53,548]

Ngl I will never understand people justifying this level of paternalism lol

[Bronco 25,424]

19 minutes ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Ngl I will never understand people justifying this level of paternalism lol

Because leaving social media to self police for nearly 2 decades has worked wonders for the world. 

We've spent 2 decades saying let the market self regulate and leave parents to parent. But that's not worked. And its not worked because the market has nothing to make it self regulate and parents aren't trained to treat dopamine addiction. 

[Defmix100 7,102]

6 hours ago, Gaga Scholar said:

I hate this about eBay. I'll spend way too much time on there, just because the page keeps loading more and more search results. The crazy thing is that the results are repeating themselves after a certain point, so it's definitely not an "innocent" feature. 

that's weird over here ebay is still regular pages, you can choose 60, 120 or 240 items to show per page but not more

[Roughhouse Dandy 13,667]

Good. Do it here too. 

[Ladle Ghoulash 53,548]

12 minutes ago, Bronco said:

Because leaving social media to self police for nearly 2 decades has worked wonders for the world. 

We've spent 2 decades saying let the market self regulate and leave parents to parent. But that's not worked. And its not worked because the market has nothing to make it self regulate and parents aren't trained to treat dopamine addiction. 

Eh, not sure I’d really trust many world governments (which are also in bed with private industry) to regulate this either. If they want to target how algorithms are formulated to drive up unhealthy levels of engagement and maybe impose restrictions on kids specifically, I’d say that’s a better option than just going for the symptom of people scrolling for extended periods of time which also comes with the unintended (and, imo, undesirable) precedent of letting the government dictate how long you’re on an app.

Edited February 16 by Ladle Ghoulash

[gagzus 23,278]

I must admit I’m on the fence, I get them wanting to stop children becoming addicted to social media or living their life for social media, but that’s already happened if anything they should’ve enforced this years ago. 
It is odd because I remember being on twitter back in like 2010 and it was possible to reach a “last tweet” of your whole timeline if you went back far enough because you ONLY saw who you followed.

Now because of advertisement, click engagement and so on you get posts based on what you like, talk about etc and it’s never ending.

Also let’s be honest, the main concern isn’t the safety it’s the  capitalist productivity, nowadays people of ALL ages are less productive even at work and school because they feel the urge to go their phone. Even I do it at my job. Like the amount of time that’s wasted on people using their phones as a “toilet break” or students who are caught not working and are on their phones in class instead. And then with the advent of AI it’s become even worse I think.

I’ll never get though how parents have completely absolved themselves from being the boundary setter and expect corporations to do it for them. “I don’t want my child to see p*rn!” then take away their internet access, “I don’t want my child to be on their phone at school!” then take their phone off them. It’s literally so easy, back in my childhood of our parents didnt want us to do things they’d intervene. We’d get the computer locked in another room, our mobiles would be taken away, our TV’s would be locked in their respective cabinet and unplugged etc 

[shape of a rvfzme 1,752]

I agree with them implementing this. I can spend 1-2 hours skating myself, because setting the time to 30 minutes doesn't help. You enter the code and that's it. There needs to be a forced option. Max 1 hour and we'll see: "Come back in 1 hours."

[meltedplastic 909]

on tumblr, it gives you the option to turn it off. i was pretty gagged when i noticed how often i WOULDNT use it when i turned off endless scroll. i think its great to have pages, like back in the day

[dynamite 66,740]

I wish Tiktok, shorts, reels etc would all **** off

Everyone is obscenely addicted whenever you look, people can't even walk down a busy street without mindlessly gawking at pointless videos on their phone. People will go to coffee shops and instead of enjoying each others company they'll be watching tiktoks... And usually out loud...

The main thing I hate, and it has become my #1 pet peeve, is when they do it without headphones. And have speakerphone calls in public places. If everyone wore headphones it wouldn't bother me nearly as much but so many people do it that it's guaranteed to happen whenever I leave the house. I feel forced to wear headphones wherever I go to drown it out, I can't just enjoy whatevers going on around me anymore

Nobody has an attention span anymore. My own is ****ed.

So yeah bye bye doomyscroll hope you die soon

Edited February 16 by dynamite

[Sepsami 20,991]

8 hours ago, RAMROD said:

Doom scrolling is doomed, if the EU gets its way. 

The European Commission is for the first time tackling the addictiveness of social media in a fight against TikTok that may set new design standards for the world’s most popular apps. 

Brussels has told the company to change several key features, including disabling infinite scrolling, setting strict screen time breaks and changing its recommender systems. The demand follows the Commission's declaration that TikTok’s design is addictive to users — especially children. 

The fact that the Commission said TikTok should change the basic design of its service is “ground-breaking for the business model fueled by surveillance and advertising," said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, president of the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish civil society group.

That doesn’t bode well for other platforms, particularly Meta’s Facebook and Instagram. The two social media giants are also under investigation over the addictiveness of their design. 

The findings laid out a week ago mark the first time the Commission has set out its stance on the design of a social media platform under its Digital Services Act, the EU’s flagship online-content law that Brussels says is essential for protecting users. 

TikTok can now defend its practices and review all the evidence the Commission considered — and has said it would fight these findings. If it fails to satisfy the Commission, the app could face fines up to 6 percent of annual global revenue. 

It’s the first time any regulator has attempted to set a legal standard for the addictiveness of platform design, a senior Commission official said in a briefing to reporters.  

The Digital Services Act requires platforms like TikTok to assess and mitigate risks to their users. But these risks are vaguely defined in the law, so until now it had been unclear exactly where the regulator would draw the line. 

Two years after the TikTok probe was launched, the Commission has opted to strike at the heart of platform design, claiming it poses a risk to the mental health of users, particularly children. The Commission's other concerns with TikTok were settled amicably between the two sides.

https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-meta-facebook-instagram-brussels-kill-infinite-scrolling/

Omg yes please set me free