Elder Scrolls No More - New US Bill to proposed to ban Infinite Scrolling and Autoplay

[rcmaehl]

Source:
The Verge

 

Summary;

The Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (SMART) Act wants to ban infinite-scroll and autoplay. Claiming to be a cause of Social Media Addiction.

 

Media:

 

Quotes/Excerpts:

Quote

Snapstreaks, YouTube autoplay, and endless scrolling are all coming under fire from a new bill...targeting the tech industry’s “addictive” design. The SMART Act, would ban these features that work to keep users on platforms longer, along with others, like Snapstreaks, that incentivize the continued use of these products. The Federal Trade Commission and Health and Human Services could create similar rules that would expire after three years unless Congress codified them into law. “Big tech has embraced a business model of addiction,” Hawley said. “Too much of the ‘innovation’ in this space is designed not to create better products, but to capture more attention by using psychological tricks that make it difficult to look away.” Deceptive design played an enormous part in last week’s FTC settlement with Facebook. [The] bill would make it unlawful for tech companies to use dark patterns to manipulate users into opting into services. For example, “accept” and “decline” checkboxes would need to be the same font, color, and size to help users make better, more informed choices. A former Google design ethicist, explained how platforms create products to increase the amount of time users spend on a site. “If I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the wine, you won’t know when to stop drinking,” Harris told the committee. “That’s what happens with infinitely scrolling feeds.”

 

My Thoughts:

While I'm all for no autoplay for any content, I doubt that it with completely resolve the issue as content creators will just switch to Click-Bait and other methods to attract people to manually play the videos. Infinite-Scrolling on the other hand, I'm on the edge about. When it comes to sites like Reddit infinite-scrolling is useful as there's not much I actually engage with, just lots of lurking and those communities I do engage with usually are out of new content within one or two pages. Finally, some communities are already use a forum or  forum-esque design and won't be affected. Can the internet handle going back to those designs though?

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

WHYYYYY

 

youtube autoplay is a godsend. i don't want to get up from bed to manually click the next video  

[HarryNyquist]

The thing is, they're not wrong...

 

But I disagree strongly with any laws that aim to tell me what I can and can't do "for my health."

[Fasauceome]

Is autoplay the cause of addictive behavior, or a symptom? I feel like auto play and scroll features were implemented simply to conform to the way users were already using the platforms

[DrMacintosh]

Contact the people who authored the bill and tell them to get a real job. They obviously don't know how to be a public servant. 

 

Public servants work for us, we tell them what to do. 

[minibois]

The title had me worried the Elder Scrolls franchise would be no more.. that's... An enticing title I guess.

 

As for the infinite scrolling thing, I would want to stop be able to manually turn on what I want, since I like the YouTube recommended stuff.

 

But to be honest, I don't think this would be the solution to the problem.

I think Nintendo's way of every once in a while giving you a notification of "hey, you might want to do something else, other than gaming all the time" would likely work even better.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Ban the internet then.

 

If you want to solve the problem of addiction, cut it off at the source.

[Origami Cactus]

I don't like these rules at all. There are much more important issues that need to be fixed, and they concentrated on infinitely scrolling feed? The issue itself lies somewhere else.

 

 

23 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

“If I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the wine, you won’t know when to stop drinking,” Harris told the committee. “That’s what happens with infinitely scrolling feeds.”

That is just straight up a stupid sentence. This is something on the im14andthisisdeep level. It sounds smart if you don't think about it, but the more you think about it, the stupider it gets.

[Froody129]

I think it depends on the user and the app. I think infinite scroll is nice to have, and while I spend a fair amount of time on my devices, it's something I can put down. 

 

Imo this is trying to plug a leaking ship with your fingers. The problem is caused by something else. 

 

I believe the average social media time for teenagers is 9hrs and something minutes. That's a crazy amount, and indicates a problem imo. This is not how to solve it, though. People should be able to manage themselves 

[Fasauceome]

9 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

That is just straight up a stupid sentence.

How do you drink the wine with no bottom on the glass?

 

[Aimi]

10 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

That is just straight up a stupid sentence.

AKA 99% of what every politician has ever said

[Princess Luna]

Don't care about either... though to be fair I kinda dislike infinite scrolling and autoplay... I just wish you had options rather being enforced a single way.

[The King of the Undead]

11 minutes ago, Froody129 said:

I believe the average social media time for teenagers is 9hrs and something minutes. That's a crazy amount, and indicates a problem imo. This is not how to solve it, though. People should be able to manage themselves  

I officialy hate my own damn generation.

[Radium_Angel]

24 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Whats so hard about just directing all social media sites to 127.0.0.1 on DNS servers?

List, please, all social media sites, so that I may do just this.

(Good luck, everything these days has a bit of social media baked into it)

[spartaman64]

16 minutes ago, Froody129 said:

I think it depends on the user and the app. I think infinite scroll is nice to have, and while I spend a fair amount of time on my devices, it's something I can put down. 

 

Imo this is trying to plug a leaking ship with your fingers. The problem is caused by something else. 

 

I believe the average social media time for teenagers is 9hrs and something minutes. That's a crazy amount, and indicates a problem imo. This is not how to solve it, though. People should be able to manage themselves 

 

5 minutes ago, will4623 said:

I officialy hate my own damn generation.

depends on how liberally they define social media. do they count youtube, twitch tv, this forum, online games like runescape, league of legends etc as social media? if they are just taking about facebook yes thats ridiculous but if all of those also fall under social media then its not as bad

[The King of the Undead]

Just now, spartaman64 said:

 

depends on how liberally they define social media. do they count youtube, twitch tv, this forum, online games like runescape, league of legends etc as social media? if they are just taking about facebook yes thats ridiculous but if all of those also fall under social media then its not as bad

I think its bad to be on a device that long. at least the internet.

[rcmaehl]

2 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

 

depends on how liberally they define social media. do they count youtube, twitch tv, this forum, online games like runescape, league of legends etc as social media? if they are just taking about facebook yes thats ridiculous but if all of those also fall under social media then its not as bad

What about Discord? Messenger? Skype? Imagine having to click between pages of 1-on-1 conversation. 

[MadmanRB]

Back to TV then as there is no autoplay there...... wait.

[Tristerin]

2 minutes ago, MadmanRB said:

Back to TV then as there is no autoplay there...... wait.

I was going to comment but this fire comment was already here.

 

Perfect example

[spartaman64]

6 minutes ago, will4623 said:

I think its bad to be on a device that long. at least the internet.

are there bad effects to health etc yes but to me personally it was worth it because some of my best friends i have today i made playing mmos and some of my best memories were playing with those friends if i lost 10 or 20 years off my life because of my time on my computer so be it i wouldnt trade those friends or memories for anything

[The King of the Undead]

Just now, spartaman64 said:

are there bad effects to health etc yes but to me personally it was worth it because some of my best friends i have today i made playing mmos and some of my best memories were playing with those friends if i lost 10 or 20 years off my life because of my time on my computer so be it i wouldnt trade those friends or memories for anything

Oh kay. it is bad for me and I until recently wasn't allowed to chat in video games so my view has that. isn't worth it to me tho.

[jiyeon]

I don't mind as generally the one time I find myself endlessly-scrolling is Reddit, and even then I only scroll through content for about 10 minutes before I get bored.

As for autoplay, I never use the feature since I don't hang around on YouTube long enough for the autoplay to work in my favor.

[Froody129]

10 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

 

depends on how liberally they define social media. do they count youtube, twitch tv, this forum, online games like runescape, league of legends etc as social media? if they are just taking about facebook yes thats ridiculous but if all of those also fall under social media then its not as bad

Even if you say it's all screen time, it's still a huge amount of your day. And for some people it's a problem that they are not equipped to deal with. 

 

You're proving my point; we shouldn't go off limiting the people who can control it as well. We should be focusing on teaching kids in schools how to manage their time and interact with the world around them. Unfortunately the education system in most countries encourages precisely the opposite, but that's another argument 

[Bananasplit_00]

47 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

List, please, all social media sites, so that I may do just this.

(Good luck, everything these days has a bit of social media baked into it)

Start with the big bois and most of the harm is gone

[Rune]

If youtube autoplay gets banned my life is going to get a lot more annoying.

This is stupid. Focus on actual problems you worthless wannabe politicians.