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My solution is to use curbox and repost content on bluesky

What happen when wanna-be-free-market interests have some lucrative addictive crap to sell, hmm? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

This is a step in the right direction, though. It will be a long journey.

Arguing that they should receive no support or positive reactions because they also deserve blame is how the center and left break down their own power: Believing that disengagement from one another is a stronger moral obligation than working together and fixing shit with people who are willing to listen and work.

They're playing the long game. First with the carrot, then with the stick, but the end goal is state tyranny, and control over tech platforms is one of the means.

They saw what China managed to achieve with their internet censorship and ID control, and they want exactly that, but with a blue coat of paint sprinkled with yellow stars, and pushing child safety up front is a easy way for the public to be onboard with this capture.

If social media was just your family, friends and acquaintances sharing stuff like it used to be you may have a point. But with the algorithm feed its turned into a der sturmer like propaganda pipeline.

Big Tech is some foreign rich dudes being dictators of their little fiefdom doing whatever they can to make themselves even richer. We have zero control over them and what they do to our society in this pursuit. No elections. No recalls. No public votes.

The only correct reaction is for the sovereign to assert its sovereignty and lay out some ground rules.

Then torpedo the damn thing and set fire to the shipyard that built it. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, about the predatory nature of Big Tech is inevitable or required for society to function. Suggesting we all just accept it is ridiculous, especially when we can trivially get rid of it with nothing more complicated than applying life-altering punitive damages to the C-suite, board, and majority shareholders.

Of course there will be bootleggers, but the benefits would probably outweigh any of the incidental drawbacks.

And I say this as someone who drinks. I would be fine with regulation like this and making a sacrifice of something small I enjoy if it meant greater good across society.

Do both.

Instagram is the same service for everyone, regardless if you are homeless or a billionaire, it is exactly because it is an ad based model. Same for google and facebook.

These models are "classless business" incarnate, and people absolutely hate them. It's part bewildering and part bemusing.

Nothing in this is geared towards curtailing platforms like social media to exist, it's trying to curtail the design of psychological manipulation for "engagement". Ragebait is the most common case, it makes people interact with content if it enrages them; another common case is to feed kids with slop content that makes them fixated on the platform, scrolling endlessly trying to get the elusive dopamine hit quite similar to the feeling of playing a slot machine.

I think framing this as the EU trying to censor platforms because people post content against the current order is a big cynical leap. I can't see how these platforms' current practices need to be defended, what is your reason for doing that? Maybe you have ulterior motives as well?

Is this really the way we’re wired after thousands of years of evolution? Even the word broadcast implies something very one way. Pre social media it was very normal to “broadcast” by discussing ideas with friends, family and neighbours, face to face in a civil manner. Good ideas gained traction gradually, bad ideas didn’t get traction because the extremists were too far apart. A nice natural protection against extremes.

More outlandish conspiracy theories on hackernews...

You are in fact wrong - see the myriad of rules advertising, especially what can be advertised on children's TV.

What messages are not being allowed to be 'streamed into the brains of the population' exactly? Are you suggesting, for example, that claims made by the US president should not be shown on TV? Are you suggesting that these are not then analysed and scrutinised by people on TV?

Also known as Russian, Iranian, Israeli and Chinese bot farms.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/22/experts-w...

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/09/g-s1-9010/russia-bot-farm-ai-...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/facebook-bot-fa...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-allies-using-armies-...

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/volunteers-found-iran...

People calling this stuff "popular movements" and "citizen journalists" are either naive or complicit.

EU Commission = US Senate, EU Parliament = US Congress. Kinda.

The default should be simple, something like time-ordered of followed only with opt in for recommendations. Ideally I'd love to be able to swap algorithms for something open source but setting a standard there rather than just mandating a level of control seems a bigger hurdle.

It seems entirely anti-consumer that I am just the behest of whatever Google or Meta decide is most profitable to show me instead of finding important news or entertainment in a way that I want.

And this is all for people that are of the 'legal age' so to speak using it. For kids, who are going to be even more insecure, have more ongoing brain development, and such - I think the idea of creating a non-addictive or non-harmful social media is basically a nonstarter. The same is true of use by adults as well, but we generally are more accepting of adults' right to engage in self destructive behaviors.

Quite honestly, I've been addicted to using my air fryer for cooking nowadays. The design is too good and convenient and the food comes out too tasty. I think EU should focus on making them less addictive.

(A similar thing has happened to X-formerly-Twitter, tragically. Musk and Bier are systematically destroying the usefulness of the site as a social platform.)

If anything, social media has inspired far too much passivity in our societies. People feel relieved that they could vent their frustrations online, instead of taking to the streets and seriously threatening some of the power of those putting them down.

Also, a big part of why the elites of society dislike social media is the huge democratizing effect that it has had on information. Of course, not so much in the more authoritarian societies where our leaders were hoping for this effect, but in their own backyards. The biggest example of this by far is the information about the Gaza genocide - that is presented at best equivocally in the mainstream press (with some exceptions like The Guardian), but that was clearly visible on TikTok and other social media. This led to perhaps the single largest policy conflict between the vast majority of the population and the vast majority of government elites in the current day EU.

That hasn't to do with the addictive design of the broadcast medium, which is what I commented on. There are myriad of advertising rules for social media as well.

The people who wanted the law were the heads of every EU state, so they could pass it with or without the EU - that's probably why it's set up like that - same reason the UN is quite powerless.

I am afraid this is setting kids up for abusing drugs and alchohol in the future.

NA beer now exists. Beer and wine places can’t sell liquor. Alcohol sales aren’t 24/7 in many places.

Germany is one such example.

Didn't tiktok get hit with this earlier in the year? Has tiktok removed these features for European users?

Tell me exactly what you mean by "ragebait". Shouldn't things that make people angry be reported on? Should they be swept under the rug? I'm kind of tired of hearing this word being used, without a good explanation.

Regarding kids, they shouldn't have uncontrolled access to the Internet, and that's a parenting problem. Just like a parent letting their kid drive their car or drink his whiskey.

> I can't see how these platforms' current practices need to be defended, what is your reason for doing that?

Some of their practices are good, some are bad. People addicted to TV have existed for decades. It's been a trope forever, the old lady spending her day glued to the TV. Hundreds of millions of people live like this even currently. And just like most people today are a little bit addicted to social media, everybody was a little bit addicted to TV. The evening news broadcast was a very important part of their day.

So yes, I think the reason why the people in power are more interested in throttling social media than traditional media - even though they both share the same addiction problem - is because the people in power have much less control over it than they did with traditional media.

As for ulterior motives, this is Hacker News, so I fully expect you to believe that I'm secretly a Russian spy, Iranian drone operator, AI bot, Mark Zuckerberg, neo-nazi, scientologist, jew, Elon Musk and bio-lab operator.

No, and we're certainly not wired to have TV or radio being broadcasted in our homes - or sitting still and silent on a bench for the most of our childhoods having to listen to some screeching fool having their weekly psychotic fit.

There will never in history be anything more extreme than the government broadcasts, urging young people to go and die in hopeless wars in the most painful and pointless ways we can think of. Whether that's a screeching priest in the pulpit, a psychotic school teacher, some demon at the radio microphone, or reptilians in the TV studio.

I agree with your points, but also think you're jumping over an elephant if you compare pre-broadcast days with today, while ignoring the decades of non-social broadcast we had before Facebook and Instagram and such.

Atomization is a fact, and the best road out of it might be to connect with other like minded people wherever they are, but it seems that the Internet hasn't lived up to this promise. Why? What have we done wrong?

There are rules that a few select channels like BBC have to be prominently placed (I.e. Channel 1-4 reserved for them) which means any rival News service is disadvantaged.

And presently they are passing new laws to force Youtube and similar to change algorithm's to also make certain UK content providers prominent.

UK Media know what they can and cannot talk about- for example Judicial Corruption.

But this is often fine if there’s real harm there. Eliminating the harm often outweighs the risk of centralized abuse of power.

But when the harms you’re supposedly protecting against aren’t actually real (the social media hysteria is a classic moral panic), you’re simply creating legal levers for control over all media that is just waiting to be abused by bureaucrats and government employees, most of whom are non-elected. Even the elected Commission has already proven they will happily force through unpopular legislation in bad faith.

People’s naive inability to understand the mechanics of this is astounding to me. You do not grant powers to government that aren’t absolutely necessary because they all power is abused and government power is implicitly enforced via a gun to your head.

Seems like I predicted your behaviour almost perfectly, you accusing me within minutes of being - let's see: a Russian, a Jew, an Iranian, and a bot. Probably you'll accuse me of being the other things as well within little time.

Literally every ad you see is a business deciding ‘instead of showing you what you came here to see, here’s something else, which I am showing you only to benefit my business.’

I’m not sure what limiting principle you can apply to limit the ability of businesses to show users other things the user might be interested in that wouldn’t also basically ban advertising too.

When I was a kid there were fines for factories that polluted water. Most of the time they were not found out, and when they did they just paid the fine that it was cheaper than to solve the problem.

Regulations changed, factories that polluted water got closed until they fixed the problem. Most factory owners fear the regulation, they are extremely pro-active to avoid breaking the law because the consequences are not worth it. (This trend reversed a decade ago when punishments started to be less harsh and government became more pro-business using the euphemism for corrupt)

It is possible to reign in Meta. Parents should be angry enough to bring governments down for letting tech treat their children as products. When citizens are angry change happens and becomes unavoidable.

It's a poor basis for policy and thought. I would wager 20 francs that none of these people have ever seen a heroin OD. The whole discussion centers around a maximally impactful comparison but the middle of the comparison is hollow.

And compulsive behaviour is definitely something that medication can help with.

The Internet itself is just a way to transfer information. Humans are the ones manipulating that information for commercial and ideological reasons. I would say as several posters above have implied we have not evolved filters that protect us from this manipulation. Quite the opposite we have biases baked into us that are being actively exploited.

What we have done wrong is not find a way to manage this for the benefit of society rather than its harm, sadly that describes much of human history. When an environment exists that amplifies self serving behavior and concentration of power it is not surprising to see it come to reflect the worse rather than best of humanity.

Society works on balance of power. The government is part of that balance. Ideally the government serves the interests of people, that's the democracy part. In practice that's far from perfect, but it's still not some absolute evil constantly repressing us.

I have not accused you of being any of those things, please make sure to read messages you respond to carefully before deflecting to outrage.

Those "citizen journalists" threatening "those in power" (e.g. our democratic societies) however? Yeah no shit they're malign actors.

Ragebait = fanning flames through misinformation or disinformation. Why do you immediately jump to the conclusion that anything inciting rage is true? I constantly get fed content on Instagram and YouTube with outright lies about my country (verifiable lies, not something I judged as lies) which are intended to cause rage and engagement. That's ragebait.

Other kinds of ragebait: creating a whole profile dedicated only to take the most extreme view on issues (on both sides), only to make people angry so they comment or like/interact with the content.

> Some of their practices are good, some are bad. People addicted to TV have existed for decades. It's been a trope forever, the old lady spending her day glued to the TV. Hundreds of millions of people live like this even currently. And just like most people today are a little bit addicted to social media, everybody was a little bit addicted to TV. The evening news broadcast was a very important part of their day.

When it gets to a device that you are carrying with you 100% of the time it's a whole other level and degree of an issue. You verge into the false equivalency territory, something before was addictive so now that we have something even more addictive it's ok just from precedence? Different levels and degrees demand different solutions.

> So yes, I think the reason why the people in power are more interested in throttling social media than traditional media - even though they both share the same addiction problem - is because the people in power have much less control over it than they did with traditional media.

That's absolutely cynical and a thought-terminating cliché since it's impossible to contradict you. I understand it's your opinion but it verges into conspiratorial thinking which I don't think anyone can de-escalate you from except for yourself.

> As for ulterior motives, this is Hacker News, so I fully expect you to believe that I'm secretly a Russian spy, Iranian drone operator, AI bot, Mark Zuckerberg, neo-nazi, scientologist, jew, Elon Musk and bio-lab operator.

Not really but you constantly rehash similar arguments in topics surrounding the EU so I'm trying to figure out what exactly is behind that. Ulterior motives don't need to be that drastic, it can simply be "I don't support the EU as a project" since you never state that but consistently take that side of the argument.

That's a baby I'm happy to lose along with its bathwater.

Thank you! That's the first time I heard a sensible explanation of the word that's being used so much. That's indeed something different and malevolent.

> When it gets to a device that you are carrying with you 100% of the time it's a whole other level and degree of an issue.

But if social media was non-existent, then people would carry these devices with them for traditional broadcasts.

Let me make a comparison that I think is very on-topic: Alcohol is a traditional drug, less addictive and less harmful than many of the worst drugs. But more addictive and more harmful than many other drugs. Wouldn't it be strange if governments, regulators and rulers only focused on the other drugs and said nothing about alcohol? Would I be a Russian, Chinese or Iranian spy or a jew (as another poster just insinuated) if I said "Hey, what about alcohol?".

Traditional mass media regulation vs Internet regulation is not only an EU issue. What I said about the EU regulators could just as much be said about any other government doing the same. I don't think it's unjustified conspiratorial thinking to look at how rulers want to control speech and the flow of information for their own benefit. It's expected. If screen addiction was what they truly wanted to fight, then the EU Commission would also act against traditional broadcasts in the same way they act against social media. Just like rulers and regulators have acted in all kinds of ways against alcohol, including prohibition and other extreme measures.

The ladder is also pulled up behind any kind of independent quality content producers. You cant run a successful channel without dedicated paid subscribers, and you can't build a dedicated subscriber base without years of work and supplementing your income with ads, so basically everything with an online audience also dies.

> And we know that the world without online ads is perfectly possible and livable, since we all lived through 1996.

We're in an information crisis. Most people don't know what is true or false anymore. Google and Meta didn't make it better and in fact might have contributed to it. I'd say let's go back to 1996.

You have this complex system that has reached some sort of relative equilibrium based on say a set S of ten sorts of tax rates, along with a set F of factors (size millions), with the government's tax revenue R being one of those outputs. Then some guy in the government called G signals to the government and public that he can increase R by X by fiddling with a member of S, or maybe adding a member to S (of size say ten).

Is G stupid, or does he just lean towards retaining the public's affection, his relatively low salary, potential under the table payments and whatever networking opportunities his job provides? I lean towards the latter.

The newsfeed is very slow to load, as to fill the screen the extension must make twenty plus requests while hiding 99% of what Facebook's addiction machine returns.

This sentence has no meaning in a modern context. The US government has declared bike lanes to be "DEI". Everything is political.

"Choice" doesn't work. Everyone is under information and attention span overload. There isn't time to research what goes into the food you eat much less everything else going on in your life.

Instagram is different, but you can see something similar happen on platforms with a chat feature. If people start to gravitate towards a singular app for talking, coordinating, etc. then there's the potential for resisters to be socially excluded. For most people, feeling socially excluded is a strong motivator. So far, this has mostly resulted in everyone having a fairly broad set of apps with chat features, so I'm not sure the centralizing power is as strong.

So you can't really trust people, even less teenagers, to make a disciplined choice of not using an addictive algorithm.

People who say this do not understand how powerful biology is. Nor do they understand that they are putting people with certain genetics more at risk.

"Choice" to people genetically prone to addiction is a trap. So unless you want to figure out the polygenetics of addiction and then have everyone tested for their genetics so they know there risk I will say I strongly disagree with your viewpoint, because there is no informed risk and you are promoting suffering with our beliefs.

Those too would be lost.

Sure some drag out three minutes into fifteen, but whatever…

Even that “curated” content is often the result of a company’s PR professionals sending free gear for review and possibly wining and dining the writers.

A few years ago I would have agreed with this sentiment however after watching many adults (and children) fall into addictive AI slop alternate reality hell holes, I just want it to stop. Likewise, I prefer not to live in a society that enables drug addicts to walk the streets and used needles to litter the pavements every 10cm like empty Coke bottles.

We regulate things we know will be abused, and we are often the better for it. Social media is no different.

Any attempt to ban political bias will reveal huge political bias.

Now I don’t mean all political biases are equal, or that all biases are absolutely wrong. Of course my biases are better™. But this days it looks like even stating that genocides are bad™ is not as consensual as it used to be in Europe over the last few decades, so what do I know.

It'd be hilarious to see the EU demand interop on features like Events, Groups, Marketplace.

Let me fix that for you. Everyone keeps choosing it because it is addictive.