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Comment by malvosenior | Hacker News Reader

> On July 30th the junior senator from Missouri unveiled the “Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act”, or SMART Act. The bill would limit social-media usage to half an hour a day (users would be able to bypass the limit by adjusting their app settings). It would also ban addictive features, such as “infinite scroll” (when a user’s entire feed can be seen in one visit) and “autoplay” (when online videos load automatically one after another).

We should never let the government dictate UI through laws. It’s shocking that it’s even being proposed.

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Why is it shocking?

The government has always had a say in the UI if it was for the greater benefit of it's citizen:

- Off putting images printed on cigarette packages

- Warning stickers put on microwaves to prevent people from drying their house cats in the microwave

- Forcing speed meters in cars

- Forcing head lights of cars to be turned on after a certain hour of the day

- Lot's of "UX" regulations in casinos and other addictive establishments

- Licenses to sell alcohol which basically influences where people can find and shop alcohol

- Recently the UK has drafted a law which prohibits supermarkets to stock and display addictive unhealthy food close to the checkout tilts (Mars, Snickers, fat crisps, etc.)

Why should it be different on the internet? Social media has a damaging and addictive negative impact on society, so it need's to be regulated to protect citizens from the exploitative patterns which these companies purposefully implement to hook vulnerable people into their system.

I wonder what makes people believe that the internet should be this sort of "law free" place where anyone can implement all the exploitative behaviour which is otherwise forbidden elsewhere?

Many of us find most of your list disturbing as is. So we certainly don't use it as evidence that we'd like it to grow longer.

Out of curiosity, what do you find disturbing exactly? That people who drive a vehicle which is capable of speeds that can easily cause death to passengers and other vehicles around them need to have a device mounted which visibly gives them an indication of how fast they are actually travelling?

Or do you find it disturbing that kids who don't know better yet are meant to be told that if they start smoking cigarettes, which are very addictive, can cause them to die 20 years earlier rather than telling them that it is "cool" which is what the ad industry did before?

Maybe from a complete selfish point of view I can see how it's annoying that I cannot buy alcohol just at any time of the day wherever I want, but the government is not being elected to act selfishly. They have a responsibility towards their electorate, and if something is causing people to get depressed, harm themselves and become unhappy, unproductive and a burden on the state, then it is the governments duty to implement regulation which can help prevent from falling into those damaging habits.

How about the law saying it's illegal to put candy bars in the checkout aisle? When does it stop? You can't just keep doing this forever it's literally insane. How big does the books of donts have to be before we are all criminals? Saying it's the government's job to regulate our lives to give us less bad habits is also an opinion, not some objective fact like you state either. Be careful about projecting your feelings and wants onto others, because once you rope the government into it the people that don't share your view are being trampled on with no recourse.

It's not projecting my personal feelings. The government has the responsibility to keep society productive. If something is having a wide spread effect on a society's productiveness, then it's their responsibility to take action. If you disagree with this, then you basically oppose the idea of having elected leaders who are responsible for looking after the greater good of society. What is the alternative though? Non elected leaders, anarchy?

Again, you are spouting opinions as facts. "The government has the responsibility to keep society productive" find me the floating rock that shows that is an objective truth. And even if I DID give you that as an objective truth, it still is very far from your previous assertion that it's the government's job to keep people from falling into bad habits.

>It's not projecting my personal feelings.

>The government has the responsibility to keep society productive

That is very much your opinion.

I'm of the opinion that government should be doing whatever the end result of every member of government acting as the people who elected them want them to act (not necessarily what is best for those people). So what if the people want stupid things, the people should get what they want. It's not government's job to act like a parent.

> How about the law saying it's illegal to put candy bars in the checkout aisle?

That would be a very good thing. Also, limiting the size of sodas. Etc. Don't the US have some kind of a weight problem maybe? Shouldn't it be the job of the government to help fix it?

The problem is not one of "freedom". It's a war waged by corporations against individuals. The role of the government is, at the very least, to protect individuals in that war.

if you limit the extent to which people are considered a "burden on the state", then the state doesn't have to exert such control over their lives. people are going to feel differently about how to make this trade-off.

speedometers seem pretty important to have (although I doubt cars would be designed without them in 2019 even if it were legal), as do headlights at night and in the rain. I don't think these are unreasonable laws, as they have a very obvious and direct impact on road safety.

I can't really agree with the arbitrary restrictions on alcohol purchases though. where I live, it is illegal for liquor stores to be open on Sundays. how is society helped by preventing me, a responsible and productive citizen, from buying some alcohol on one of my two days off from work?

> how is society helped by preventing me, a responsible and productive citizen, from buying some alcohol on one of my two days off from work?

It's a cost benefit calculation. Laws are primarily not drafted for the responsible and self disciplined people. They are there to prevent the irresponsible or vulnerable people from getting so wasted on a Sunday evening that they don't show up to work on a Monday, then lose their job, then become homeless, then start petty crimes to survive on the streets, then fall into drug addiction, then rob you, a responsible and productive person on a Tuesday when you are at work, potentially even harming your kids which might be already at home just to steal something stupid as someone's phone.

Does the alcohol restriction prevent responsible and productive people from having a beer on Sunday? Not really, if they are responsible then they probably did a bigger shopping the day before and have some extra beers stocked in their fridge on Sunday.

Just to be clear, I am not defending a particular law here, just highlighting that there is nothing inherently wrong with a government wanting to draft legislation in a cost/benefit effective way.

In micro and macro economics the one law that all our economic models are based on is that everyone works for their own benefit, so at least from that perspective it's in the governments benefit to look after the people who elected them, so they will get elected again.

> Just to be clear, I am not defending a particular law here, just highlighting that there is nothing inherently wrong with a government wanting to draft legislation in a cost/benefit effective way.

it's important to note that this is an opinion, not a fact. clearly there are a few people here who don't share that opinion.

personally I think to harm or even inconvenience people who haven't done anything wrong yet is one of the worst things a government can do. it's just my opinion though, clearly there are many people who are happy to grant even more power to the state so it can craft crude laws to protect them.

> Laws are primarily not drafted for the responsible and self disciplined people.

And yet, they still apply to us. Your benevolent intentions do not invalidate our stake in the restrictions that are imposed upon us.

Many people find constant paternalistic intrusions on the part of the state to be a legitimately worse cost than a marginal increase in behavior by bad actors. Exercising authority over petty matters may be a free action in your utility calculus, but it adds up to a significant irritation and a material quality-of-life burden to those of us who value the freedom to simply buy a beer when we want to.

Please consider this point of view. Society is not a sterile engineering problem to be optimized in terms of concrete inputs and outputs.

While others find it as a reasonable middle ground between banning things outright(which never works anyway) and letting everyone do whatever they want even if it harms others.

You are living in a society after all.

It's a wonder to me why more middle-ground approaches such as what you stated don't get proposed more often.

Because nobody ever got virtue points from their "base" for proposing a middle ground.

One of the rights we explicitly give the government in the Constitution is to regulate our trade and commerce.

From that lens all these regulations make sense, including the social media regulations proposed.

Check your source. I believe the constitutional power is to regulate interstate commerce. There is a conceptual difference (or there used to be). Traditionally, this power isn't supposed to apply to all aspects of the market -- just those aspects conceptually bounded by trade that is between states.

Yes, but you're selling your attention to Facebook across state boundaries (in 49/50 states).

But my more serious answer would be that everybody is harmed by inconsistent trade rules between states. It just makes doing business harder. The commerce clause was thought up when considering a much less centralized nation composed of many isolated markets. Today even the much less tightly bound EU has a pretty strong level of trade uniformity, enforced centrally. So I think that everyone benefits from a relaxed view of the commerce clause, and that this isn't a real infringement on our rights.

That is a good list... I think people think of social media as different since it is a computer program/app instead of a physical product but really there is no difference legally or philosophically!

Don't forget ingredient lists, nutritional information labels, and the newer reference intake labels. Take a look at any alcoholic beverage to see what happens when such labels are voluntary.

Material Safety Data Sheets is another regulation that manufacturers are forced to follow but is pretty damn useful for end consumers also.

There is a certain, rather vocal, section of HN that seems prone to having a knee-jerk reaction against all regulatory behaviour. They seem to pop up a lot in threads like these, or those related to free speech etc.

I see the case for minimising regulations in some contexts, but there are definitely strong cases for the government to come down with the force of an anvil in other contexts.

It's kind of funny, for a bunch of people who ostensibly look for edge cases all day.

Then they want simple one case fits all solution to a complex or intractable problem (and usually the same solution, regardless of the problem).

In an ideal world, all government regulations are well thought out and limited to things that are minimally invasive to the citizen, and still allow the citizen to be free to make a choice. Nutrition labels are a good example of this.

In the real world, many regulations are influenced by corporations to serve their own interests. The food pyramid is an example of this.

Anyone aware of the latter should be skeptical of any proposed regulation, especially in the US. Is it in the best interest of the populace, or was it influenced to be in the best interest of a lobbying organization?

> Take a look at any alcoholic beverage to see what happens when such labels are voluntary.

Amen. I did keto for a couple of years and was shocked at the amount of carbs and added sugar.

Also speed regulations in the form of net neutrality.

I think it would be great for someone to introduce well-crafted legislation, formed with the input of smart, savvy, educated, and Big Tech-hostile technologists, that establishes some kind of standards board to review and levy fines for things like dark patterns.

This legislation is not that. It is one legislator's policy team throwing darts wildly, with the goal of generating hype for their member, not actually getting anything passed into law.

This is why governmental bodies need to rely on experts in various fields. There is no way we should require our politicians to know everything about everything, but they should be smart enough to recognize what they don't know and become educated and informed. I feel your last statement is sadly, 100% accurate.

And flouride in the water [0], maybe good for your teeth, health effects on the rest of the body unclear ... law of unintended consequences and all that.

Folic acid fortification of flour too [1]. Protects against neural-tube defects, health effects on aging adults less clear. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_in_the_Unit...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_fortification#Folate

>I wonder what makes people believe that the internet should be this sort of "law free" place where anyone can implement all the exploitative behaviour which is otherwise forbidden elsewhere?

Violent crime doesnt happen on the internet. The only thing to prevent is fraud. And that weirdly isnt huge, at least in my life.

Not everyone subscribes to the thought that government makes better decisions than individuals. Having laws are often used for corrupt purposes.

>Violent crime doesn't happen on the internet. The only thing to prevent is fraud.

I couldn't disagree more with these statements. Human and sex trafficking occur through the net, hell you can hire hitmen! Then there's the grooming of underage kids, etc. To say only fraud happens on the net just seems wild.

>Not everyone subscribes to the thought that government makes better decisions than individuals. Having laws are often used for corrupt purposes.

This is a pretty general statement. What specifically in the proposed law are you against?

All those crimes happen offline, though. Internet is just a communication channel.

Dang

Why do some people have to jump from

Person A: I think in these situations the government action has been effective

“Person A thinks thst government makes better decisions than individuals”.

There is literally (and I mean this literally) not a single non crazy person in the world who thinks the government makes better decisions than individuals in general. For one thing, we don’t have AI yet and government is made of individuals. Yet this is your counter argument, and probably what you think people who disagree with you believe and rest their philosophies on.

I must be crazy then, and so are many people. Smoking less, driving more slowly, are better decisions than the alternative; but left to their own devices people will make the wrong decision most of the time.

Isn't this sort of similar to the motorcycle helmet thing? Is it okay to make helmets mandatory by law or are we okay with people being free to do as they wish and so some percentage of us dying because of it.

There's always personal responsibility no doubt - and I'm very big on it -, but at the same time, should we allow corporations to exploit most of the population through addiction?

I don't think anyone can predict consequences of either choice in the short / long term.

It's not that "government makes better decisions than individuals" it's that unorganized individuals do not have the power to change the behavior of large organizations that are out to manipulate the public. Corporations manipulate individuals and entire populations by only providing the means for certain actions to be taken, by using propaganda, and in the case of UI, preying on the impulses of individuals.

By contrast, state power in this instance is exercised after deliberate thought, and in theory, in the interest of the people. This isn't the thoughtful and well informed decisions of individuals vs that of the state. It is that of our weakest, most impulsive moments vs making an informed decision before allowing products to be sold or made available.

That assumes that the government should have a say in those things, and that people don't accept the fundamental axiom that the internet is different from everything else.

On the other hand it’s shocking social media companies use every psychological tool at their disposal to get people to share their private info as well as getting them to engage with them as much as possible. I’m shocked they’d do this!

When industries don't self regulate and cause harm to societies, then yes the government steps in to prevent harm through regulation.

> The bill would limit social-media usage to half an hour a day (users would be able to bypass the limit by adjusting their app settings).

The Economist is putting it mildly. The Act is quite short and accessible, so well worth reading directly: https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-07/So.... More on that half an hour limit, from Section 4 (paraphrased):

- Opt-out 30 minutes a day time limit

- The time limit gets reset every month, so you have to keep opting out

- A nag pop-up at least once every 30 minutes showing how much time you've spent there that day

If this passes, using the (US) internet will become much more annoying.

(Section 7, which says the FTC gets to make up new rules later, looks a bit suspicious to me too, but I'm not clear on the degree to which that's just standard operating procedure for American politics.)

Think of getting a car approved for road use involving a pointing mechanism that isn’t a steering wheel... and then you let me know how successful you expect to be.

This happens all the time and is completely normal. It’s just the first time it’s happened in the context of a web browser or mobile app as far as I know.

As strange as it is I think there is something to be said to limiting social media's most addictive features. These things are designed to be as addicting and unhealthy as possible in order to absorb as much of our time and energy as possible.

Well, if he removed endless scrolling, which should be listed as a deadly sin somewhere in the bible, I might humor him.

What I never understood is sites that put links only available in the footer -and- enable endless scrolling.

Worst thing ever.

Without that, why would you need the end button on your keyboard?

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