> Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive.
Or you could just shut the phone off and/or not install the app. It's a simple solution, really, and one that is available at your disposal today at no cost.
It's a phone. Put it in the trash. You will not go through physiological withdrawal symptoms.
The amount of people in here right now clamoring for legislation to keep them away from electronics which they themselves purchased is mind-bogglingly insane.
Oooooof. Can I recommend you spend some time developing some empathy?
The world is complicated. People's lives are complicated (and often meditated by their phones). People's emotional and social wellbeing is complicated, and simply ghosting all your social groups on a random Tuesday is likely to cause significant problems.
I would assume any sane person would have them regulated the same way as alcohol and tobacco so that people who want them could at least get those compounds clean and not die because their "heroin" turned out to be some mixture of fentanyl with god-knows-what.
> People's emotional and social wellbeing is complicated, and simply ghosting all your social groups on a random Tuesday is likely to cause significant problems.
You are in a great place in your life, if your most significant problem is caused by not liking a stupid meme and a breakfast photo your friends posted on a random Tuesday...
> You are in a great place in your life, if your most significant problem is caused by not liking a stupid meme and a breakfast photo your friends posted on a random Tuesday...
Or you’re in a terrible place in your life, and the small endorphin release from liking stupid memes and breakfast photos is how you try and escape from terrible things that haunt you day-to-day.
Why write like this? This is what sick internet communities look like. Mocking people for their account age, advocating for hating people for the sin of being addicted to social media. This is antisocial behavior, and we should do everything in our power to eject it from the small remaining pockets of sanity on the internet.
Someone hurt this person, I suspect. And it has left them bitter, resentful, and angry at anything that gets in their path.
They probably don't like that someone is challenging their ability to be neighborly, follow the golden rule, etc. because it conflicts with their mental model of themself.
I hope someday they will introspect and realize that we are all humans, and all humans deserve wellbeing, even those whose choices, opinions, or situation we disagree with or find unpleasant.
If it's so easy to do this, then it should also be easy to not make addictive apps right? Why are multi billion dollar companies unable to make a compliant app? They clearly have no issues paying for labor and since this is software, the labor is the true cost for compliance. Are they unable to hire devs that are unethical or what?
Shesh, maybe we should start fining individual developers too if companies aren't able to do it themselves.
I think it's really bigger than that. I'm hooked myself scrolling reels, but I go to the pub after work and see retired or 50-70 year old men (barely know how to work a phone) scrolling through them as well. That's when you know they're addicting as anything. Can't go anywhere nowadays in public without hearing someone scrolling through reels who don't know how to behave themselves in public by turning down the volume or wearing earphones.
The fact that you had to prefix "withdrawal symptoms" with the modifying adjective "physiological" means you are perfectly well aware there are withdrawal symptoms and other problems with your plan.
A few years ago, I accidentally left my phone at home when I went to work, and when I arrived I found that because I no longer had my 2FA device, I couldn't do any work until I went home again and picked it up.
I'm fine without doomscrolling. I've gone from the minimum possible service with internet, to pure PAYG with no internet, and I'm fine with that. But society has moved on, and for a lot of people, phones are no longer an option.
And for a meaningful fraction of people, somehow, I don't get it either, TikTok is the news. Not metaphorically, it's actually where they get news from.
> A few years ago, I accidentally left my phone at home when I went to work, and when I arrived I found that because I no longer had my 2FA device, I couldn't do any work until I went home again and picked it up.
Sounds like a personal problem. There are many other 2FA authenticators available. Yubikey, TOTP tokens, smart cards, etc. Using a smartphone (which can lose power at any time) for critical authentication was a silly idea to begin with. I would refuse anything work-related on my personal phone.
> There are many other 2FA authenticators available.
Specified by job, so no choice in this matter.
> I would refuse anything work-related on my personal phone.
Quite reasonable as a general rule, though my then-employer only required the 2FA app and nothing else, and in this case it would've just meant "get an additional phone".
We were literally not given the choice in the matter, in the case of $JOB. Plenty of people complained about having to use their phones to access the buildings, but that was the policy.
I suspect the next thing you're going to say is along the lines of "then just switch jobs", though.
> I suspect the next thing you're going to say is along the lines of "then just switch jobs", though.
I mean even that might not work out. We just switched to MS Teams last year and Microsoft uses a push-based app, not TOTP or other offline keys like we'd used before. And Teams just seems to be getting more popular...
Microsoft can actually use TOTP, Push, or offline keys.
Which of them are available depends on what your company has configured.
If the push version is configured, it's possible it has also installed an MDM profile on your device. Avoid that, or your phone will get wiped when you leave the company in the future.
> I would refuse anything work-related on my personal phone.
What a wonderful privileged position you hold. If only everyone could afford to tell their employer to pound sand in the same heroic manner you have undertaken.
Laws are not created to be malleable about the population's trivial mental illnesses.
We don't need new laws on the books because some people are incapable of turning their phones off. They have addictive personalities and will fulfill this by other means, while everyone high-fives claiming success.
For many people, it is unrealistic to uninstall Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, Bluesky, whatever the fuck else all at the same time.
I'm proud of you that you are as disconnected as you are. I'm the same -- ditched my addictive social media accounts back in like 2011 -- but not everyone is like us.
There will never be anything close to uniformity, so we must decide if we cripple freedom to protect the weak while increasing bureaucracy and authoritarianism, or allow natural selection to take its course while improving treatment of symptoms.
I'm empathetic to the struggle of addiction, which is a real and terrible thing, but I don't think we should create vague nanny laws as a solution. Even if you're an addict, personal responsibility is still a thing.
> allow natural selection to take its course while improving treatment of symptoms.
I have a feeling natural selection will take its course at the level of nations, with nations that do protect their weak surviving and the ones that let profit extractors exploit and abuse theirs dying off.
I don't think so, because it's not only the truly weak that get exploited and abused in an "every man for himself" system. It'll also destroy the lives of many who could become strong in an environment that protects them when they're weak.
> we must decide if we cripple freedom to protect the weak
Well, we do want to protect the weak (that's a function of society, after all), and I'm totally okay with removing infinite scrolling from social media apps (or "crippling freedom" as you put it). I don't see any significant benefit it provides to individuals or society. Indeed, it has a negative impact on both. So it sounds like a win/win.
It's not that infinite scrolling is good, I'm just not a fan of the legal solution because it sets precedent and is yet another law. I'm not an anarchist, I think some laws are needed, but I want society to be more engaged and responsible for our collective future, not helpless and dependent on laws and government to save us from ourselves.
> I'm just not a fan of the legal solution because it sets precedent
The precedent for "creating a law against an ongoing problem which is bad for societies and individuals and has no redeeming qualities" was set thousands of years ago.
> I want society to be more engaged and responsible for our collective future
Unfortunately, some members of society resist that, like here. Companies have thusfar failed to eliminate the 'infinite scroll' dark pattern out of engagement and responsibility for our collective future. "Plan A" has failed. So now we try "Plan B".
This isn't to say that we shouldn't strive for everybody to be more engaged and responsible for our collective future. Just that the appeal to decency doesn't always work (e.g. here).
No, I consider adding laws that ban a simple navigation technique as overreach and a reduction in freedom. To me it feels like banning candy bars because some people eat way too many candy bars. My intention wasn't to provoke, and you shouldn't make statements based off assumptions of someone else's thoughts. My intention is to point out that there's no one-size-fits-all solution, and that there are negatives associated with the top-down legal approach. I want to promote personal and societal responsibility instead of banning every harmful thing.
> This is hideous.
Yes, humans and life in general are filled with terrible things. Doom scrolling was created by us. We allow irresponsible and uncoordinated people to drive cars.
> You are very strongly implying that this is untrue.
So I'm lying because I don't think banning scrolling is the best solution? And you say I'm the one provoking... Have a nice day.
The brain is part of your physiology. And people do go through withdrawal symptoms when they stop using social media that’s been designed for addiction.
Endogenous drugs, exogenous drugs. Same effect on the brain, and in some cases the actual literal same substances. The difference is that endo-/exo- prefix, the former is made in your body, the latter is supplied from outside.
We have been learning how to induce certain experiences, which correspond to certain substances, for a long time; we're getting more competent at it; this includes social media A/B testing itself to be so sticky that a lot of people find it hard to put down; this is bad, so something* is being done about it.
* The risk being "something should be done; this is something, therefore it should be done"
You could say that about literally every single type of addictive behavior present on the face of the planet. You could just stop smoking and/or not buying cigarettes. You could just stop drinking and/or stop buying alcohol. It's a completely pointless observation. There's a reason why these are addictions.
It started with apps pre-installed on many phones. No one cared. People can easily waste unlimited amount of time watching content from unknown creators which they don't even follow.
People start using these apps and sites to stay in touch with friends and with current events — and those things are real needs. People should not be exploited for them.
Honestly, at this point, just ** OFF to all the useful idiots that just relentlessly block any possible solution to the overbearing power of social media companies with this crooked vision of individual responsibility.
They are trying to block a harmless mechanism, that has proven to be addictive, and that companies have willfully exploited for this very reason, proceeding to wreak havoc to various facets of society while concentrating never before seen levels of wealth in the process.
Wealth that in many case makes them more powerful than the government that should regulate them, which in many cases drank the kool-aid of self-policing these companies have gleefully distributed and lobbied for for years.
So, enough with this fine principled arguments about slippery slope that don't exist. What is your comment good for, if not for maintaining a status quo that makes these companies even reacher at the expense of everyone?
Found the guy who won the genetic lottery AND the healthy childhood lottery!
Dude, in case you don't know, you are the anomaly. Most people don't have the amount of free will as you do. They can't "just put down the phone". You can. They can't.
The whole point is that these companies are spending a lot of cash making sure that their products are as addicting as possible to as many people as possible, so "just" shutting the phone off isn't a viable strategy.
It's as idiotic a statement as saying "Just stop smoking" around the time when big tobacco was lobbying politicians and bribing scientists and doctors to straight up lie about the deleterious effects of tobacco. It's engineered in such a way as to make it basically impossible for a large swathe of the population to "just not use" the apps.
Or you could just shut the phone off and/or not install the app. It's a simple solution, really, and one that is available at your disposal today at no cost.