EU: Facebook and Instagram's Infinite Scroll May Break Digital Rules

[turbineseaplane]

Incidentally, i’ve never understood why automobiles are so over engineered for speed.

Apparently our hybrid suv can get to nearly 190 km/hr (we haven’t tried)

that has no real world use case

Me either.
Honestly, cars need a max speed and perhaps even a max acceleration enforced in software.

People are driving like absolute dangerous maniacs all over Idaho these days.

Red lights are run routinely (fully red, before even starting to cross into an intersection), people go 50+ on a main road I live near that's a 35 mph limit. Everyone is on their phone, meandering into the bike lanes, ignoring crosswalks (and folks waiting to cross). It's all just a dangerous hellscape.

 

[I7guy]

Me either.
Honestly, cars need a max speed and perhaps even a max acceleration enforced in software.

People are driving like absolute dangerous maniacs all over Idaho these days.

Red lights are run routinely (fully red, before even starting to cross into an intersection), people go 50+ on a main road I live near that's a 35 mph limit. Everyone is on their phone, meandering into the bike lanes, ignoring crosswalks (and folks waiting to cross). It's all just a dangerous hellscape.

FSD for the win.

Edit: unlike the competition it’s not limited to a grid or geofenced and accumulated data has already proved its effective and safer than humans.

 

[I7guy]

The relevance of the question is a measure of your faith in, and willingness to abide by, a social contract, which is precisely what the article and the entire discussion are about

Your refusal to answer is quite telling

It seems that you believe that your “freedom to” is more important than anyone else’s “freedom from” which is a common North American misunderstanding, almost pathology really, of what human freedom and liberation actually require

I find debating against posts who don’t exhibit intellectual honesty in the writing tiring. Do you?

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

I find debating with people who don’t exhibit intellectual honesty in their posts tiring. Do you?

I certainly do!

I have been absolutely intellectually honest

I don't refuse to answer direct questions

when someone has proven my argument to be logically invalid or factually false I don't waive that away with folksy idioms

 

[I7guy]

I certainly do!

I have been absolutely intellectually honest

I don't refuse to answer direct questions

when someone has proven my argument to be logically invalid or factually false I don't waive that away with folksy idioms

Fantastic. Then you will go back and read the chronology of why it came to be that I posted what I did. And then we can have a cogent discussion.

When someone posts a tangent to what I responded to I tend to believe they are not following the thread and hence not posting with intellectual honesty.

I’m glad we agree. This entire thing about unintended consequences and using the sugar tax as an example was a great example of how a tax could lead to a solution much worse.

Now back to the DMA and why it is lousy legislation.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

Fantastic. Then you will go back and read the chronology of why it came to be that I posted what I did. And then we can have a cogent discussion.

When someone posts a tangent to what I responded to I tend to believe they are not following the thread and hence not posting with intellectual honesty.

I’m glad we agree. This entire thing about unintended consequences and using the sugar tax as an example was a great example of how a tax could lead to a solution much worse.

ok sure,

so for you to show that this was a great example you will have to explain:

1) what the intended consequence of a tax on sugar was
2) what the actual consequence was
3) in what way the actual consequence of the tax was worse than the intended consequence

if you intend to display intellectual honesty you will respond to each of these points plainly and clearly so that we can discuss them

if not, you are not being intellectually honest

 

[I7guy]

ok sure,

so for you to show that this was a great example you will have to explain:

1) what the intended consequence of a tax on sugar was
2) what the actual consequence was
3) in what way the actual consequence of the tax was worse than the intended consequence

if you intend to display intellectual honesty you will respond to each of these points plainly and clearly so that we can discuss them

if not, you are not being intellectually honest

I’;d be willing to have an intellectually honest debate if you went back and read the original responses and adjusted your posts accordingly. Otherwise way to far off-topic these are. But I understand we’re discussing some off-shoot issues as a result of the DMA and some analogies there-of.

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

I’;d be willing to have an intellectually honest debate if you went back and read the original responses and adjusted your posts accordingly. Otherwise way to far off-topic these are. But I understand we’re discussing some off-shoot issues as a result of the DMA and some analogies there-of.

We already proved your previous arguments about the sugar example to be both fallacious and unsound. Reviewing them will give the same result

I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt and offering you the opportunity to restate your case

 

[JMalone]

Without infinite scrolling you won’t be able to find low follower accounts, new accounts, or small business. The bigger accounts with the most money will get all the attention and it will be game over for anyone who wants to start a popular account or grow a business on social media. Nobody will want to use a more difficult way to navigate the home page or recommended page.

Europoor Parliament who import hoarders of cheap low IQ religious maniacs to replace expensive European workers don’t want anything good for Europeans.

The UK government is the same. They main parties take money from human traffickers, they use body brokers to manipulate local elections, they take bribes from dictatorships and girl grooming gangs. Democracy and freedom of speech is over in Europe and UK because they want permanent power. So they need to spy on all your messages and drive young people into deeper poverty.

Their governments pretend to care with one hand and then take away freedom with the other hand while plotting complete demographic replacement with a cheaper group of people who will use religion to control everyone.

If you complain they call you far right even when you’re just saying what Christopher Hitchens and Carl Cagan were saying when we lived in a free productive society.

 

[name99]

you may be conflating morality with political power

you can make a moral argument about what the limits of a government's authority should be,
and you can debate the morality of any specific case

but a government's ability to legislate itself authorization to do something is a matter of political power, regardless of the morality of that something one way or another

edit: edited for clarity

The Chinese situation is interesting and more nuanced than people suggest. Not just the limits to state capacity, but the concerns of state capacity. So much of Western analysis of China is onanistic, projecting our concerns onto them rather than bothering to understand their concerns. (In this way it mirrors the way the West has viewed everyone else since at least WW2, from decolonization to domino theory to 3rd world civil wars. 80 years of university control have not changed a damn thing, because the point of all these studies like "Orientalism" is not to actually understand the Other, it is to condemn the West.)

So let's list some examples
- the *primary* point of the Great Firewall and social media censorship is to prevent the spreading of Woke into China. That's why they don't care about the multiple ways that it can be worked around via VPNs, or via using a foreign SIM. Likewise they don't much care about who foreigners talk to, or their own people going overseas. This is all very different from how the USSR ran censorship. The concern is not various "facts", the concern is mass mobilization, especially around craziness that can't be refuted because it's based on neuroticism and emotion rather than any sort of reality.

- China has cracked down on certain uses of high tech, but not all uses. The concern in this case appears to be (maybe correct, maybe not) that the sorts of high tech that have been sexy to Silicon Valley for 20 years (web sites, social media, software, basically "asset light" companies) are a poor match for China's economic plans (maybe just now for the next decade? maybe always?). So while it has sometimes seemed that they are anti-high tech, that's a matter of definition. They've been happy enough to encourage Huawei or CXMT or YMTC; they just don't see a need for multiple chat apps and suchlike.

- China seems to be content for Douyin (equivalent of TikTok) to become ever more popular. This does not *seem* to be a consequence of lack of state capacity. I may be wrong, but to me (based on talking to a few Chinese locals), this seems like a deliberate choice.
I wrote my comments on why this choice here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/eu-facebook-and-instagrams-infinite-scroll-may-break-digital-rules.2485215/page-7?post=34676289#post-34676289

and

EU: Facebook and Instagram's Infinite Scroll May Break Digital Rules

I see it more like Brave New World. Epsilons and Deltas should be happy with their Epsilon and Delta status, and AI and scrolling video allow that. It was a mistake of the Enlightenment to assume that everyone can and should be Alphas and Betas, and we're reverting to the natural (and in fact...

forums.macrumors.com

- China is meanwhile cracking down on something different, namely duanju (vertical form microdramas). Westerners obsess about superficial aspects of these ("vertical form", "a few minutes per episode", "made with AI") but the Chinese government cares about something different, namely the *"emotional" content*. In particular they are concerned that these soap operas are giving people unrealistic ideas about feasible life trajectories, wild wealth, marrying up, etc.
To meet this looks like the same sort of concerns as in my first point – they don't want to create Schelling points for dissatisfaction. In essence they understand the danger of Elite Overproduction (hell, their primary strategy for crippling the US is based on harnessing it!) and are doing whatever they can to limit such overproduction, to limit the unhappiness of the dissatisfied elite [by preventing them seeing "unrealistic TV lives"], and to limit their ability to organize.
I *suspect* romancebots fall into this same category, that they are currently viewed as more like duanju than like Douyin. Are they? Do romancebots act like alcohol, channeling frustration into rage? Or like marijuana, channeling it into passivity? No-one knows, but I suspect the govt is being cautious here. They will see how this plays out in the West before possibly recalibrating.

There may also be more practical concerns here (see my 3rd point above). If AI resources are in short supply, China would doubtless prefer that they be used to help design chips (or anti-Western strategies) than that they be frittered away on trivialities like romancebots.

 

[drrich2]

So much of Western analysis of China is onanistic, projecting our concerns onto them rather than bothering to understand their concerns.

Perhaps because of a belief there are objective moral truths that apply to all peoples, and while the extent to which government and many people care, in light of culture, governmental paternalism, etc., varies, the idea that there are such truths remains. It's how the Nazis were condemned after World War II. There are limits to cultural relativism.

Put another way, understanding their concerns wouldn't necessarily make us agree with what the government chooses to do. And China has had dissidents; the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest comes to mind.

I don't dispute there are differences, and they come through in your post, painting what sounds like a paternalistic government with an 'ends justify the means' attitude toward restricting freedoms to manage society as it sees fit.

"China is meanwhile cracking down on something different, namely duanju (vertical form microdramas). Westerners obsess about superficial aspects of these ("vertical form", "a few minutes per episode", "made with AI") but the Chinese government cares about something different, namely the *"emotional" content*."

are a poor match for China's economic plans

China's economic plans. In the U.S., private industry seems to drive the main economic 'plans.' Federal management of interest rates shows government plays a role, but the idea the federal government has some master economic agenda...sounds 'foreign.'

To be clear, I'm well aware many people are hotly critical of a number of things the U.S. government has done in recent times. And in terms of the bans on drones and foreign-made routers and the effort to exclude TikTok, some of us are worried the U.S. federal government is getting more like China's.

 

[name99]

Perhaps because of a belief there are objective moral truths that apply to all peoples, and while the extent to which government and many people care, in light of culture, governmental paternalism, etc., varies, the idea that there are such truths remains. It's how the Nazis were condemned after World War II. There are limits to cultural relativism.

That is, of course, THE Great Lie Of Modernity, the belief/claim that "we are all the same". And this is precisely my point, that you are so high on this myth that you can't even see it's a myth.
I assure you that neither the Islamic World nor China see things that way.
And like my previous posts, this is not moral judgement – I'm not saying China or Islam are good (or bad), I'm simply saying this is the way things are, and your fantasies otherwise are just that.

Put another way, understanding their concerns wouldn't necessarily make us agree with what the government chooses to do. And China has had dissidents; the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest comes to mind.

I don't dispute there are differences, and they come through in your post, painting what sounds like a paternalistic government with an 'ends justify the means' attitude toward restricting freedoms to manage society as it sees fit.

"China is meanwhile cracking down on something different, namely duanju (vertical form microdramas). Westerners obsess about superficial aspects of these ("vertical form", "a few minutes per episode", "made with AI") but the Chinese government cares about something different, namely the *"emotional" content*."

China's economic plans. In the U.S., private industry seems to drive the main economic 'plans.' Federal management of interest rates shows government plays a role, but the idea the federal government has some master economic agenda...sounds 'foreign.'

To be clear, I'm well aware many people are hotly critical of a number of things the U.S. government has done in recent times. And in terms of the bans on drones and foreign-made routers and the effort to exclude TikTok, some of us are worried the U.S. federal government is getting more like China's.

Oh you sweet summer child! OF COURSE the Federal Government has economic planning. (D)ARPA is basically MITI for America and has been so for 70 years.
The difference is that the Federal Government (like almost everything the US does), while horribly inefficient is still mostly superior to how the rest of the world does this. One large part of the difference is the much larger degree of decentralization of the planning, so that it's built on a million SBIR and STTR grants. Superficially (and looked at with a one year granularity) these look horribly inefficient compared to, say, a Five Year Plan that funnels the money into a national lab. But SBIR and STTR grants are supposed to (and indeed do) operate like Venture Capital; you expect that 90% of the money is "wasted", but the other 10% hits home runs – and if you were so good at predicting which will be the home runs, they why are you losing that 90%? (Because the world is too complicated to predict...)
Even the 90% that's "wasted" (for SBIR, STTR, or VC) is mostly not really wasted, largely because (so far...) these spaces are mercifully free of much genuine corruption. The money does go into genuine experience and training, and the participants in these programs, even when they fail, usually do better in the subsequent attemps.

Tariffs are a similar idea (though who knows how they will play out by the time the courts have their say). Tariffs are an attempt to set a goal ("manufacture more in America") while letting the market handle the details, so that, overall, manufacturing returns to the US, but perhaps not for various specific items that, for one reason or another, are much cheaper overseas, even with tariffs. (In which case, of course, things can be tweaked if this is important, and not otherwise). Once again "planning", but not "micro-managing".

 

[AriaAmaris]

I'm going to have to start using Instagram then! Maybe it should go into your enemy's retirement account instead. That'll bring usage down.

Even better. Lol

 

[drrich2]

That is, of course, THE Great Lie Of Modernity, the belief/claim that "we are all the same". And this is precisely my point, that you are so high on this myth that you can't even see it's a myth.

A big issue with this point is it depends on how the hearer defines 'the same.' I don't think the culture and resultant attitudes of varied people groups are all the same, no...not everyone in the world is thrilled at the prospect of democracy, thinks theocracy is a bad idea, etc. Some of the people who came to America in the early years where 'think different' folks.

But I do think we're all human, and that while many have physical differences associated with so-called 'race,' that these are mainly cosmetic and practically trivial.

And I also believe in the concept of a core set of human rights that apply to all peoples. I don't have a detailed list on hand; the Declaration of Independence (which acknowledged but did not claim to originate) 'certain inalienable rights' had a similar take.

It's like when we in the U.S. look back on the slavery of our early years and condemn it. We don't say 'Oh, well, it was the law and culturally accepted at the time, so no fault, no foul.' We condemn it. We think some things are wrong no matter what the 'law of the land' says.

I suppose everyone has to decide for him/herself whether those assertions are myth or fantasy.

Tariffs are a similar idea (though who knows how they will play out by the time the courts have their say). Tariffs are an attempt to set a goal ("manufacture more in America") while letting the market handle the details, so that, overall, manufacturing returns to the US, but perhaps not for various specific items that, for one reason or another, are much cheaper overseas, even with tariffs. (In which case, of course, things can be tweaked if this is important, and not otherwise). Once again "planning", but not "micro-managing".

I acknowledge your point. The 2nd term Trump administration is hardly 'business as usual' for America, and it has indeed taken a hand in some active meddling (which, in the case of the router and drone bans, a lot of people (including me) disagree with and consider government over-reach).

 

[name99]

A big issue with this point is it depends on how the hearer defines 'the same.' I don't think the culture and resultant attitudes of varied people groups are all the same, no...not everyone in the world is thrilled at the prospect of democracy, thinks theocracy is a bad idea, etc. Some of the people who came to America in the early years where 'think different' folks.

But I do think we're all human, and that while many have physical differences associated with so-called 'race,' that these are mainly cosmetic and practically trivial.

You might not think this. But the core of DEI and Disparate Impact assumes exactly this.
It's always Harrison Bergeron. The smarter proponents may hide this in polite society, but we've had 65 years to see it play out.

Full text of "Harrison Bergeron (& Activity)"

And I also believe in the concept of a core set of human rights that apply to all peoples. I don't have a detailed list on hand; the Declaration of Independence (which acknowledged but did not claim to originate) 'certain inalienable rights' had a similar take.

It's like when we in the U.S. look back on the slavery of our early years and condemn it. We don't say 'Oh, well, it was the law and culturally accepted at the time, so no fault, no foul.' We condemn it. We think some things are wrong no matter what the 'law of the land' says.

We DON'T all do this. See what I meant? You so automatically fall back into the Big Lie that you can't even see that you are doing it.
Plenty of, for example, our Islamic friends see absolutely no problem with the mores and customs of the world as of 600AD, including slavery.
The land acknowledgement crowd have zero problem with forcible land transfers at any point in history, just so long as the beneficiaries were not Europeans.
And so it goes.

Speaking for myself, while I have no interest in bringing back slavery, I also think that a world whose primary interest in the past is finding things to condemn is the most boring possible world, and I absolutely loath history that takes this stance.

We are not in fact all the same. Whether you take a broad or a narrow view of the meaning of same.
And this is not about "we all deserve equal rights". Superficially it was about rights and opportunities in 1960, but we passed that the moment the state considered unequal outcomes proof of nefarious behavior.
(And in fact it was always about equal outcomes, not equal opportunities, even in 1789; "we" have just preferred to gloss over that point because "we" like our history sanitized.)

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

I also believe in the concept of a core set of human rights that apply to all peoples.

yes, human rights should apply to all peoples

Plenty of, for example, our Islamic friends see absolutely no problem with the mores and customs of the world as of 600AD, including slavery.

that does not mean that they are not wrong

We are not in fact all the same. Whether you take a broad or a narrow view of the meaning of same.

That is, of course, THE Great Lie Of Modernity, the belief/claim that "we are all the same". And this is precisely my point, that you are so high on this myth that you can't even see it's a myth.

all humans are all in fact the same as moral agents and deserving of all the same rights. people believing different things has absolutely no bearing on what universal right should or should not apply to whom

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

It's always Harrison Bergeron.

reaching for Vonnegut to swing at DEI is strange move, "Harrison Bergeron" isn't as plain as the conservative meme version. a uniformed read can lead one to believe it's an attack on forced equality, but Vonnegut was a socialist and a humanist, so it's actually more easily read as a skewering of the paranoid American Cold War fear of equality, that protecting any other groups human rights means the jackboots are coming for you

that aside, claiming that leveling-down is the actual goal of DEI or disparate impact is a lazy caricature

 

[drrich2]

We DON'T all do this. See what I meant? You so automatically fall back into the Big Lie that you can't even see that you are doing it.

Yes, I over-generalized 'we.' There are people like the Klu Klux Klan who might have different opinions. I think there's a pretty good consensus that early American slavery was wrong, and that this is considered in effect a moral truth rather than just a cultural opinion of the time. Not everyone would agree, you have a point. But while different may disagree on what a given 'moral truth' about something is, there's often a common belief there is an objective moral truth.

Speaking for myself, while I have no interest in bringing back slavery, I also think that a world whose primary interest in the past is finding things to condemn is the most boring possible world, and I absolutely loath history that takes this stance.

If it's just about navel gazing, hand-wringing and perpetuating a spirit of grievance and victimhood, I'd judge on a case-by-case basis but might well agree.

But the old adage 'Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it' carries great weight. We need to learn.

Beyond that, what we learn can inform our understanding of the human condition. Why empires fall. That human beings without overt mental illnesses could do what the Nazis and their organizational staff people did. That people would willingly enslave others for self-serving economic interests, and fight a bloody war largely for the power to keep doing so (I'm aware of the 'right to secede' argument). The Trail of Tears tragedy comes to mind.