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Comment by zachr | Hacker News Reader

Some of this is definitely good. Requiring companies to use plain and truthful language when describing privacy-affecting settings is a great step, and apps/services shouldn't try to hide the "continue without enabling" button.

With that said, requiring different rules for children seriously increases barriers to entry for new services hoping to attract users in areas where these rules take effect, and kids will ALWAYS find ways around it. Nudges like snap streaks and the Like button encourage daily active use, but they also encourage actual social interaction between people to some degree.

Additionally, nudges like the Like button or Snapstreaks, though they do encourage a potentially unhealthy relationship with technology, also encourage social interaction with peers. It's certainly more complicated than "these are bad!"

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I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. Until about a year ago I myself was one of the under 18’s and although I myself have never had a “streak” or used social media much in general I do have some experience with these kind of things because I see my friends and peers partake in these kind of things. What I mostly see is that the upkeep of a streak consists of sending a black photo with some text on it like “goodnight” and then it being sent to dozens of people. Not much comes from it other than maintaining a streak.

So not a lot of social interraction in that case, more so a reward for substanceless and ultimately unrewarding behaviour. Even more so, I saw my peers getting distracted from actual social interaction IRL by these kind of things.

I don’t think social interaction has anything to do with things like streaks or other addictive nudges. I think the most that is needed for social interaction is a chat client (or voice for that matter) and the ability to send photo’s or use a webcam. It shouldn’t be more than that. Other things often get in the way of real social interaction be it online or offline.

I'm definitely guilty of the blank picture solely for streaks. For me, the value comes from a feeling of connection when keeping a streak, mostly with friends I barely ever see. There are people that I've only really met once at events etc., but we have remained acquaintances through these 'substanceless' conversations over Snapchat. If I ever travel and end up near these friends I wouldn't hesitate to message them to hang out, where as if we never started a streak I'd most likely never see them again.

I've never liked keeping in touch with people over the internet, but 'streaks' lets me do it with dozens of people without sinking in hours of my time for conversation.

Do they really encourage social interaction? From what I can tell, they're pretty much just an addictive feature.

If you want to encourage social interaction, promote less popular content. If you promote more popular content, then it becomes a popularity contest. Services want more eyeballs on their platform, so there's no way they'd promote less popular content because people will switch to a platform that gives them the reward for being popular.

>> plain and truthful language

It always ends up with "we do something to make your experiences better", to "help us continually protect and improve your experience", etc.

I'll be rather explaining along the lines "we're a corporation, we have shares to sustain and employees to pay, so we're going to milk you and your personal information for our sole benefit. You have to know that it will be better for you if you don't make it easy for us to do so".

I would argue they explicitly stop real social interaction. People like a thing and then move on. How is that useful discourse?

Without a like mechanism, people would have to genuinely interact by adding to the conversation in order to be a part of it.

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