Disable Autoplay and Infinite Scroll Or Risk Massive Fines, EU Tells Meta (arstechnica.com) 111
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The European Union is ramping up pressure on Meta to make big changes to Facebook and Instagram after the European Commission preliminarily found that features like autoplay, infinite scroll, and highly personalized content recommendations were addictive. On Thursday, the EC said its investigation indicated that "Meta did not adequately assess the risks of its addictive design on the physical and mental wellbeing of users, including minors and vulnerable adults." "These features fuel the user's urge to keep scrolling and shift the brain into 'autopilot mode,' contributing to unhealthy habits and compulsive use," the commission said. Over the next few months, Meta will have an opportunity to dispute the claims, and it has already taken a defensive stance. Meta's spokesperson, Ben Walters, told Reuters that Meta disagrees with the commission's preliminary findings, which supposedly "don't accurately take into account the significant steps we've taken to protect teens."
"Since this investigation began, we rolled out Teen Accounts that automatically protect teens and put parents in control -- allowing them to block access to Instagram at night and cap daily screen time at just 15 minutes," Walters said. However, the EC emphasized that Meta's current mitigation efforts, including time management tools activated by default for teens, "failed to effectively tackle the risks stemming from its addictive design." Additionally, parental controls were deemed "only effective if parents and guardians possess adequate technical expertise" and dedicated "effort and time to understand them effectively." "This undermines the efficiency of such measures in addressing the inherent risks posed by Instagram and Facebook's addictive design," the EC said, particularly for minors.
At this stage, the EC recommended that Meta consider "disabling key addictive features such as 'autoplay' and 'infinite scroll' by default, implementing effective 'screen time breaks,' and adapting its recommender system to make it less engagement-oriented." If Meta fails to make changes to comply with the EU's Digital Services Act, the company risks fines up to 6 percent of its global annual turnover when the EC makes its final decision in the coming months. "Our starting point is that, based on our findings, this design is too addictive and changes need to be made," Henna Virkkunen, the EU's tech chief, told Reuters. "The next step is either that Meta changes its design or a non-compliance decision will follow," she said, noting in the press release that the EU's priority is "protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans." "The Digital Services Act provides a clear framework to hold platforms accountable for the addictive design and effects of their services," Virkkunen said. "We are fully committed to enforcing our legislation in Europe."
The report also notes that the EC will share findings from experts on Monday that "could help pave the way for a Europe-wide social media ban for teenagers." It's not looking much better for Meta in the U.S., either. The company faces a lawsuit from 29 states that claim Meta's platforms addict kids. "That trial begins in August, and states may seek up to $1.4 trillion in penalties if Meta is found guilty," reports Ars.
"Since this investigation began, we rolled out Teen Accounts that automatically protect teens and put parents in control -- allowing them to block access to Instagram at night and cap daily screen time at just 15 minutes," Walters said. However, the EC emphasized that Meta's current mitigation efforts, including time management tools activated by default for teens, "failed to effectively tackle the risks stemming from its addictive design." Additionally, parental controls were deemed "only effective if parents and guardians possess adequate technical expertise" and dedicated "effort and time to understand them effectively." "This undermines the efficiency of such measures in addressing the inherent risks posed by Instagram and Facebook's addictive design," the EC said, particularly for minors.
At this stage, the EC recommended that Meta consider "disabling key addictive features such as 'autoplay' and 'infinite scroll' by default, implementing effective 'screen time breaks,' and adapting its recommender system to make it less engagement-oriented." If Meta fails to make changes to comply with the EU's Digital Services Act, the company risks fines up to 6 percent of its global annual turnover when the EC makes its final decision in the coming months. "Our starting point is that, based on our findings, this design is too addictive and changes need to be made," Henna Virkkunen, the EU's tech chief, told Reuters. "The next step is either that Meta changes its design or a non-compliance decision will follow," she said, noting in the press release that the EU's priority is "protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans." "The Digital Services Act provides a clear framework to hold platforms accountable for the addictive design and effects of their services," Virkkunen said. "We are fully committed to enforcing our legislation in Europe."
The report also notes that the EC will share findings from experts on Monday that "could help pave the way for a Europe-wide social media ban for teenagers." It's not looking much better for Meta in the U.S., either. The company faces a lawsuit from 29 states that claim Meta's platforms addict kids. "That trial begins in August, and states may seek up to $1.4 trillion in penalties if Meta is found guilty," reports Ars.
Re:Leave Meta alone or face embargoes on all trade (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no limit to is escalation tactics.
That's all the more reason to not try to appease him, because there's no limit to reasons he'll think of to retaliate against perceived grievances. He could wake up one morning and fart crosswise and impose sanctions on the EU.
So the EU (and rest of the world) should just go about their lives, do what they need to do, and not worry about trade sanctions, because even trade agreements signed by Trump himself won't prevent sanctions.
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He wants to embargo Spain but can't understand that Spain is part of the EU.
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Yep. He would have to embargo the whole EU, because any other EU country is free to act as a middle-man and that cannot be prevented in any way (rules of a free market zone).
I am thinking that Trump actually has no clue how business works. Which would mean he has no clue about anything, really.
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Don't tell me you realize this just now ?
Even before being elected it was well known the guy bankrupted many businesses. He even managed to sink two casinos. Think of it: Casinos !
It is quite glaringly obvious the guy is not just someone with opinions we don't like and the self control of a 6 years old. He is also a bona fide moron. In the clinical sense of the word.
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I was just stating the obvious to complete the argument.
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"Discard convenient features because we have a bug up our ass", does.
Re:Leave Meta alone or face embargoes on all trade (Score:5, Insightful)
But are they convenient features?
Autoplay: Is there anyone who wants a random video to start catching their attention while reading their feed? That's totally an advertiser feature.
Endless scroll: Just consider the alternative. With pagination you can bookmark where you stopped scrolling, so you can continue later.
Endless scroll forces you to read until the gap between the top and where you left off last time is closed, otherwise you never will find the position of where you stopped reading again. Chronological ordering would help a bit, but you still have to jump around between positions you can only find by scrolling and not by page numbers.
They are selling your attention and so they are optimizing how much content gets your attention. They are not optimizing for you to use the app effectively, they optimize for the ads to catch your attention.
Re: Leave Meta alone or face embargoes on all trad (Score:3)
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I never really understood TikTok, possibly for that exact reason. They also already got their share of criticism and they may be next for the EU to look into if they are addictive to children for these reasons.
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The endless scroll is predatory at every moment.
It even reloads when you stop for a while. Switch to a different tab, do something else for five minutes, come back - it reloads and refreshes everything. Why? Because that activates a primal fear in your brain that you're losing something, missing something that might've been important, so your instinct is to NOT divert your attention elsewhere.
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I never understood why they would start you scrolling a whole new feed just because you left the app for a while. In fact, I find it extremely annoying that you can't go back to the top and find that item you skipped over, but wanted to come back to.
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It is more about apps, than web sites.
A webs site simply can adjust the URL every few "pages", no real need to have a button for paging, or a gesture.
Most apps/web sites have a setting to disable auto play. Instagramm interestingly seems not to have it. And it has the stupid habit to at least preload 5 to 10 videos. Which means you waste your mobile data quotage if you use it via SIM card.
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It's still a design choice in the app. There could easily be pages to, for example, jump to a specific day, or you could set bookmarks. The technical side of a good UX may not be all that simple, but currently nobody is working on it anyway. They want you to doomscroll. And the EU wants to help you not to doomscroll that much unless you really want to.
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I do not know/think they want you to scroll. It is probably just the simplest solution. Ad Hoc, I actually have no real idea how to make it different. Especially on a phone screen.
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The thing why the EU is against it is, that endless scroll (among a few other patterns) is designed to keep users engaged more than they intended to use the app. That's why they want you to scroll. If you want to go deeper they indeed only want you to click ads, but to show you apps they need you to use the app. They also need user generated content (including interactions) to keep the site alive for others.
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Agreed on that.
Question is: is it the correct approach. I have actually no idea about that.
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No idea either. The problem is, no matter what you do, the companies find the loopholes. If they can make a few more cents per user with dark patterns, they will use dark patterns. If regulators ban dark patterns, then they will use "gray" patterns where nobody can pinpoint "This is a dark pattern" while they are still clearly serving the company's interest.
But what do you want to do? Let them do whatever they like because you can't get them to stop completely?
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If a regulation can be implemented in a simple way, I likely support it.
If it is difficult or leads to "to many changes" then I doubt it is worth it.
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"Stop trying to extend your authority over our citizens", doesn't sound unreasonable to me.
Literally no one is extending authority over your citizens. They are exercising the authority to regulate how companies work with *their* citizens. Meta already geofence their products so they behave differently in different regions. All tech companies do.
"Discard convenient features because we have a bug up our ass", does.
The gambling addict says the dopamine hit he gets from winning a hand while being down thousands of dollars is really convenient to keep him going so that he will strike lucky, just like he feels. Only people with bugs up their ass would regulate addictive
Re: Leave Meta alone or face embargoes on all trad (Score:3)
Just to be clear, in that context, Meta is the one trying to extend their authority over EU citizens, with manipulative patterns. Right-wing content has been mass-"suggested" by Meta, unsolicited, following Trump's election.
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...convenient features ...
oh you're the guy that likes them.
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T
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What you probably do not know (likely because you did not try to find out) is that this is not some leaders giving some orders. This is based on an actual investigation. If you are in the US, you may be unclear on what that means. It involves expert testimony and a thing called "Science".
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Given the US current economy and the GOP prospects for the coming election, the absolute worst thing Trump could do for the GOP is to enact new economic measures.
If he messes up enough he will be impeached again. Just takes a few more democrats in the senate.
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Considering their "candidate" lol right, guess we can call him that, dropped out in the Maine senator race, things aren't looking to great for the Senate. Also, you need 67 senate votes to remove the president from office. It's essentially an impossible threshold given our polarization.
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#1) After the Maine Candidate dropped out, the chances of the DNC taking Maine rose above what it was before.
#2) I said impeached again, not removed from office. The Dems will do it if they get 51% if only to make it harder for him to continue to destroy the country.
#3) Plattner was a bad Democrat candidate in part because he did the same things the Republicans candidate do and stay in office. Trump himself has been convicted of lying to the US government not to mention paying large sums of money (> 1
But Meta/Facebook deserves to be embargoed (Score:2)
I'm guessing it was a rush to FP but I had quite a bit of trouble figuring out your intention from that short teaser. You should have given us a hint, perhaps by speculating about the bribery. However I do think Facebook is only "donating" small amounts of cash and most of the YOB's "eternal gratitude" is based on past services rendered. (In the YOB's case "eternal" means about two weeks. Until some other shiny object gets his attention.)
I know it seems intrinsically off topic to mention books on today's ve
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The 96% will hurt a little, the 4% will collapse.
US laws end at the US boarder.
There are plenty of US companies who will abandon ship and totally move out of the USA to maintain access to the rest of the world.
Without the ability to exploit the world the US will collapse.
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TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out.
All the EU has to do is hold its nerve until he relents.
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Since this is an actual legal proceeding, not even that. The EU leadership cannot easily block this going forward.
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The EU has a thing called "rule of law". This means its leaders cannot stop things like this unless it is an emergency. Yes, I understand the current US regime thinks it does not have such quaint limitations.
That said, I think they are still far too friendly to Meta here, because even this threat does not accuse Meta of doing the addictiveness on purpose and keeping it to the max as long as possible. No penalties for doing it in the first place are threatened, just ones for keeping it up.
Re:People are sheep and can't help themselves (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there's a middle ground between the libertarian view of it's your own damn fault if you didn't realize buying Snicker bars in bulk and stuffing your face with them will make you fat!" or "People lack the self control to snack responsibly, so we're locking the junk food behind the counter and placing purchase limits on it." IMHO, that middle ground should be educating and informing people of the risks, but ultimately leaving the final decision up to them (assuming they're an adult, obviously).
Yeah, I know we're discussing social media and not unhealthy food, but there's a common thread with lawmakers believing they can make people healthier (mentally/physically) in spite of themselves.
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In theory I would agree, but the issue here is that social media platforms intentionally compromise your ability to make decisions. That's what the addictive pattern is all about. You could at any moment decide to stop scrolling and get back to work or life - but everything in there is designed so that the decision is made for you and bypasses any critical thinking paths in your brain.
And while I'm the first to agree the politicians are sleazebags and are the first ones that need much tougher regulation and
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"Anti-smoking laws have reduced smoking, for example."
Why is that desirable? Smoking makes you look sexy and cool.
Evolutionary pressure is a good thing. Cull the least smart and self-restrained.
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Why is that desirable?
Because the cost to society is paid not by the smokers but by all of us. And health care costs are only the tip of the iceberg.
Cull the least smart and self-restrained.
There's no culling here. Both doom scrolling and smoking kill you so slowly that evolutionary it doesn't matter.
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Because the cost to society is paid not by the smokers but by all of us. And health care costs are only the tip of the iceberg.
What cost to society?
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/0... [nytimes.com]
Cull the least smart and self-restrained.
There's no culling here. Both doom scrolling and smoking kill you so slowly that evolutionary it doesn't matter.
Doom scrollers won't breed, they are busy doom scrolling. Duh!
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Your link - seriously?
"Tobacco giants say"? Dude, they said that smoking is actually healthy for a few decades. I'd trust my cat around buckets full of her favorite treat more than those companies.
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Independent researchers confirmed this report. It wasn't the result that made people upset, it was the cynicism. Look it up.
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I'll definitely take personal responsibility over the nanny state. At no point in history has the average person had so much information at their finger tips and almost entirely for free as well. For all practical concerns, you can learn just about anything off the Internet and most the time for free. If you don't have the drive, that's not my problem.
If you eat poorly, that's on you. I shouldn't have to deal with government dictating to me what I can and cannot put into my own body. Of course, if I put bad
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Depends on the "healthcare system".
In Germany EVERYONE pays for the idiots who can not control themselves. So: how should education help more than restrictions?
The restrictions that get invented are not to help the fat guy gt responsible, it is for lowering the costs for EVERYONE.
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Large companies are adopting similar patterns leaving the user without a choice to help themselves. Do you expect to chat with your friends in Slashdot comments? If you want a social network where your contacts are, you can choose if Meta, Google, or Musk provides you endless scroll. If you want a social network without endless scroll, you can choose one of the few and be pretty lonely there.
Re:People are sheep and can't help themselves (Score:4, Informative)
So let's all blame the scapegoat.
The "scapegoat" literally employed people from the gambling industry in an attempt to make their product as addictive to possible to the sheep, and openly admitted doing so under oath in front of congress.
Let's not blame the "scapegoat". Let's outright slaughter it and grill it, and then wear it's coat as a warning to others. That's what the "scapegoat" deserves.
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I completely agree.
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So we're beating down social media while ignoring "predictions" markets. Hmmm.
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So we're beating down social media while ignoring "predictions" markets. Hmmm.
Who ignored prediction markets? They are banned in France, Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal, they are restricted in Spain and Germany. The UK, Ireland and Denmark have a licensing system in place and are looking at taking action against companies not registering.
You do realise that even if the EU was one person we humans are able to do more than one thing at a time right? Why should Facebook get a free pass because it's not your pet project of concern?
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Ahh my bad, I was talking about the US states doing a similar lawsuit, but you are right we are talking about Europe in this particular thread.
From what I've read, US really isn't doing anything about prediction markets. There may be hints of a fart somewhere, but nothing serious purposed by anyone.
I get we can do more then one thing at a time, but seems rather hypocritcal when we turn a blind eye on so many things. This is a major societal issue, and not just for our narrow topic.
I'm fine with META/social
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Oh that I agree with, the US should definitely take action. I thought you were talking about Europe. That said nothing is perfect. The EU would do well to pass unified gambling laws. Right now it's every nation for itself and there are still plenty of places in Europe where prediction markets are unregulated.
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Ironically, Reddit already doesn't let me doomscroll. I think I'm not subscribed to enough subs, so it eventually just runs out of content to show me.
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Who says these companies are not targeted by the law? This is the article about Meta, when they continue with TikTok Slashdot will probably also report about it.
Social Fixer (Score:5, Interesting)
I managed to get Facebook to behave almost the way I want it to using the Social Fixer extension.
Chronological order, no ads, only posts from people and pages I'm actually following, no autoplay, no stories. But as a side effect it seems to reload the page multiple times and sometimes stalls for a while, so it ends up too much of a hassle to check it more than a couple times a day anyway.
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That is most likely a Chrome problem.
Endless scroll is absolutely addictive... (Score:3)
As someone who has spent a lot of time doom-scrolling on twitter, I can see where the EU is comming from on the addictiveness of social media.
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I'd still say it depends on the person. Both on X and Facebook reels, the further you go down the rabbit hole, the more asinine the content becomes. It doesn't take long before I just close the app because it's nothing but slop, political garbage, and rage bait.
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The digital services acts requires competent risk management. Competent risk management finds addictiveness here, beyond just isolated incidents. And that is enough for Meta to be in violation.
No more doomscrolling. Yay. (Score:2)
Now I can go back outside and stare at the decommissioned stoves of my run down industrial town.
Quite the opposite, I think... (Score:3, Insightful)
On Thursday, the EC said its investigation indicated that "Meta did not adequately assess the risks of its addictive design on the physical and mental wellbeing of users, including minors and vulnerable adults."
I believe that Meta both assessed those risks and - based on those assessments - altered their design to maximize the risks.
Addicted people whose wills have been compromised by psychological manipulation are better targets for ads, propaganda, etc. Therefore, they're more profitable; and profit is the god to which virtually all Capitalists kneel, whether or not they admit that fact to themselves or others. Zuck is a high priest in that tawdry religion.
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I believe that Meta both assessed those risks and - based on those assessments - altered their design to maximize the risks.
Believe? My friend you don't need to believe, Meta admitted it in 2018 when they got dragged in front of various governments to explain their site and the cambridge analytical scandal.
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Clearly. But the EU is not (yet?) prepared to accuse Meta of malice. They are just finding that Meta is not in compliance with the DSA. That is a civil violation, while malice would be a criminal one.
But... (Score:2)
Re:But... (Score:4, Interesting)
But why do they still allowed things like cigarettes, why not ban those altogether?
Cigarettes are heavily regulated and taxed. We could only dream of a world where Facebook is as heavily regulated as cigarettes. Let's apply this shall we?
- Cigarettes are banned for minors, we should ban minors from Facebook.
- Cigarettes are subject to huge taxes in a great part to disincentivise smoking. We should make Facebook pay per use.
- Cigarettes are banned from marketing in many places. We should ban Meta from placing any adds on Facebook.
- Cigarettes are banned from having flavours which make them even more addictive or pleasant. We should ban Meta from optimising their algorithm to make it addictive.
- Cigarette manufactures are required to provide detailed ingredients lists on request. We should force Meta (and all tech companies) to open source their algorithms so we can see how they are pushing rubbish.
- Cigarettes in many European countries are not allowed to be displayed publicly for sale nor sold in supermarkets. We should force Meta to not automatically auto-play or infinite scroll (oh wait that's what we're doing now).
oh ...
Many countries ban the sale of cigarettes via the internet ... can ... we ... ban Facebook from... please?
Re: But... (Score:2)
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Yes, all things to hide cigarettes, but they don't dare to outright ban them,
How is it hypocritical? No one is banning Facebook either.
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Many countries ban the sale of cigarettes via the internet ... can ... we ... ban Facebook from... please?
Unless there is an alternative: nope.
I am involved organizing international sport events / seminars.
How the fark do you do that without a platform like Facebook? Yes, the idiots will jump up and yell eMail. How do you forward something you got via email to friends who are not on CC? How do you actually figure out which of your friends is not on CC, when you see there are 300 people in CC?
Seems people wh
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How the fark do you do that without a platform like Facebook?
We organised such events not only before Facebook, but also before email, and we do so now also without Facebook or email (also please NEVER put invites of large groups in CC, it's a major breach of privacy. The BCC field exists for that reason.)
Seems people who hate facebook, never use it, and have no clue what it actually is about.
No. Facebook has useful edge cases. That's not what people hate about it. Mind you those useful edge cases can easily be replaced by a service that isn't as objectively bad for society. I fully support your idea to use an alternate event management platform (and the
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Most people do not know about BCC, so in normal posts like this one, I write CC. But perhaps I should in future write (B)CC.
Yes, you could use an alternate event management platform. Now, how to get the user to hop over there?
They are all on facebook already. And if I hear about an event, my friends might be interested in: I just share it. And that is it.
And if you are one of my friends, and facebook thinks you might be interested, it pops up in your feed. And then if you share it, people I do not know abou
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Most people do not know about BCC, so in normal posts like this one, I write CC. But perhaps I should in future write (B)CC.
We're on Slashdot. It's not your job to dumb down something technical.
Now, how to get the user to hop over there?
Who said hop on there? Virtually all event management platforms require no user registration. Communication can be handled via email, snail mail, calendar invites, WhatsApp, etc. If you need users "on your platform" then its a really shitty platform for event management. The only person who needs to concern themselves with using a proper event management platform is the person who hosts the event. That holds true if you invite 10 people t
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But they do not have a "Share to my friends" option.
Can not be so hard to grasp.
Better option would be to group message everyone details to your event.
I do not know all your friends and friends of your friends and their friends who might be interested in that event: so, I can not reach them. Without a platform that works similar like facebook, or TikTok etc.
In other words: without invading your account, stealing all your friends and grouping them into:
- likes Aikido
- likes Tango
- likes Surfing
etc.
I have no
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Many countries ban the sale of cigarettes via the internet ... can ... we ... ban Facebook from... please?
Careful what you wish for here. Right now, all the "normies" are over there. If you kill off their favorite watering hole, they'll have to end up somewhere. I'd prefer we keep them quarantined away from the rest of the Internet.
Who knows, maybe we can revert back to small hobby based sites with small forums and the masses will just go back to pre-Internet. Ahh, who am I kidding, that ain't happening.
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Who said they end up somewhere else on the internet? You worried that a bunch of moms and teens will come here and say SystemD is an awesome thing or something?
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Fair enough, but I'd still like the remain the forgotten part of the "old" Internet that the kids won't even be interested in ruining, ahem, I mean using. Yeah. And get off my lawn!
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You must be one of these "dumb" people I hear so much about these days.
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And yet, we still let everyone vote. Real head scratcher there.
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The problem is a practical one. As soon as you restrict voting, some assholes will use that for their own purposes. If that effect could be prevented, voting could be restricted to those that actually understand what they are voting for or against and democracy would work much, much better.
Thank god (Score:2)
As a vocal proponent against Slashdot's change to infinite scrolling, I'm glad there is now a legal punishment
Are Sports Next? (Score:1)
EU may be going too far but... (Score:2)
i truly despise Autoplay that I can't disable and Infinite Scroll. Give me a pagination option please.
And tell Zuck that FB auto-refresh is a terrible idea.
Abusive (Score:2)
On a similar note, when are shows (specially live sports streams) going to be fined for playing ads sound with a higher volume (or more compression, whatever).
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I am not sure now. But between say 2016 and 2020, every time I'd visit my father I would disable auto play. Next month's visit it was on again. Meta (Facebook back then) was reverting the setting. The problem was not so much auto play itself (already a dopamine and advertising paradise) but the fact it was auto playing audio too. On a similar note, when are shows (specially live sports streams) going to be fined for playing ads sound with a higher volume (or more compression, whatever).
When is the EU going to heave a censor to save people from such terrible treatment, European citizens need to be protected from anything anyone doesn't like.
Perhaps a fundamental difference between Europe and the heathens in 'Murrica. I was annoyed by some of meta's practices. Set my browser to not autoplay. But apparently EU needs to do the pecuniary extraction route.
Next up (Score:2)
Seriously, is there nothing that the EU doesn't try to extract money from? I'll bet they will fine anyone using comic sans font next, or Borders larger than 5 pixels. I mean really, we must protect our citizens!
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Facebook is not in chronological order.
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Books literally use pagination ...
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Yeah, but guess what:
the book shows the same pages to everyone who opens that book.
Ooops.
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A URL to a paginated website does the same for good websites. There are a few mistakes you can make though, such as starting to count pages from the most recent page instead of the oldest one.
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It is a bit more complicated. As the "feed" is for every user unique.
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A good start would be a link that works in your feed. Maybe the feed algorithm needs to be more deterministic (put the ads always in the same place). Also quite a few users would like a chronological feed anyway, and there you can just do ?position=$datetime_of_current_item and build the chronological feed with a clause limiting date to before/after that item.
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The whole thing how feeds work should be changed.
It is basically to random.
And the new idiocy of facebook, it puts two buttons under some posts: "are you interested?" "not interested?"
Why the fark do I follow that person? Yes I am interested!
On the other hand dozens of posts of my friends never pop up in my feed. For what do I have friends, if I do not see their posts?
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Twitter had for new features a button "Show less often". When you looked into the Browser console, you could see that the button did not send any feedback to Twitter. That's like "remind me later" instead of "no". They could also just have an on/off switch instead of a (fake or not) "less often" switch.
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Interesting :D stupid noobs.
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Yes. They fucking will. Only to rip off hard working, honest American corporations. And right so. Pages out of order for freedom! EU! EU! EU! In your face, America!
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You sound very much like a "happy slave" (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7628602-happy-slaves-are-the-bitterest-enemies-of-freedom)
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You sound very much like you've fallen for the idea that "algorithms" are the very Devil's own addictive work.
Re: (Score:2)
As a CS PhD? I do not even thing that is possible without a major mental breakdown. I think you are hallucinating.