New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos
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New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
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Taking aim at “features that are designed to be addictive.”
Note that autoplay in this case doesn't refer to a video that auto-plays when you load the window, but rather the auto-playing of the next video in the feed after the last one is completed.
“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.”
When I go to any restaurant, the waiter automatically refills my water. I have yet to get ill from this because I'm not a fucking idiot.
Here's the full bill.
Within 6 months of the bill being enacted, the company must "automatically limit the amount of time that a user may spend on those platforms across all devices to 30 minutes a day unless the user elects to adjust or remove the time limit and, if the user elects to increase or remove the time limit, resets the time limit to 30 minutes a day on the first day of every month"
Should we also automatically turn off the TV in 30 minute increments? What about radio? Should a magazine come with springs to snap closed every 30 minutes?
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(4) BADGES AND OTHER AWARDS LINKED TO
ENGAGEMENT WITH THE PLATFORM.—Providing a
user with an award for engaging with the social
media platform (such as a badge or other recogni-
tion of a user’s level of engagement with the plat-
form) if such award does not substantially increase
access to new or additional services, content, or
functionality.
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@The_Quiet_One quoted in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
“If I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the wine...
... it'll end up on the floor, and I won't have a chance to drink any of it.
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Is this guy serious? I'm usually the first one to hate on companies abusing "psychological tricks" (pseudo-gambling and stuff) to keep people addicted, but... infinite scroll? Of all the things out there, that's the one you consider unacceptable?
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Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act
I see what they did there - but "Social Platforms" would make for a much better acronym.
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@anonymous234 said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
but... infinite scroll? Of all the things out there, that's the one you consider unacceptable?
Yes.
@error_bot !xkcd infinite scrolling
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@anonymous234 said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Is this guy serious? I'm usually the first one to hate on companies abusing "psychological tricks" (pseudo-gambling and stuff) to keep people addicted, but... infinite scroll? Of all the things out there, that's the one you consider unacceptable?
It's not the inifite scrolling trick (i.e. how Discourse or NodeBB display their forum posts) which is marked as the problem, it's that Facebook or Twitter feeds just keep bringing in content the further you scroll down:
(1) INFINITE SCROLL OR AUTO REFILL.—The use of a process that automatically loads and displays additional content, other than music or video content that the user has prompted to play, when a user approaches or reaches the end of loaded content without requiring the user to specifically request (such as by pushing a button or clicking an icon, but not by simply continuing to scroll) that additional content be loaded and displayed.
I'm really divided on this one: one part of me is thinking "nanny state!" while another is thinking "you know, that might curtail 'binge-scrolling' a bit". However, the cynic in me is thinking that this can only be implemented badly and would very soon be subverted.
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@JBert can't wait for a court case to determine whether scrolling the mouse wheel or swiping up counts as specific request such as pushing a button.
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@Gąska It's already excluded : "such as by pushing a button or clicking an icon, but not by simply continuing to scroll".
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@Khudzlin is "scroll" defined anywhere? I can imagine quite a few UI designs where using a scroll wheel behaves more like pushing a button than page scrolling. Like, for example, you reach the end of a page, and it stops, and if you try to scroll more, it shows a popup that says "spin mouse wheel downwards one more time to load more post" (note how I carefully avoided the word "scroll"), and if you keep scrolling after that, it loads.
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@Gąska In this design, the user reaches an end, and as such this would be acceptable with the idea behind the bill. They're against appending unrelated content after the original page, in such was as to make the user think that they're still reading the original article or whatever.
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@acrow said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
@Gąska In this design, the user reaches an end, and as such this would be acceptable with the idea behind the bill. They're against appending unrelated content after the original page, in such was as to make the user think that they're still reading the original article or whatever.
Under this interpretation, Facebook and Twitter absolutely do reach an end even now - there's always this little delay when you hit bottom and only then it starts loading. Considering they put "Social Media" in the name of the act, I don't think that's the intention.
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@Gąska said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
@acrow said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
@Gąska In this design, the user reaches an end, and as such this would be acceptable with the idea behind the bill. They're against appending unrelated content after the original page, in such was as to make the user think that they're still reading the original article or whatever.
Under this interpretation, Facebook and Twitter absolutely do reach an end even now - there's always this little delay when you hit bottom and only then it starts loading. Considering they put "Social Media" in the name of the act, I don't think that's the intention.
Considering how much my phone stutters on some pages, I don't think "a little delay" counts. A pop-up or a horizontal divider with a "next article - picked based on your interests" would be different.
Or, have I understood the intent incorrectly? The intent is to force the media top tell the used that the specific content that they were consuming has ended, and they're about to continue to the next one, is it not? Versus loading similar content to append to the previous page, without any clear boundary.
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@acrow said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Or, have I understood the intent incorrectly? The intent is to force the media top tell the used that the specific content that they were consuming has ended, and they're about to continue to the next one, is it not? Versus loading similar content to append to the previous page, without any clear boundary.
Nope. The intent is to make browsing Facebook more annoying, to make people spend less time there.
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I see the US is picking up the "Silliest Internet Law" gauntlet that the EU tossed in their face.
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@The_Quiet_One said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
Taking aim at “features that are designed to be addictive.”
Obligatory:
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@CHUDbert Either that or the legislator is describing the size of a fish he caught.
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Anyone who doesn't know about the one-handed fisherman?
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@JBert said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
I'm really divided on this one: one part of me is thinking "nanny state!"
Totally,
this.
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If this would outlaw Discourse I am behind it completely.
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@Gąska said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
@acrow said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Or, have I understood the intent incorrectly? The intent is to force the media top tell the used that the specific content that they were consuming has ended, and they're about to continue to the next one, is it not? Versus loading similar content to append to the previous page, without any clear boundary.
Nope. The intent is to make browsing Facebook more annoying, to make people spend less time there.
The effect would certainly not be limited to Farcebook, et al. The other day, I watched a news video at cbsnews.com. When that video finished, another began, without even any noticeable loading delay, that I can recall, then another and another. IIRC, most of this was while my body was trying to set a record for turning water down my throat into smelly brown liquid out the other end, so it's not like I had anything better to do with my time while sitting on the toilet, but it wasn't until after a 20+ minute story on Midwest flooding that I decided I'd watched enough junk news.
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@HardwareGeek said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
@Gąska said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
@acrow said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Or, have I understood the intent incorrectly? The intent is to force the media top tell the used that the specific content that they were consuming has ended, and they're about to continue to the next one, is it not? Versus loading similar content to append to the previous page, without any clear boundary.
Nope. The intent is to make browsing Facebook more annoying, to make people spend less time there.
The effect would certainly not be limited to Farcebook, et al.
I mean, it's a law bill. Written by politicians.
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@HardwareGeek said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
I watched a news video at cbsnews.com. When that video finished, another began, without even any noticeable loading delay, that I can recall, then another and another. IIRC, most of this was while my body was trying to set a record for turning water down my throat into smelly brown liquid out the other end, so it's not like I had anything better to do with my time while sitting on the toilet, but it wasn't until after a 20+ minute story on Midwest flooding that I decided I'd watched enough junk news.
How is that substantially different from you turning on the TV for a comparable length of time?
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Fuck yeah, make web 1.0 again!
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@Gąska said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
"Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act"
I see what they did there - but "Social Platforms" would make for a much better acronym.
Social Platforms Addiction Reduction Technology Act for Keeping Users Sane
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Banning Infiniscroll and badges? Did this person just have a bad experience with the Discohorse?
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@loopback0 said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Did this person just have a bad experience with the Discohorse?
Did someone not?
Filed under: Besides
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@blek said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Fuck yeah, make web 1.0 again!
This, but unironically!
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@topspin said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
@blek said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Fuck yeah, make web 1.0 again!
This, but unironically!
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@topspin said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
@blek said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Fuck yeah, make web 1.0 again!
This, but unironically!
Well, depends. Are we talking about Web 1.0 from before or after
<marquee>?
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@topspin I was being completely serious.
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The web is coming full circle to some post-postmodernism bullshit.
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@loopback0 said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Banning Infiniscroll and badges? Did this person just have a bad experience with the Discohorse?
You're laughing with the badges, but research does show that this whole "gamification" business can be addictive which is why it has spread so much in the first place. And while the act says "badges", it's clear that they also want to include likes.
One should wonder what this would do to StackOverflow though. Somebody check Jeff's Twitter, now.
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@error said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
@HardwareGeek said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
I watched a news video at cbsnews.com. When that video finished, another began, without even any noticeable loading delay, that I can recall, then another and another. IIRC, most of this was while my body was trying to set a record for turning water down my throat into smelly brown liquid out the other end, so it's not like I had anything better to do with my time while sitting on the toilet, but it wasn't until after a 20+ minute story on Midwest flooding that I decided I'd watched enough junk news.
How is that substantially different from you turning on the TV for a comparable length of time?
In one sense, it's not. It's just like TV news, where unrelated news stories follow one after another.
OTOH, it's unexpected and unwanted behavior from a website. If I turn on the TV news to find out about the revolution in Oobleckistan, I expect I'm going to have to sit through the entire hour of news before they get to the three minute segment on Oobleckistan at the end of the hour. But if I go to, say, NY Times, Fox, Grauniad, WaPo, or whoever's website to read a story about people committing forgery to hide Google search results, I expect information about people committing forgery to hide Google search results, not Oobleckistan or the weather in Nebraska. Links to those stories, sure, but not the stories themselves without navigating to another page.
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Wow, we're combatting features meant to be addictive?
Like the literal gambling and propagand-- oh wait we're just combatting features meant to be convenient.
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@ben_lubar said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Wow, we're combatting features meant to be addictive?
Like the literal gamblingB*****n Lootboxes Thread is
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And what about the Garage? It's highly addictive...
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@Zerosquare said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
And what about the Garage? It's highly addictive...
It comes with free house burnings so the problem is self-regulating
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I hate both of these misfeatures with the burning passion of a thousand suns, so I'm 100% behind this bill.
Clicking on a Youtube link from a private window is something that happens to me often enough to be really pissed off that they made it ON by default.
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@JBert said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
You're laughing with the badges, but research does show that this whole "gamification" business can be addictive which is why it has spread so much in the first place.
Well, duh! What's the point of badges, if not to engage the user more with the site, i.e. play on the same psychological mechanism than addiction????
You don't need "research", just look at articles from people from pushed gamification (I remember some
blog posts about it, from when he started SO, or maybe it was on joelonsoftware.com?), they explicitly said from the start that this was the point of it.But then again, any feature that makes viewing/interacting with content easier is "addictive". When I first started reading Usenet (
), I used a text-only newsreader where I discovered one day that I could move to the next message by just pressing <space>, I definitely read more groups after that because it was easier.
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@error said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
If this would outlaw Discourse I am behind it completely.
Us Discourse fans also get to become dashing outlaws.
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@pie_flavor said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Us Discourse fans also get to become dashing outlaws.
If it's on a long thread with lots of embeds, it's more like being shuddering shambling outlaws…
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ban infinite scroll
Noooooooooooooooooooooo
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All it would take is for these sites to allow a minimum amount of customization, like whether or not to auto play, but hipsters always think they know best for everybody else so every fucking time I watch a Star Trek video on DailyMotion the next video is some retarded infotainment clip about R Kelly abusing/assaulting women stupid enough to associate with him.
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I remember how Jeff fought tooth and nail to avoid adding a pagination option. He had some way of turning every feature request and bug report into an ideological debate.
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@error said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
I remember how Jeff fought tooth and nail to avoid adding a pagination option. He had some way of turning every feature request and bug report into an ideological debate.
Jeff's attitude is one of the reasons why we will end up serving robots instead of the other way around.
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@levicki said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
I like this bill and hope it passes even if I am not living in the USA.
I fucking hate infini-scroll sites and auto-play-next videos.
I fucking hate listening to Justin Bieber songs. I'm not going to outlaw things I hate, though. Because I'm not a fucking idiot.
@The_Quiet_One said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Should we also automatically turn off the TV in 30 minute increments? What about radio? Should a magazine come with springs to snap closed every 30 minutes?
Maybe we should because anything we do in excess turns out to be unhealthy?
Or maybe we should merely advise people on the health effects and not control people's lives? The government is not my mommy.
Consider this -- you buy a cup of coffee and as you are paying for it, the barista starts making another cup for you and you have to tell them "no I don't want another cup right now" to make them stop and that happens every time you are buying a coffee because hey, you bought one coffee (read one article, watched one video) and they are in business of serving coffee (articles, videos) so they assume you want more if you are still standing there (on their website).
Now imagine if everything you did during your day was on "autoplay-by-default" or "infini-scroll-by-default".
I don't think it's physically possible to accomplish a greater strawman argument. I think you've just found the universal plank constant for maximum possible strawman per volume before collapsing into a black hole.
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@The_Quiet_One said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
Or maybe we should merely advise people on the health effects and not control people's lives? The government is not my mommy.
Are you one of those "government so small you can drown it in a bathtub" proponents?No, but you're clearly one of those "government so big it will inevitably make everything resemble 1984 as a side-effect."
Newsflash -- big corporations pushing shit on you and abusing you aren't your mommy either and they won't stop with their shit unless they are forced to stop by guess who? The government! The entity we made for the purpose of having authority to conduct the policy, actions, and affairs of a state, organization, or people.
I have enough self-control not to social media myself to death. Hell, I have a job. I barely have enough time to participate here except on occasional breaks in my work. There's a lot of stuff that some people may get harmfully obsessed with. MMORPGs, beauty magazines, comic books, clothes shopping... and Internet addiction is something that was a problem even before infinite scrolling and auto-play videos, so even banning that is going to do jack shit for those people.
@The_Quiet_One said in New bill would ban auto-scrolling and auto-play videos:
I don't think it's physically possible to accomplish a greater strawman argument
Don't tempt me... What if you read a book in the library, and the next book immediately jumped into your hands as soon as you finished with the first one?
Joking aside, for me the ultimate test is whether you would tolerate in a physical world something you are forced to tolerate in a virtual world.
I'm not forced to tolerate it. I often listen to music on YouTube on a playlist. Having to hit "play" on each track would be more infuriating for me. And, once again, if you want to talk about the physical world, TV show marathons and weekend-long countdown lists on radio stations have been around for decades. Last I saw nobody was dropping dead because of that.
Just like anything else that is harmful if one is addicted to it, you need to combat that with therapy and self-control, not forcing everyone to be babied into moderating it because some people have those problems.
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Won't anybody think of
the children@Tsaukpaetra? Every time he's upvoted every single post, more posts appear, and he has to start again.
1309: Infinite Scrolling - explain xkcd
