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New Bill Would Ban Autoplay Videos and Endless Scrolling (theverge.com) 247

A new bill, sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), targets snapstreaks, YouTube autoplay, and endless scrolling that, the bill alleges, are designed in a way to make services "addictive." Reader Zorro writes: Hawley's Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act, or the SMART Act, would ban these features that work to keep users on platforms longer, along with others, like Snapstreaks, that incentivize the continued use of these products. If approved, the Federal Trade Commission and Health and Human Services could create similar rules that would expire after three years unless Congress codified them into law. "Big tech has embraced a business model of addiction," Hawley said. "Too much of the 'innovation' in this space is designed not to create better products, but to capture more attention by using psychological tricks that make it difficult to look away."

Deceptive design played an enormous part in last week's FTC settlement with Facebook, and Hawley's bill would make it unlawful for tech companies to use dark patterns to manipulate users into opting into services. For example, "accept" and "decline" checkboxes would need to be the same font, color, and size to help users make better, more informed choices. "Social media companies deploy a host of tactics designed to manipulate users in ways that undermines their wellbeing," said Josh Golin, executive director of campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood.

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New Bill Would Ban Autoplay Videos and Endless Scrolling

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  • Bzzzt (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Constitutional error. Law denied!
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @02:04PM (#59013020)

    What I hate about this world is that laws like this have to be made because people insist on being evil cunts all the time, everywhere. Instead of simply not being evil cunts, they *have* to force laws like this, and countless other idiotic laws which, in theory, I'm against, but which make sense if you understand why they were added.

    I've seen such complete and utter disregard of people's "experience" online since so many years now, every single day, that I've become deeply cynical and no longer expect to be able to do anything anywhere, which is the truth. Can't register anywhere. Can't do anything whatsoever "online" anymore. It's all broken garbage.

    • by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @02:36PM (#59013234)

      What I hate about this world is that laws like this have to be made

      No, they don't have to be made.

      The end user is capable of not using a product that has irritating practices like "auto play", etc, if they so desire. This laws does not HAVE TO be made; in fact, it's quite nanny-statish to suggest it in the first place.

      • by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @02:54PM (#59013362) Journal

        "There ought to be a law" folks think they need a "law" for every contingency in every situation.

        The reality is, they want laws because they don't know how to handle the "evil cunts all the time". The real solution if you don't want autoplay on websites, stop using websites that have autoplay. Its right up there with Click Bait articles with shit ton adverts on them, they are only profitable when people actually go there.

        Stop doing business with people you don't like. Simple, elegant, doesn't require endless law making and politicians pontificating about "evil cunts".

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          This is like saying "if you don't want lung cancer, just stop smoking!"

          It works for a few people, but what really got smoking rates down was making tobacco products more expensive, putting age restrictions on them and banning their use in public places.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        The end user is capable of not using a product that has irritating practices like "auto play", etc, if they so desire.

        That's true, assuming information symmetry. So we need a law to guarantee it, if you agree that the proper role of government is to help the market work efficiently.

      • by epyT-R ( 613989 )

        There are 4 basic choices:

        1. use it and tolerate the annoyance
        2. don't use it
        3. find a way around the annoyance
        4. see if someone else has already come up with a solution for the annoyance

      • by jwdb ( 526327 )

        The end user is capable of not using a product that has irritating practices like "auto play", etc, if they so desire.

        Except that the whole point of dark patterns is to take advantage of weaknesses in the human mind in such a way as to make it harder to "not use a product". In what way is that acceptable behaviour in a free society?

        It's easy to say, "I'm not addicted, so you shouldn't be", but it's not very helpful and is somewhat oblivious to reality.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jwymanm ( 627857 )
      No. Just No. The path to hell is paved with good intentions. This is slippery slope written all over it. They don't care at all about banning autoplay videos or endless scrolling. This is about control against a non existent government labeled "atrocity." They want more control over all of it. Obviously we can't hold it off forever as these dipshits that get into power keep wanting more power and every decade of time has given them more power in exchange for absolutely nothing. Not safety. Not privacy, not
      • by DogDude ( 805747 )
        we really need to gut the government because it is our #1 safety concern at this point.

        What in the hell are you talking about? The US government hacked the elections? The US government is stealing all of our information? The US government is sending out people to shoot up gatherings of people? The US government is causing massive wealth disparity?

        The government is the only thing keeping you safe from (a few crazy) people who would happily grind you into dog food if they could.
      • by epine ( 68316 )

        No. Just No. The path to hell is paved with good intentions. This is slippery slope written all over it.

        Ah, the multidimensional astral plane which Kubrick's monolith calls home, with no detectable gradient anywhere and always. Intriguing on a postcard, but wouldn't want to live there. Dull place.

        Kubrick was thinking about man's triumph over nature when he filmed this. For my own part, I think invention of the wheel gets far too much credit in the usual story. Before the wheel, there was only shiny moccasin

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Like that time they banned subliminal single-frame advertising in movies, and now everything is disneyfied and bland?

        I actually think this is unlikely to get passed, but it's a useful warning shot across the bow of companies using these techniques. Stop using dark patterns or face regulation.

    • Blame capitalism. Why freely make life better when you can instead charge for the privilege?

    • Some people are evil shits and ruin it for everybody else. That's just the way it is. And unfortunately, that problem is magnified 1000 fold online, because those people don't care, because they don't know who they're being shits to, and because there are no repercussions, since it's a community of billions.

      Socially, people have always lived in relatively small groups. I saw a study once that showed that people got together best in groups of no more than 100ish-200ish (?). Beyond that, any sense of co
    • by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @04:03PM (#59013752)
      This shouldn't be mandated by law, it should be standardized by browser makers. Why isn't there a per-domain autoplay permission that the website can just request from the user? We already have this functionality built for Flash; even Edge requests permission to load Flash per-site. Why not do this with videos generally? The only sites I really want autoplay on are video sites like Youtube. If I'm not on Youtube or a similar site, I don't want videos autoplaying, and this includes embedded Youtube videos.
      • >"This shouldn't be mandated by law, it should be standardized by browser makers. Why isn't there a per-domain autoplay permission that the website can just request from the user?"

        If you use Firefox, you have had that exact feature for many months and now WITH UI exposure. If you also want it to stop MUTED autoplay, it can do that, too (and no other browser can), although that part is an about:config (no UI) but does it across all domains (that is not per-site)....

        media.autoplay.default;1
        media.autoplay.

    • by epyT-R ( 613989 )

      or you could just, I don't know, hit ctrl-w and do something else.

  • by gbkersey ( 649921 ) on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @02:08PM (#59013038)
    Really? There are no more pressing problems than crappy websites? If you don't like autoplay / endless scrolling don't go to that site... Maybe they should be working on immigration or balancing the budget or any number of things that are much more important....
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "A new bill, sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)," - You know, because of all the free time they scared up by NOT SECURING THE ELECTION SYSTEMS, AND BLOCKING THAT THE DAY AFTER MUELLER WARNS OF COMPROMISE.

    • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @02:14PM (#59013070) Homepage Journal

      Legislators like this stuff because it gets them on tech committees, because they are "tech-knowledgeable". Then they can use those committee seats to get donations from tech companies to sway legislation. After they leave politics, then can then get jobs in the tech industry. It isn't just tech: same goes for agriculture, patent law, etc.

    • by Pinky ( 738 )

      There's that European(?) bill that legislated a cooking confirmation dialog so I'd say the US and EU are now competing for the world's stupid web design legislation.

      I'd like a Firefox checkbox for blocking bad government please.

    • I think SPAM, Scams, spoofing e-mail addresses and phone numbers, deceptive ads, ets etc etc are bigger problems that "autoplay"

    • by suutar ( 1860506 )

      fallacy of relative privation, aka "not as bad as" fallacy

    • Maybe they should be working on immigration or balancing the budget or any number of things that are much more important....

      But those are hard problems to solve. Our politicians are too pretty/handsome to deal with complicated problems.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    but came back to it because I was addicted....

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Make it so members of Congress and Senate are not allowed to use facebook or twitter, or any other third party service to engage with the public, but must use their own .gov website to do so instead.

    They legitimize these services as if they are the "official" town square, and at the same time want to condemn them.

    Walk away from the on-the-sly foreign donations (which is what its really all about) and represent your actual constituents, you greasy two-faced fuckers.

    Only vapid hollywood attention seekers sho

  • Endless scrolling (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @02:14PM (#59013068)

    I'd prefer if all newspaper apps and sites would use endless scrolling, instead of using 'pages' like the dead tree version.

    I guess the authors of this initiative are all over 70.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by omnichad ( 1198475 )

      You must be a Chrome user - you just love giving all your RAM to one place.

    • My thoughts exactly. I mean no wonder why they aren't touching data caps. They're more worried about pointless stuff like this. Also, ever wonder why republicans sponsor these bills against big tech? Hint: Big tech doesn't pay republicans.
    • I absolutely despise endless scrolling. I will take pages that I can jump to rather than an endless scroll any day.

      That said... a law against it seems a little ridiculous.

    • And I hate endless scrolling, and I hope it dies sooner rather than later.

      Endless scrolling generally doesn't load the content so you can't search for text in-page. Most of the time there's no way to bookmark a specific part of the endless page. And your back button doesn't generally to back to where you left off scrolling.

      It's so fucking consumer hostile I just don't get how anyone ever thought it was a good idea. The only redeeming feature is that zombified readers can just keep scrolling, and never need

      • by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @03:05PM (#59013434)

        Endless scrolling does have its uses though. I particularly like it on shopping sites as I don't have to wait for pages to reload to see more search results. It's just a technology, it could be used for good or for bad. Sure, sometimes it's used to make a site more addictive. Sometimes it's just a faster way to load more content so people can get their work done faster.

        • Endless scrolling does have its uses though. I particularly like it on shopping sites as I don't have to wait for pages to reload to see more search results.

          Until you accidentally hit the back button just as you were trying to click on an intriguing search result. And now you have no idea where in that endless list that search result is. You can't just re-do the search and jump to page 8 like with paged search results. You have to start all over at the beginning and scroll through the entire thing all o

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Amazon solved that at least a decade ago. When you get near the bottom of the page it pre-loads the first screen of results from the next page, so that they display instantly when you click "next".

          In fact pre-load hinting is part of the HTML5 standard, but I think Amazon does it with Javascript.

        • What endless scrollers are you using that don't need to constantly reload pages? Dynamic loading, and all the delays it introduces, is probably the worst thing about the modern web.
    • I'd prefer if all newspaper apps and sites would use endless scrolling, instead of using 'pages' like the dead tree version.

      So when their links for more details/references open in the same tab rather than a new one you then have to go through all that scrolling all over again to get back where you were? No thanks. They can auto scroll that "feature" right back up the ass it came from.

      And maybe try sites that are interested in presenting you the desired information rather than inserting extra pages so they can stuff extra ad views in. I have yet to run across a news site worth reading that breaks up articles like that. Hell, Fox

      • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        So when their links for more details/references open in the same tab rather than a new one you then have to go through all that scrolling all over again to get back where you were? No thanks.

        Use the middle mouse button to click on those links.

        • So when their links for more details/references open in the same tab rather than a new one you then have to go through all that scrolling all over again to get back where you were? No thanks.

          Use the middle mouse button to click on those links.

          A design has failed when it forces people to work around it for common/expected tasks.

          That is definitely an option if you know/remember they are going to do it to you. That doesn't always work on phones/tablets, however, as some cases (memory usage) will cause it to reload the page when you go back to the original tab and you are back to square one anyway.

          • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

            A design has failed when it forces people to work around it for common/expected tasks.

            Agreed, I hate links that open in a new tab because it forces me to work around the failed design by closing a tab when I wasn't expecting to. Using the middle mouse button gives me back some control but I agree, I shouldn't have to do that, either.

    • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      I found this really cool post you should read. Just go to https://www.example.com/a/Some... [example.com], then scroll down 750,393 pixels. ...Oh wait, someone made a new post so you'll need to go down a bit further than that now... It crashed for you? ...Oh, it works fine on my machine, maybe you need more RAM.

    • by Livius ( 318358 )

      Like autoplay, endless scrolling has its place, but people (mistakenly) think it's cool and try to use it everywhere, rather than just when it might actually be a benefit. It's really only about as 'cool' as Unix more.

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      I'm over 40 and hate the endless scrolling. It really hogs my old devices' resources. :(

    • Yeah, what the hell is wrong with being able to keep scrolling? I wish Slashdot had it every day!
  • There's a toggle in upper right corner to turn off YouTube's autoplay.

    Don't see why we need a law for this.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Can you point to the toggle on CNN, BBC or any countless other pages? Just because one page is well behaved doesn't mean there isn't a problem.

    • YouTube routinely ignores or resets that preference.

      • by iCEBaLM ( 34905 )

        It only gets reset, from my experience, when you clear browsing data, so it seems like it's probably stored in a cookie. Again, we don't need a law for this.

        • by sremick ( 91371 )

          1) If it's stored in a cookie, that is boneheaded. It should be stored as a persistent account setting.
          2) Mine resets all the time and I'm not clearing cookies, browser cache, or anything like that. Google just likes to ignore your preference and reset it.

  • At times when I've been on a device not loaded for bear against ads, trackers, autoplay, and similar crud, I've found that the bottom of Slashdot's page is infested with psychologically harmful click-bait. Watch out for the web police.

  • by Dallas May ( 4891515 ) on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @02:15PM (#59013090)

    That's what I hate more than anything else in the entire world. Autoplay video ads.

    Why can't web browsers just have an option that says "Never Autoplay Video FRIGGIN' EVER I DON'T FRIGGIN CARE WHAT THE VIDEO IS. DON'T FRIGGIN' AUTOPLAY IT!"

    • Autoplay isn't 100% bad. If I've made up a playlist, for example, I generally want the next item to auto-play. But that's under my control, not random content forced upon me.

      That said, if a website throws an auto-play item on the page, most of the time I block it with ublock. I used to just leave, but then found myself accidentally going back to sites that I swore not to go back to and running into auto-play shit again. So I block first then leave now, just in case I ever go back.

    • by Mousit ( 646085 ) on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @04:25PM (#59013944)

      Why can't web browsers just have an option that says "Never Autoplay Video FRIGGIN' EVER I DON'T FRIGGIN CARE WHAT THE VIDEO IS. DON'T FRIGGIN' AUTOPLAY IT!"

      Firefox has exactly that: about:config, variable "media.autoplay.default" set to 1 (which is now the default, 0 = allow, 1 = block, 2 = prompt).

      Firefox has had this setting (though the variable changed names, and became a multi-state value instead of boolean, since FF 63 as they expanded and worked on the function) for quite a number of years. It's not perfect--part of why it's hidden in about:config as it's still considered experimental--but it generally works. I've avoided almost all autoplay for a very long time.

      I do, however, see brinkmanship on the part of assho.. I mean, websites, that try to get around it though. It's why that variable changed recently and why Mozilla has been expanding the autoplay blocking functionality. YouTube for example added "user gestures" that override autoplay block if you just happen to click.. almost literally anywhere on the page, even to just resize the window (it counts the click as a "user action" so it's not an "auto" play at that point, it's an interactive play). So then Firefox added "media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed" boolean which you can set to false to stop THAT particular form of bullshit. Additionally there's "media.autoplay.block-event.enabled" that can be set to false (now the default) as well, which further attempts to prevent a website from even detecting events that signal autoplay didn't happen.

      With these settings even YouTube doesn't autoplay for me (on fresh page load that is; bearing in mind direct clicking will still play). A couple sites need some extra click-click-clicking when I DO actually want to play something, but I can get them to play. I haven't found anything that's outright broken.

      Currently, as far as media.autoplay.* values in FF that I have changed from default, I have "media.autoplay.allow-muted" false, "media.autoplay.block-webaudio" true, "media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed" false, all others at their now-current (FF 68) defaults. Almost universally, nothing autoplays for me, except for straight GIFs. Even then not always.

      It's unfortunate that dickheads continue to try and find ways around this, but as other posters mentioned, people just can't seem to stop being evil cunts. I'll continue fighting them with these settings, and I hope Mozilla continues expanding them.

      • I do, however, see brinkmanship on the part of assho.. I mean, websites, that try to get around it though. It's why that variable changed recently and why Mozilla has been expanding the autoplay blocking functionality.

        Many of us here have written fairly complex code.

        There may be an infinite number of ways to invoke the act of playing a video but there are not an infinite number of ways to actually play a video. If you put the block in the path of actually playing the video instead of fucking around with placing blocks in the paths to invoking the video playing function, then videos will NEVER autoplay no matter how ingenious the website programmers are.

        Mozilla and other browser makers have zero interest in allowing the e

  • This is highly subjective in at least two ways:

    1 - Whether these things make a product better or not depends on the use case and who the target audience is, as well as the perspective of the vendor vs the user

    2 - Auto play videos are just as likely to deter users as they are to engage them. Sites and apps that auto-play are instant-close for me, for example.

    Sounds like legislation from angry people who want things their way.

    sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)

    Republican: Check.

  • Same color for accept/decline? That's an anti-pattern in and of itself.

  • Yes, let's take the flashing lights off the poker machines and the sugar out of Coca-Cola. No more daily loot crates. Honestly, where do we draw the line between plain positive reinforcement and things meant to trigger compulsive behaviors in people with addictive personalities? Perhaps a politician should speak to a psychiatrist or psychologist before pushing this kind of legislation.
  • There aren't forcing anyone to do anything against their will. They aren't stealing anything from anyone,except maybe time. This is not an issue that should have a legal resolution. People need to either accept that designs are this way and stop being a sh*thead about it or stop using these services all together. As much as I'd like to see every autoplay video disappear I don't think this is legal issue.
  • by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @02:40PM (#59013262)

    I was chatting with an academic at U.W. who studied use of technology in families. They did a study that compared three tweaks of a mainstream video service for kids: (1) the video service did "autoplay" onto the next show, (2) the video service just stopped at the end of a show and the child had to seek out the next show to watch, (3) the video service app locked up and required parental intervention to unlock to watch more shows.

    The question was: to what extent, in the real world, do children continue watching more shows? or do they put the device down and go and do something else? The surprising result was that (2) and (3) were pretty much identical in real world observations.

    I don't have much to say about apps/platforms that are targeted at adults. But for platforms like Youtube Kids that are explicitly targeted at kids, I think it's worth looking at how addictive they are, and to look at regulation if the platforms are deliberately using addictive behavioral-modification techniques. (Youtube Kids lets you turn off auto-play, although I'm not sure what is the default. Amazon Freetime always autoplays as far as I can tell.)

    • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      As a parent I agree. I've allowed my youngest to watch a youtube video, then gotten caught-up and came back to find it was on some totally unrelated thing. Yes, this happened with traditional broadcast TV too, but it was much less random. Yes, I should be monitoring, but the old way was a feature I really liked. The autoplay next video makes me have to be hyper-vigilant to when the video ends. I can't take a phone call or take out the trash without checking if the video will end before I get back.

  • by Necron69 ( 35644 ) <jscott.farrow@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @02:47PM (#59013292)

    WTF is a 'snapstreak' and why should I care?

    - Necron69

    • A "snapstreak" is the welt from a good 'ole towel snap to the leg or abdomen.

      You should only care if people are regularly snapping towels at you (prey they aren't wet).

      Oh, and Twitter is those birds that wake you up at 4AM (I'm already awake by then).

    • by DogDude ( 805747 )
      I read the article and I still have no idea what they are.
  • One of the worst offenders of all of the above.

    Not only do their obnoxious autoplay videos ignore your autoplay preference (like pretty much every other site that pretends to offer you a toggle), their auto-scroll makes it impossible to click anything on the bottom menu. Just as soon as it comes into view, auto-scroll loads up another batch of content, pushing the bottom menu bar out of sight forcing you to scroll further down. Repeat ad naseum. It's like some stupid website prank.

    The other evil of auto-scr

  • The purpose of endless scrolling is so that you can never see a whole set of data. Its designed explicitly to prevent you from doing anything to alter the stream they want you to see.
  • Endless scrolling is arguably an accessbility problem [webaxe.org] and perhaps can be sued away via a flood of ADA-reladed lawsuits. [ada.gov]

    The law is fuzzy in terms of browsers and markup, but the cost to fight such lawsuits alone may persuade many to stop.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @03:10PM (#59013466)
    i hate both features, if they are features, i consider them borderline malware
  • Ending infinite scrolling means no more infinite growth in the finite world of computer resources, which means no more disk thrashing on every grandma's computer after she's scrolled a bit too long on Facebook and loaded up her swap file to its limits, which means less frequent hard drive replacements.

  • Murder, you?

    UX violation!
  • If we need to run to politicians for this kind of help no wonder we are fucking doomed.

    This has nothing to do with how nasty or bullshit autoplay or scrolling gimmicks sites create. It has to do with how adult the American population is and how every little thing has to be solved by a politician.

    Every nation deserves the government it gets, and damn if this is not a clear sign of that!

  • I very seldom turn on the "Allow Notifications" feature for websites as it is usually an abused method the recapture viewers to continue their addictive behaviour. Yesterday I saw a new abuse of this when a web page demanded I turn on notifications to "prove I am human" before allowing me to view their page. Not happening, closed that page and moved on. I wonder if will become a trend?
  • by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @05:19PM (#59014312)
    No word on those annoying "subscribe to our worthless newsletter" popups?
  • Despite all the bots on here saying otherwise, humans who are thinking about humans and not gogole profit might be OK with this new law. Why or why do we need a law? Because the monsterous corporations with more power than most governments is sucking the lifeforce out of 80% of the population of the developed nations, that is why. You have to fight their power with laws, that's the only thing that is going to slow it down.

  • Sex change operations using a rusty spoon w/o anesthesia for the web designers that employ this. And not because of "addiction". It's because, while it works okay for the first couple of screens worth of information, after that, you can't scroll just a little bit. Move your mouse one pixel and the remainder of that article or post you were reading just jumped several screens upward forcing you to scroll up and down trying to find what you had been reading. If web designers think they're forcing the readers

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