
New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling - moltensodium
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/30/20746878/josh-hawley-dark-patterns-platform-design-autoplay-youtube-videos-scrolling-snapstreaks-illegal
======
rsweeney21
I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it
first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We
called it "post-play" at the time.

When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features
were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all
sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about
100,000 or so. It was great because you didn't have to debate much about
whether a new feature was a good idea or not, you just built it and tested it.
If the feature didn't increase hours watched or retention in a statistically
significant way, the feature was removed.

Autoplay massively increased hours watched. I can't remember the exact
numbers, but it was by far the biggest increase in the hours watched KPI of
any feature we ever tested. There was some skepticism about whether the number
was inflated by Netflix continuing to play when the user left the room.

As part of the autoplay test, we tested how long the countdown should be
between episodes. 5 seconds, 10 seconds or 15 seconds. 10 seconds caused the
biggest increase in hours watched. We thought that it gave people time to
digest what they had just watched, but wasn't too fast (5 seconds) where it
became jarring. Interestingly, Netflix recently changed the countdown between
episodes to 5 seconds. That means they tested it out and found that people
watch more if with a shorter countdown. This didn't use to be the case.
Netflix user have become conditioned to expect autoplay.

So yes, Netflix wants you to spend more hours watching Netflix and the product
team is scientifically engineering the product to make it more addictive.

But...the product team at Doritos does the same thing.

~~~
saurik
> When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new
> features were tested against: hours watched and retention.

So, I totally understand retention: that one makes sense to me, as that's
revenue for Netflix; if I'm more likely to renew my account, then Netflix
makes more money. But... I honestly don't understand why Netflix is optimizing
for hours watched, and in fact I had assumed it would be the opposite (leading
to Netflix actually making it kind of annoyingly difficult to watch the full
credits on movies, for example).

> But...the product team at Doritos does the same thing.

This makes sense to me: the more Doritos I eat, the more money Doritos makes.
This isn't true of Netflix: every time I watch something, it _costs_ Netflix
money. I would, naively, expect that what Netflix would want to optimize for
is some weird balance of retention (at high priority) and _least_ hours
watched (at a much lower priority).

> So yes, Netflix wants you to spend more hours watching Netflix and the
> product team is scientifically engineering the product to make it more
> addictive.

I also appreciate that the more hours I watch of Netflix, the more I might be
"addicted" to doing so... but the reason I'd expect Netflix to care about that
is because it means higher retention, which is already being directly
measured. Any other aspects of my addiction _don 't_ seem to benefit Netflix:
it costs Netflix money every time I stream something from them...

...and, it would seem to me _crucially_ , it means that Netflix is "on the
hook" for more and more content. If, on a relatively short-term basis (such as
during an experiment), my measured retention is the same, but my hours watched
is higher, then it means I'm burning through content I like to watch at a
faster rate, and so Netflix needs to spend more money to rotate their catalog
and create more originals.

It just seems so weird that Netflix would be optimizing for "hours watched",
and I'd love to learn from someone more on the inside who was involved in that
why they would do that. I understand why YouTube and Facebook optimize for
"engagement" (even though I also think it is abhorrent) as 1) their revenue is
based on advertisements and 2) they spread using network effects; neither of
these are true for Netflix.

~~~
jressey
Why hours watched? Because Netflix wants as much of your time as you're
willing to give. The more ingrained they are in your life, the less elastic
your demand. We've seen them raise prices and remove just about all of the
worthwhile content, and they have more subscribers than ever. Stay tuned for
more of this.

~~~
giggles_giggles
I wonder how many of those extra hours watched are because the stream just
didn't stop after the person fell asleep. I can't tell you the number of times
I've fallen asleep while Netflix played (or walked away) and it went right
into some other show I didn't care to watch (and never actually did).

If hours streamed is your metric for engagement.. of course having the stream
continue on its own would make that number rise. It doesn't actually say
anything at all about real engagement.

~~~
asark
Ours has definitely ended up playing to an empty room for a good long while, a
few times.

------
GhostVII
Things like requiring accept and decline checkboxes to be the same font seem
somewhat reasonable, even if I disagree with it, but banning autoplay videos
and endless scrolling is insane. There are legitimate uses for autoplay videos
(ex. Netflix playing next episode, YouTube playing next song when you are
listening to music) which I personally use all the time and appreciate, and
endless scrolling is great when you don't need to refer back to previous
results, and don't want to keep clicking "next". I think people should have
the freedom to consume content how they want, the government shouldn't
compensate for their lack of self control.

~~~
zbrozek
While I agree that it's hard to support legislation that's likely to have a
lot of unintended consequences, it's also important to realize what's driving
folks to introduce a bill like this. It's also worth pointing out that (in
particular with Netflix) your example is its own counter-argument. You can't
turn off autoplay, and that's the opposite of letting me make choices for
myself.

There's also plenty of other examples of government regulating or banning
things which exploit human weakness. Ponzi schemes, meth, gambling, and more
are all controlled. It's pretty clear that a lot of tech-company design is
(intentionally or not) probably scratching a lot of the same itches. It's
reasonable to expect regulation.

~~~
GhostVII
I think the choice is to just leave Netflix when you are done an episode.
Maybe it's just me but I've never felt like the autoplay makes me much more
likely to keep watching, it is just convenient so I don't have to go through
all of the menus again.

If we ban autoplay on Netflix, we should also ban cable I suppose (not a big
loss, really), since cable will autoplay indefinitely.

~~~
missingcolours
This kind of sounds to me like "you can stop smoking by not buying anymore
cigarettes". True, but glosses over the addictive aspects which led to
cigarettes being regulated as they are. And this isn't an accidental property
of these apps, they're intentionally engineered features to drive
"engagement"/addiction.

~~~
superkuh
The difference is that actually addictive things, rather than just rewarding
stimuli, produce increases in incentive salience regardless of actual reward
outcome. In cigarettes this is mediated through nicotinic acetylcholine
receptors on cells with inputs to dopaminergic systems that predict reward.

There's a vast distance between directly effecting the substrate of thinking
chemically and reactions to rewarding stimuli coming in normally.

~~~
sizzle
And what would that difference be when you are just describing different
methods for affecting dopaminergic reward pathways?

If you scan the brain with an fMRI, the reward pathway lights up and suggest
over time you will have reinforced that pleasurable activity and have created
a strong affinity towards repeated activations, further strengthening those
pathways.

Have there been any studies to show withdrawals from inhibiting consuming
pleasurable visual media?

I mean if you were watching a series on Netflix that really resonates with you
and you make a strong connection with the characters and feel as if you are a
part of the scenes taking place (game of thrones etc), with characters faces
activating your fusiform gyrus and dramatic scenes activating your amygdala
making you emotional etc, how is autoplay facilitating the pleasurable
dopamine response from imagining/anticipating/looking forward to how great the
next episode will be, not as compelling of an issue as consuming exogenous
substances that activate similar dopamine release?

------
Agustus
If politicians could focus their efforts on actually solving problems instead
of giving hand outs to their tort lawyer buddies, we might get a better
system.

The lawsuits would include:

\- autoplay of gifs vs web videos

\- does Pinterest count as an auto scroll ad

\- does an endless scroll populated with 50% real content count as non-ad?

The law will just create more headaches for the producers and less innovation
thanks to having to fight lawsuits.

Example of the depths lawyers can class action: Godiva is being sued in court
for putting “Godiva 1927” on the label; the lawyer is arguing that people
believe that the chocolate was made in 1927.

*edited the content away from ideas.

~~~
Nullabillity
Outlawing X doesn't mean almost-X is completely fine. That said, none of your
examples make much sense (to me).

> \- autoplay of gifs vs web videos

Presumably the content is what matters, not the particular compression format.
Does it show animated content continuously without being triggered by active
user interaction? Yes, so it's an auto-playing video.

> \- does Pinterest count as an auto scroll ad

It's primarily focused on a call to action, so yes, it's an ad. Would they
show an equivalent popup for ordinary user-generated content that they have no
stake in?

> \- does an endless scroll populated with 50% real content count as non-ad?

Is there an ad that appears when the user scrolls? I don't even see what this
example was supposed to demonstrate.

> The law will just create more headaches for the producers and less
> innovation thanks to having to fight lawsuits.

More headaches and less innovation in how to sell bullshit sounds like a very
positive outcome to me.

~~~
Asooka
> Presumably the content is what matters, not the particular compression
> format. Does it show animated content continuously without being triggered
> by active user interaction? Yes, so it's an auto-playing video.

By that logic a loading spinner is an auto-playing video. Does me logging in
count as "active user interaction" for showing me a loading spinner? I didn't
request the spinner, I requested access to my skype chats.

~~~
Nullabillity
The spinner fulfils a purpose (by notifying you that the content is still not
quite ready) and is temporary (it goes away once the content is loaded). That
said, you could always just replace it with a static "Loading.." label.

~~~
TotempaaltJ
Plus, it's not exactly "content".

------
root_axis
I apologize for making a comment with regard to politics, but I can't help
feeling frustrated by the narrative around curbing "addictive behavior" coming
from the political party that consistently extols the virtues of "personal
responsibility" and regularly characterizes the desire to regulate harmful
behavior as the machinations of a "nanny state". I find it especially
frustrating in this case because the specifics of this proposal seem to be
pretty poorly reasoned from a technical perspective.

~~~
nichos
The Republican party is about personal responsibility as much as the Democrats
are for ending wars. Both parties are essentially the same now, and have been
for several years.

~~~
root_axis
> _Both parties are essentially the same now, and have been for several
> years._

This is very obviously and demonstrably false. I don't understand how anyone
can believe this.

------
hedora
This is textbook regulatory capture.

Want to host your own website? Be sure to hire a specialized lawyer to audit
and sign off on the user interface choices you made (and be sure to retain
them indefinitely as your dependencies and the law evolve).

~~~
torgoguys
> This is textbook regulatory capture.

I do not think it means what you think it means. (Or maybe I don't! :-)

~~~
dredmorbius
The suggestion is that only large established firms can navigate the
regulatory requirements.

I don't buy that.

~~~
krageon
Because it is nonsense. A lawyer isn't some sort of rocket or satellite,
fundamentally they are accessible to anyone who is even remotely in the middle
class.

------
tantalor
“If I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the
wine, you won’t know when to stop drinking”

That's not how drinking works. That's not how anything works.

~~~
FabHK
EDIT: see caveat from K-Wall below. Can't trust anything these days :-/
</edit>

That's exactly how it works, to an extent. In a study [1], people with self-
refilling soup bowls ate 73% more soup (p < 0.01) than those eating from
normal soup bowls. Similar with popcorn [2]. I first read about this either in
_Nudge_ or in _Mindless Eating_.

[1] Wansink, B., Painter, J.E., & North, J. (2005). Bottomless Bowls: Why
Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake Obesity Research, 13 (1),
93-100

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12)

[2] [http://projectputthatcookiedownnow.com/2011/bottomless-
bowls...](http://projectputthatcookiedownnow.com/2011/bottomless-bowls-of-
soup-and-stale-popcorn-can-all-lead-to-mindless-eating/)

~~~
K-Wall
I wouldn't cite Wansink... the guy had 15 retractions in the past year for
making shit up.

~~~
FabHK
Oh, good to know. Are you aware of more details? Replications or critiques of
those studies? (As I said, I came across them in pop-sci books.)

~~~
K-Wall
The unit I'm affiliated with was tasked by the university to run replications
and ultimately assist with the retractions. This was all done by my colleagues
but I heard about it quite often. Past that I am going to refrain on
commenting more as I'm unqualified to do so.

Two published replication studies (used for retractions) can be found here:

[https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php...](https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php?IDTITLE=2796)

[https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php...](https://cisermgmt.cornell.edu/go/PHPs/catalogSingleStudy.php?IDTITLE=2797)

------
godshatter
Even if we could all agree that autoplay videos and endless scrolling are
terrible ideas, I still don't understand why we should get the government
involved. Use a service that has them, or refuse to. Find another service that
doesn't use them. "There should be a law..." is often the wrong response. At
least in my opinion.

~~~
la_barba
Its coming out of a social initiative that deals with the inability of parents
to keep social media (and tech in general) addiction of their kids under
control. Human beings have a lot of psychological vulnerabilities and, if you
watched the senate hearing, you'd know how tech companies exploit some of our
innate addictive personality traits to get people hooked on their product.
Pick-up "artists" use this to get laid. Advertisers use it to sell their junk
products, etc.

Its easy to point out whats wrong, but nobody sticks their neck out and tells
people how to fix the situation. Here, someone seems to be trying, and for
that I give them some props..

------
Jazgot
This sounds like complete joke. Next another bill will ban pagination?

~~~
umvi
Another bill will mandate that websites display a banner if the user has been
there for too long (to protect internet addicts from being sedentary for too
long). Pretty soon only big corps will be able to make a website because there
is a phonebook sized stack of regulations you have to comply with.

~~~
danShumway
> Another bill will mandate that websites display a banner if the user has
> been there for too long

Why wait? From Ars's writeup of the same bill[0]:

> As described in the text, social media companies would have to limit users
> to 30 minutes of use per day by default. Users would be allowed to choose
> their own time limits for daily and weekly use, but companies would have to
> reset that time limit to half an hour every single month, as well as
> providing "conspicuous pop-up" displays at least once every 30 minutes
> showing how much time you have spent using a service in the past day, across
> all devices.

This is just political grandstanding. (I hope) nobody would ever actually vote
for this.

[0]: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/proposed-us-
law-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/proposed-us-law-would-
ban-infinite-scroll-autoplaying-video/)

~~~
davesmith1983
This is what they do on gambling websites in the UK.

Similarly if you are in a Casino you will never see a clock anywhere. Also
generally food and drink is pretty cheap and there is normally table service
in a Casino because they want you to be at the tables spending your cash.

------
fhood
This seems like an extremely short sited, overly broad and unlikely to pass
bill, and to make it all worse, based on the title, I thought that someone was
attempting to ban videos that play automatically when you visit a website,
which would have been a deeply noble cause.

------
nemonemo
I have suspicion that these politicians know what they are doing and they are
doing these stupid things with the fullest knowledge that the bill does not
help the addicted people. Also probably they know these things don't even
threaten the tech giants. Then why are they spending their precious time for
such a meaningless bill?

This makes me think of McConnell gaining support or lobbying from tobacco
industry. Maybe this is a thinly veiled threat or request to the tech giants?

~~~
la_barba
You don't seem to be familiar with this. They had a hearing in the Senate,
which featured testimony of experts in this field.

[https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-youre-being-
manipulated-1835...](https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-youre-being-
manipulated-1835853810)

~~~
nemonemo
Do you think this is an important enough issue for a Senate hearing or a bill?
I honestly do not.

~~~
la_barba
Well,.. the government is taking drug addiction seriously, so on principle I
don't see why tech addiction should be a-priori excluded from discussion. I'm
sure good people on both sides can disagree as to the measures that need to be
taken..

------
segmondy
Tech needs to fight. There are tons of new regulations being pushed to
regulate tech with politics. It's going to end very badly. This is not about
caring for people, but controlling tech. People care about high hospital
bills, expensive insurance and high college costs. Why are these same
politicians not writing new bills to fix those? Why do they want to tame
Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, Google, Amazon?

~~~
scarface74
Because tech companies are run by the “liberal elite” and they don’t bribe
enough congressmen.

People in tech should be much more concerned than they are about the
government encroaching on it. The government does _not_ represent big
states/big cities in proportion to the population once you consider the
tiniest state has the same two senators as the largest.

------
i_am_proteus
It seems like a lot of the bill could run up against first amendment
challenges. The only parts that seem "safe" are checkbox parts that deal with
contracts; agreeing and disagreeing to terms. I am not a lawyer.

------
bigsassy
An app I worked on had a similar feature to Snapstreaks, but it was used to
help people quit smoking. This bill would have killed this feature that helped
many people lead healthier lives.

~~~
djrogers
This bill would only apply to social media sites, so unless your 'quit
smoking' app was such, it woulnd't have affected it at all.

~~~
geddy
Until a 74 year old politician expands "social media site". Come on, you know
how this always goes. Slippery slopes and what-not.

------
ilovetux
I would like to see warnings on certain websites which use user retention
tactics such as these to prominently display warnings like cigarette companies
are required to do. Something like the following:

"Facebook is known to be addictive and use deceptive practices in user
interface design to influence you into spending an unhealthy amount time on
their platform in order to maximize the number of advertisements you view."

~~~
calais
That would be a much better law than the lawmakers'.

------
BFatts
Uh, TV is unending, constantly "scrolling" to new content meant to addict you
as well, correct? How does this differ from having the TV on and just
consuming what's on it versus Netflix autoplay feature? Is it possible to
distinguish autoplay (auto-continuation) from just regular TV streaming over
the airwaves or cable?

------
DannyB2
From TFA...

> 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, format,
> and size to help users make better, more informed choices.

So don't use color. Make the two choices equally clear.

Example:

Would you like to enroll in our craptacular offer which is free for 90 days
and then costs $9.95 per month thereafter?

Please check one of the following options:

[_] No. Please DO NOT add me to the list of people to be excluded from being
automatically enrolled in our special craptacular offer.

[_] Yes. Please DO add me to the list of people ineligible to not be excluded
from not being enrolled in our special craptacular offer.

If you do not select one of the options, then default will automatically be
selected for you.

Thank you for enrolling in our craptacular special offer!

------
ahallock
The government has nothing better to do priority-wise than regulate UI/UX
behaviors like video autoplay? This is not essential to the functioning of
society; it's bureaucrats avoiding the real issues. Also, ironic coming from
the party that is ostensibly for less government intrusion.

------
Fjolsvith
I doubt this will happen. First Amendment free speech restriction will get
batted down by the Supreme Court.

~~~
AdrianB1
In theory yes, but there are enough cases where amendments were castrated by
the SCOTUS so that one cannot predict what will happen with this one.

------
hackbinary
I thought I was going insane with all these videos auto playing in Facebook
and Twitter. It truly is annoying.

I'm not sure if I am against endless scrolling, however. I would, though,
accept the loss of endless scrolling if that would stop videos from auto
playing.

------
eridius
I could support something like this if, instead of banning it, simply made
these practices opt-in. Autoplay is great if you want it. It sucks if you
don't. And Netflix makes it so dang hard to disable (you have to use a web
browser and find an obscure preference). So instead of autoplay, it should
require interaction the first time, with an option to autoplay for the rest of
the session. Similarly for infinite scrolling, how about we don't infinitely
scroll the first time, but have a footer you can click to load more, with an
option to infinitely scroll for the rest of the session.

------
macinjosh
This is the last shreds of personal responsibility disappearing from the
culture.

------
aitchnyu
While we are at it, ads need to be marked in contrast colors and show business
details of the ad buyer and if its an app, what kind of contract you are
entering. My Android nags me "Enable anti-malware" and I don't know if it came
from the OEM or from some originally minimal app that sold itself to a
unscrupulous buyer. Elders's Androids (in India) have undismissable
notifications many times taller than 2000s IE toolbars nagging them to install
intrusive system tools.

------
georgeecollins
This seems silly of course, but you can't have companies such as Google and
Facebook claim they are a carrier while they promote and curate content, even
if they are only curating via AI (which turns out at to be really smart at
connecting people to extreme content). It's like the phone company putting up
an ad to suggest your child call a pedophile and then saying we're not
responsible for the call, we're just the phone company.

~~~
root_axis
> _you can 't have companies such as Google and Facebook claim they are a
> carrier while they promote and curate content_

Do you have any examples of google or facebook claiming to be a "carrier"?

~~~
georgeecollins
Certainly

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-
mark-zuckerberg-platform-publisher-lawsuit)

~~~
root_axis
The article does not support your position that Facebook claims to be a
carrier.

If you want to extract some specific sections of the article that you believe
support your position I'm happy to discuss them, but I'm not seeing it.

------
phil248
Banning things is obviously silly but I wouldn't mind regulations that force
media outlets to give subscribers some simple _options_ so we can choose
exactly how we consume the media we pay for.

That might wreck the holy grail of A/B testing that these companies live and
die by, but it would be fantastic for the consumer.

------
giorgioz
You can disable Netflix auto-play following these steps:
[https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102)

I disabled Netflix autoplay for the reasons mentioned in this article.

------
stunt
I'm not sure if banning can fix anything. They will come up with different
ideas. Every company is heavily focused to optimize digital products for
business values now.

Auto-play-video is probably very high on list of things that wasted so much
time in human history.

------
WhiteNoiz3
I think it makes more sense to require apps to let people know how much time
they spend using them (especially if more than a few hours per week), and
encourage people to take breaks. Banning one type of UI is not going to change
anything.

------
csense
If this is something people want, why does it need a legislative fix? Couldn't
we just implement a technical solution and let people choose whether to use
it? Like a browser plugin that stops videos from automatically playing?

~~~
stri8ed
This could just as well be said about opiates. Human's are not very good at
regulating ourselves, when we encounter artificial signals that would have
meant success in an earlier time. Not to mention minors, who do not yet have
the physical capacity to regulate themselves. Not to say I support this
regulation, but there is something to be said for protecting us from our
primal selves.

~~~
homonculus1
I know you're not saying the government should fully regulate everything, but
I see drugs used to demonstrate need for government intervention in people's
choices despite drug policy being perhaps the most visible and painful failure
of such paternalistic policymaking. Namely because it _hasn 't_ protected
people from themselves, it _hasn 't_ treated anybody's addiction, it mainly
just creates violent black markets and saddles nonviolent offenders with a
permanent criminal record.

Cynically, I think the real purpose of these laws always looks more like
protecting entrenched interests rather than helping people who would get
better if only they had some legislator making their life choices from a
thousand miles away.

------
tlrobinson
So why wasn't a ban necessary for the ultimate autoplaying video, television?

------
aussieguy1234
Infinite scrolling is just good UI. I've implemented it in Libr, the Tumblr
replacement ([https://librapp.com](https://librapp.com))

------
RustyBucket
Umbrella bans are never a good thing - there are tons of legitimate and corner
cases. Instead force companies to provide easy to find and to use
option/toggle for those.

------
api
Endless scroll has lots of legitimate uses, and there are a million more dark
patterns where the dark use of endless scroll came from. Bills like this are
not the answer.

------
m-p-3
> endless scrolling

With how many poor implementations out there (looking at you new Reddit), I
don't think a ban would fix that but I'd like to see it scaled down.

------
lunias
Don't ban things. Educate the population as to why they should ban themselves
from doing things; and whenever possible, offer people better alternatives.

------
throwaway743
Would this set a legal precedent for regulating code or is there already a
precedent? If this does set a new legal precedent, the future looks messy

------
bhouston
China's anti-internet/video game addiction stuff isn't totally insane. The
premise is actually noble.

------
CaptainSteve89
Seems like a way to limit a users access to desirable content while ramping up
paid placement advertising?

------
dingus
Here's an idea, how about spending time and effort on something that's an
actual priority.

------
neilv
I'll be the first to say that dotcoms overall have become an industry of
greedy and grossly irresponsible and sneaky backstabbing sociopaths, _but_...
the idea of legislators trying to get into the fine details of practice, and
keep up with it, doesn't immediately sound like it's likely to be effective.

And that's even before we factor in the possibility of lobbyist influence.

While you're banning infinite scrolling (which has legitimate applications,
and people should be horrified that such basic neutral ideas of communication
could become illegal), the dotcom bad actors are running circles around you --
with numerous other dark pattern tactics, and sometimes entire technology
infrastructure architectures and platforms irrevocably designed around what
could also be considered dark patterns.

I'm reminded of some other abusive industries, with regulations that create
waste, and barriers to entry for upstart competitors, while not doing nearly
enough to reign in abuses.

Bring on the regulations (and, hopefully, eventually, a culture of
professionalism and responsibility will follow), but first figure out how to
make the regulations wise and genuinely effective, not counterproductive
distractions.

------
walterbell
Are there comparable regulations for casino games, where some gamification
techniques originated?

------
Scoundreller
Can we also replace “next”/“prev” buttons with “newer”/“older”?

I always get confused by the 2nd page.

------
CaptainSteve89
They just want to prevent people from easily tabbing/scrolling away from ads.

------
tomatotomato37
I hate web 3.0 features like this, more so for CPU than psychological reasons,
but this is textbook useless government overreach; it's the web equivalent of
those firearm bills than ban some auxiliary features that looks scary but are
functionally irrelevant

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digitalneal
Auto-play is a tax on the poor with limited data plans.

~~~
zazaraka
So true. Just like high definition video or images.

This bill should also ban: large hero images, serving more than 500 KB of
JavaScript, making more than 50 HTTP calls when loading a page, causing the
fans to spin up when loading the page, unnecessarily using web fonts.

Banning these things would make the web so much better.

~~~
tenebrisalietum
It'd be awesome to have an extremely lightweight protocol that lets you get
the size or approximate size of a resource before download. Maybe a new HTTP
method like SIZEOF.

But how to make it truthful? Other than client cutting off download at the
expressed limit. Would that be good enough? And how to express "fuzzy" sizes
like "at least 1MB but might be a little more or less".

~~~
NateEag
I believe you want HTTP HEAD. It's defined to return the same response as a
GET but without a body. You can therefore look at the Content-Length response
header to see what actually issuing a GET will cost you.

The server should not return fuzzy content lengths: your client should have
soft limit ranges rather than a single hard limit.

Of course, the server is not required to support HEAD, nor is it required to
include Content-Length, which touches on your real complaint:

Programmers get to write programs the way they want to, and most of them don't
share your value of preserving bandwidth and using progressive enhancement.

That is a relational and human problem. There is no technological solution to
it.

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gok
So fitting for The Verge to be reporting this.

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cpursley
Fantastic.

Can we also ban scroll-jacking?

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RandomInteger4
God this is so fucking stupid. Can we get the Government to focus on actual
problems rather than this bullshit?

~~~
moate
Porque no los dos?

~~~
RandomInteger4
That's like saying "Why not both?" to eating healthy and putting your balls in
a vice grip. Eating healthy in this analogy is the government making laws
regarding actual problems that require government intervention, while the
balls in vice grip in this analogy is a pointless law concerning something
that doesn't require government intervention just because people have a moral
panic over technology allegedly ruining society.

~~~
moate
No, it's more like saying "why not fix both 'big' and 'small' problems at the
same time", because whataboutism is a constant defense of problematic status
quos.

I don't know that this bill is a good or bad thing yet, I haven't dug deep
into it yet. But the idea of making more designers eliminate dark patterns in
software and make more features opt in instead of opt out is a good use of
regulation in my mind.

I get it, "regulation ruins innovation" or some other libertarian nonsense.
The bottom line is that the software industry has some problematic behaviors
that they have refused to self-correct, and this is what happens.

~~~
RandomInteger4
This is not a "whataboutism". This is a "The government doesn't need to tell
me how long I'm allowed to have an erection-ism"; i.e. micromanaging bullshit
is not in the purview of the federal government.

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Jsksks
Don't know about others but i support this

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magduf
Banning autoplay videos, with extremely severe penalties for offenders, would
be a great thing for the world.

