
If the internet is addictive, why we don't regulate it? - pmcpinto
https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-t-we-regulate-it?mod=e2this
======
khabaal
The whole question sounds wrong from the beginning. It is not 'the internet',
which is being addictive but certain services, who use the internet to provide
their service.

I do not think that it is questionable, that, for example, facebook or online
games like world of warcraft have a huge potential to be addictive, but this
is not a problem of the internet itself.

You would not blame drug addiction to transport infrastructure, calling for
its regulation, just because it is involved in bringing the addicted and their
dealers together.

~~~
fulafel
The article is using layperson terminology and is infact talking about
"certain services", not the IP protocol. I think this is apparent from the
article.

------
te_chris
There's a lot of head-in-the-sand, kneejerk appeals to individual
responsibility here, which is understandable on a forum populated by the
people who are perpetuating the most egregious examples of the behaviour the
author is lamenting. This ignores the author's point, which I'm assuming is
the point of these responses.

Instead of just making some abstract appeal to 'individual authority', how
about actually engaging with what they're saying?

 _" A handful of corporations determine the basic shape of the web that most
of us use every day. Many of those companies make money by capturing users’
attention, and turning it into pageviews and clicks. They’ve staked their
futures on methods to cultivate habits in users, in order to win as much of
that attention as possible."_

This seems like a salient point that is worthy of proper discussion and
analysis. I've recent been reading a great book [1] about it, that is forcing
me to reconsider a lot of positions I took for granted, as one of those
building the web, complicit in a whole bunch of this madness. I highly
recommend looking into this more, as, in my opinion, we're becoming victims of
our medium in the most McLuhan-esque sense.

[1] The World Beyond Your Head - [http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-World-Beyond-
Your-Head/dp/037429...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-World-Beyond-Your-
Head/dp/0374292981)

~~~
karmacondon
Ok, let's discuss the ideas presented in the article. The two forms main forms
of regulation suggested near the end of the piece seem to be letting users
control the amount of content/notifications that they consume, and flagging
users who seem like they are exhibiting signs of addiction.

Most sites do offer options to control the number of notifications, etc, but
most people just stick with the defaults anyway. Even if there were an option
for "Disable infinite scroll for me because I can't control my
procrastination", how many people do you really think would use it?

Likewise, if Zynga et al did implement some kind of flag for users who play
too much, do you think it would make a difference? If someone is willing to
invest 5 hours clicking a Farmville button, then a popup that says "We noticed
that you spent the whole day clicking a button, don't you have something
better to do?" probably isn't going to be epiphanic for them. Casinos and some
gambling websites are required to do this now, and it hasn't cured gambling
addiction yet. Just like adding a perfunctory "Please drink responsibly" to
the end of beer commercials has had a small effect.

What could work? In some parts of Asia, security officers will forcibly remove
people from cybercafes if they're showing signs of addiction. But most people
in the west use home internet, which would make physical enforcement cost
prohibitive. Laws could be passed that outright ban certain types of games.
But a politician would look pretty silly taking a stand against Mafia Wars on
the floor of a legislative body, especially given recent world events.

There might be a great solution, maybe offered in your book recommendation
(thanks for that, btw). But it's hard to see what can practically be done
about this problem, other than people exerting more self control in a changing
world.

~~~
te_chris
For me, the question is bigger than just harm reduction and efforts at it, in
fact, in the book a whole chapter is made around the example of slot machines,
and the concept of 'autism as a design principle'. It's about the design
decisions made and the way that we accept design which is clearly optimised to
exploit human weakness. I guess, more broadly, it's about the ethical
framework that one choses to make their decisions and broader policy within -
which is really the whole point of the book I went against, and which your
comment reinforces - _But a politician would look pretty silly taking a stand
against Mafia Wars on the floor of a legislative body_.

That statement is only true within our current mode of thinking about these
things, this book and all the other writing on the economics of attention is
showing me that there's another way to think about this, and just because the
standards we currently accept are normative, doesn't mean that they're
exhaustive - and certainly not perpetual.

------
TeMPOraL
I don't think regulations are the most effective things on the Internet, but
the knee-jerk rejections of the very concept miss one crucial thing: addictive
services are not something you can make people resist by willpower. Why?

 _Because they 're optimized to be as addictive as possible by malicious
people who get paid boatloads of money for being good at it._ If people can
resist them, they'll be improved until they again can't be resisted.

Right now, in many conference rooms worldwide, there are professionals sitting
and talking about how to make their websites more addictive and life-sucking.
Of course they don't call it that way. They use euphemisms like "user
engagement", "retention", "user satisfaction", "conversion funnels", and
picture things in terms of company growth. The addictive Web didn't happen all
by itself. It was engineered this way on purpose, by people who don't care
about others.

So whatever regulation there is, I wish it would be something that would allow
to strike back, and not just attempts to shield users. If you're adding heroin
to food to make it addictive, you will find yourself in front of a judge who
will send you to jail. And so should be if you're making media addictive on
purpose, to the detriment of health of the consumers.

We can't forget in those discussions that we're fighting living, sentient
opponents, who are going to try and counter every coping mechanism we develop
- and who are better at this game than we are.

~~~
bsbechtel
>>addictive services are not something you can make people resist by willpower

Yes, you're right, but to your first point, drugs are addictive too and the
War on Drugs (regulation) has widely been seen as a major failure.

I'll admit I didn't read the article, but I get a little annoyed when I see
articles that reach thousands of people calling for regulation because one
journalist/writer found some problem they deem a societal problem that can be
best solved by regulation. For many, many of our problems, there are literally
thousands of options to solve them before resorting to regulation. The problem
with regulation is there is no guarantee that it is the best solution, but by
it's very nature, it kills the possibility of better solutions being tried out
later on.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _drugs are addictive too and the War on Drugs (regulation) has widely been
> seen as a major failure._

That's why I'm not jumping on the regulations bandwagon. We had enough such
examples around banning addictive substances to prove that regulations can
hurt people much more than they're helping.

You're right that regulation isn't the best default solution. They have a lot
of momentum; once enacted, they get very hard to remove.

This actually reminds me of pg's insight from his very relevant essay[0]. He
argues that society develops antibodies against addictive things, and that the
law actually follows - not precedes - social customs that change to protect
us. But he also points out that technology seems to be outpacing the rate at
which society can adapt itself.

[0] -
[http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html)

------
tajen
Many answers here say "No" because it talks about regulation. But the article
is an interesting study: What website features could be disabled because
they're systematically addictive? The article suggests:

> 1\. To forbid infinite scroll,

> 2\. Sites should be required to flag users who display especially compulsive
> behaviours,

> 3\. Certain sites or browsers would be required to include tools that let
> users monitor themselves – how long they’ve been on a site,...

I'm an addict of 9Gag. I'm also to a lesser level a compulsive reader of HN,
fb, commitstrip, my sales dashboard, support tickets and emails. I'm not sure
however what would be the solution. Actually it all started because the
compilation time (60-90s) is just long enough to lose focus from programming
and let me wander onto other topics (and if it were not fb, I'd find something
else like my bank account).

During compilation time, do you think it's possible to let your mind stay
idle, as to avoid distraction and internet compulsive disorder?

~~~
hliyan
I'm not sure whether we should use "addiction" and "lack of discipline"
interchangeably. Ever since I was small, I've associated the former word with
changes in brain chemistry that cannot be overcome with a regular dose of
self-discipline (e.g. heroin addiction). If we can break it behaviorally, then
isn't it a compulsion disorder of some sort?

~~~
tremon
I don't think a solid line can be drawn between compulsion disorders and
addiction. Both are reinforced by the reward mechanisms in the brain, and both
can have (psycho)somatic effects that are hard to overcome with willpower
alone.

I would even guess that the lesser somatic addictions (e.g. cigarettes) are
easier to overcome with willpower alone than compulsion disorders, but I have
no actual experience or numbers to back that up.

~~~
TeMPOraL
You need to add "habits" to the equation as well. All of those things exhibit
the same properties. We differentiate them by a mix of how many problems it
causes for the person, for the person's surroundings, and various moral
preconceptions about what one should do. Biochemical changes and
responsiveness to raw willpower aren't really useful metrics, because both
habits and addictions affect the brain, and the whole point of a good habit is
to make something that's resistant to willpower.

~~~
hliyan
I sort of agree. A decade's worth of force-of-habit could be as difficult as
an addiction to break, but I'd be hard pressed to call it an addiction.

------
austerity
No. Next question please.

Seriously if anyone is treating humans like pigeons here it's the author by
posing this question.

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
You can tell just from the capsule bio what the authors agenda is.

------
pimterry
I really like this article, it's full of good points and it's definitely a
huge real problem, but I do think better tools for users are the better (and
easier) route to fixing this.

Personally I find every time that my biggest problem beating this is that it
makes distraction totally automatic; I open facebook without even thinking
about it. I have a reasonably good level of willpower when I'm actively making
the decision, but I find as soon as I'm a bit bored or distracted or doing
something I don't really want to do then suddenly I'm on my third buzzfeed
article that somebody posted on facebook, and half an hour's disappeared down
the drain. Painful.

It's the constantly compulsive going to check facebook part that's the real
problem, imo, rather than the staying on it too long. I'm not too sure how
regulation is really going to help you pull that back, even with the ideas
proposed here.

Excellent point about the existing tools not being accessible to the non-tech
crowd though, even though the problem is universal; that's definitely been my
impression of the current audience. Not sure why though; any idea what they're
doing wrong? What do we need to do to get everybody using Build
Focus/RescueTime/ForestApp/etc to help your average person stop losing time to
facebook too, instead of just the productivity hackers?

[Disclaimer: I'm actually the creator of Build Focus
([http://www.buildfocus.io](http://www.buildfocus.io)), so I do have a little
skin in this game]

~~~
vlehto
My take on drugs is that kids should not use them. Not because I say so or
because some of them are dangerous. But because I hope they really don't need
to self medicate broken psyche.

So the best way to dump addiction is not to ban alcohol from yourself. It's
finding some meaning for your life before you turn into chronic alcoholic.

...and here I am, browsing HN because I'm absolutely terrified to make few
phone calls. Not because of the calls themselves, but because I don't know
what will happen afterwards.

------
teekert
I only skimmed over the article as I find the beginning already horribly
patronizing. Why don't we deregulate drugs and treat drug addicts like we
treat internet addicts, by offering help and counseling? Find the holes in
their lives and try to fill them with non-self-destructive habits.

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
And the example some one who doesn't know how to work with mail its an
asynchronous medium FFS.

The journalist needs some advice on time management and possibly a PIP Plan.

------
lmorris84
> Should we blame Michael S for wasting hours of his life hitting a small
> button? We could.

Yep we could, and we should. I'm all for personal responsibility, and this
feels like setting up a massive excuse for someone wasting their day on
Facebook or Reddit. Unlike the Pigeons in the story, you're not locked in a
box and are free to not use the internet if you so wish.

~~~
tremguy
Yes, you are also free to choose your food at the supermarket, but there are
still regulations in place to prevent selling of potentially harmful stuff.
Although I agree, the author has somewhat missed the point here as Facebook !=
Internet.

~~~
tikhonj
That's a great example, actually: there are regulations that prevent actively,
unexpectedly harmful stuff. There are no regulations preventing stuff that
tastes great, is easy to eat but not entirely healthy.

We should take the same approach to the internet: prohibit the actively
harmful (malware, scams) but not "addictive" content.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Actually, the most addictive content would under this example get banned too -
as it should be (or rather, addictive _content delivery methods_ should be).
There are no regulations preventing stuff that tastes great, but there are
regulations preventing companies from adding addictive substances to the food.

------
pdkl95
> Facebook

This sounds like yet another case of someone confusing Facebook (plus a few
related businesses) with the internet. Regulate the endpoints, if you must,
instead of blaming the internet for letting you talk to that endpoint.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Regulate the endpoints, if you must

Only one relevant endpoint, namely the human sitting at the computer, and
they're quite capable of self-regulating. If they choose not to, fine.

------
dmichulke
Because "regulation" is not a solution, it is merely the process of delegating
the power of each individual to choose to a selected few.

~~~
tremon
Regulation, when implemented correctly, is the process of delegating power
from a self-selected few to a democratically controlled body.

~~~
dmichulke
Two points:

Who are the self-selected few in substance or gun regulation?

"when implemented correctly" is a very strong condition, I suppose my start-up
would be worth billions and my country would only ask for 10% taxes if they
were implemented correctly.

~~~
tremon
In the case of illegal drugs (assuming that's what you mean with substance),
the "self-selected few" are the traffickers and producers (including middle-
men): they fully control pricing, availability and quality.

In the case of gun regulation, it's more or less the same, but there's another
component: the items themselves are a means of asserting power, so the
regulation has to account for the entire product lifecycle more than with
other areas (yes, drugs can also be used to assert power, but in those cases
it's the supplier who has power over the user, and with guns it's the user who
has power over a third party).

I included "when implemented correctly" only to avoid having to discuss
regulatory failures such as market capture (e.g. FCC) or rubber-stamping (e.g.
FISA) as fundamental arguments against regulation. We don't use Volkswagen's
recent troubles as arguments against cars in general, yet somehow that line of
reasoning is valid when discussing regulation.

~~~
dmichulke
In the drug case people are not self-selected, because anyone can easily
become a trafficker himself.

Same for the gun regulation case.

However, as soon as there is a legal structure that exerts regulation, it's
very hard, basically impossible, to enter the regulatory institution. This
staticness is one of the reasons, regulatory institutions fail after some time
- _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_

~~~
tremon
But that's exactly what I meant with self-selection: anyone can choose to
become a power figure in an unregulated market. How did you interpret self-
selection?

Yes, regulatory bodies require maintenance and vigilance both to remain
effective and to maintain an accessible market. Neither is a fundamental
argument against regulation.

------
onion2k
In the case of Twitter they probably _don 't_ know how often you're checking
it. It's a stream that's constantly pushing updates to your computer whenever
you have a client open. If you open it and put it the background and only
check it a few times a day that looks the same as if you open it and keep it
in the foreground checking every tweet.

------
mseebach
_[Novel-reading is] "one of the more pernicious habits to which a young lady
can become devoted. When the habit is once thoroughly fixed, it becomes at
inveterate as the use of liquor or opium. The novel-devotee is as much a slave
as the opium-eater or the inebriate."_ Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, 1882. (Yes,
the cornflakes-guy).
[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1ocgQy4hQA8C&lpg=PA37&ot...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1ocgQy4hQA8C&lpg=PA37&ots=tlqQiTD6FD&pg=PA37#v=onepage&q&f=false)

There exists well-know literary mechanisms by which to make a book "addictive"
and those mechanisms are used by unscrupulous authors and publishers to profit
on getting people hooked on their books and to buy them and their endless
sequels.

Make an argument that also includes regulating certain plot-devices in pulp-
fiction novels (that doesn't make you throw up a little in your mouth), then
we'll talk.

------
cafard
1\. I spent half an hour the other day helping someone get Websense running
again. Some places do regulate internet use.

2\. I remember from many years ago the sense of disgust at knowing that I had
wasted hours of a perfect Colorado afternoon in watching an old mediocre movie
on TV. That, I think would have been before even DARPANET.

------
hliyan
Perhaps we should consider regulating false advertising (in and out of the
Internet) before trying such strange measures as "forbidding infinite scroll".
Perhaps such regulation should include the form of false advertising we call
click-bait (of which this article is, perhaps, a borderline case).

~~~
tremon
why do you consider this article click-bait? The content-to-link ratio of that
page is extremely low. I agree that the HN link title is a bit sensationalist,
but I'm a bit puzzled why the article itself would be bait-y.

~~~
hliyan
Perhaps click-bait was too strong a word. Reading the article, I got the
feeling the author crafted both the title and the content to stir up feelings
on both ends of the opinion spectrum.

------
ducuboy
I like the notion of _organic web_.

But the parallel between food and web in terms of consumption doesn't stand.
The currency for food is money and organic food is more expensive, while the
currency for web is generally time spent, and so the junk web is more
expensive.

And no, we should not regulate either. Just promote the more valuable and
healthier options. By the way, besides tools such as Freedom which only reduce
the intake of junk web, what services do you think would fit in the category
of organic web?

------
tremon
Can someone please fix the link title? The article is very interesting, but I
almost skipped it because of the miscontructed sentence. The only reason I
opened it was to check whether the article itself had that headline...

(edit: actually, the target page title is grammatically correct)

------
gtpasqual
Fact of the matter is that these services are not addictive, they just make it
easier for mundane individuals to do certain things.

For example, Facebook just makes it easier to spy on others' lives. Before
that, a lot of time was spent of rumors and gossip.

------
Grue3
But so is coffee, Coca-Cola and a lot of finer things in life.

------
ucaetano
Betteridge's law of headlines clearly applies in this case.

"No".

Next question?

------
sukulaku
How about just treating adults as adults? There's no need to "regulate"
everything, and who's "we" anyway?

