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@bstacey@icosahedron.website · 2 weeks ago

The EU tells TikTok to kill infinite scrolling

https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-meta-facebook-instagram-brussels-kill-infinite-scrolling/

I am ~~very much not an expert in EU law~~, and I suspect that different requirements will come into force for platforms of different sizes, but I still think that #MastoDev folks should get on with making limited scrolling (like "click to show more" every N posts) an available feature, maybe even a default. It compromises no ideal of value and further distinguishes fedi from the things that we *want* to distinguish fedi from.

POLITICO

The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

Brussels is going head-to-head with social media platforms to change addictive design.

halcy :icosahedron:

@halcy@icosahedron.website · 2 weeks ago

@bstacey that aside, wow, so the EU *does* have the right idea about what might actually improve the social media landscape instead of just "uhhhh idk ban kids"

Blake C. Stacey

@bstacey@icosahedron.website · 2 weeks ago

@halcy Well, plenty of them do still seem to be endorsing the "uhhhh idk ban kids" approach, including von der Leyen and the EU Parliament overall.

https://www.dw.com/en/european-nations-mull-social-media-ban-for-children-instagram-tiktok-anxiety-depression/a-75841184

dw.com

European nations gear up to ban social media for children

Some experts question how such a ban would work, not least because EU rules have so far produced mixed results when it comes to making large platforms safer for minors.

Nik

@nikclayton@mastodon.social · 2 weeks ago

@bstacey This feels like a mis-read.

Infinite scrolling in apps like TikTok are effectively infinite because your feed never ends - there's enough content for "The Algorithm" to endlessly add new things to your feed.

That's not the case with Mastodon and similar. Your feed is posts from the specific accounts and hashtags you follow, and when you reach the end that's it - there's no algorithm shoveling more content at you to keep you in the app / show ads at you.

Nik

@nikclayton@mastodon.social · 2 weeks ago

@bstacey That's your home feed. On busy servers the local feed (and federated feed, if either are enabled) may be effectively infinite, but again, the content selection is by time of post, rather than an algorithm designed to keep you endlessly scrolling.

Blake C. Stacey

@bstacey@icosahedron.website · 2 weeks ago

@nikclayton Sure, there's a difference between a feed composed only of posts from (or boosted by) accounts that I have chosen to follow versus a generated feed, but as a matter of design, nothing stops me from scrolling my home timeline and always getting more posts. There's no break point, no impediment to the home timeline being effectively "infinite" (as policymakers interpret that).

Nik

@nikclayton@mastodon.social · 2 weeks ago

@bstacey as a Mastodon client developer ( #pachli, https://pachli.app) there are a few impediments.

1. You have to be reading slower than the people you follow post. I follow ~ 300 accounts and a handful of hashtags, and regularly hit the top of my home feed
2. You can follow accounts, add them to a list, and exclude posts in that list from your home feed.
3. Your home feed (on Mastodon) has a server-defined maximum number of posts (used to be 400, is now 800).

Nik

@nikclayton@mastodon.social · 2 weeks ago

@bstacey Preventing people from seeing content they have explicitly opted in to seeing is fraught with its own problems.

As a hypothetical, consider an emergency service that decides to publish alerts on the Fediverse (e.g., as was done with the LA wildfires on X). Or time-sensitive ICE spottings, etc.

As the EU Commission pointed out, the issue with infinite scroll on TikTok was the use of a recommender system to keep pushing unasked for content at people in an addicting fashion.

Nik

@nikclayton@mastodon.social · 2 weeks ago

@bstacey (whether the Fediverse should be relied on for time-sensitive emergency services information is a different question, and one I think the answer for now is "no". I don't know of a single Fediverse service, Mastodon or otherwise, that is staffed and run sufficiently well to provide the sort of SLA that would be required for that).

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