What "robust evidence of harm it causes"? Which of your many links is the robust one? And why is this on me? Yes, I think it's a moral panic, there are many previous examples of x entertaining thing supposedly corrupting young minds (or female minds, going further back). But you have to show how it's harmful. What is meant by "addictive" in the "addictive online feeds" that this prohibits? Extra points if you manage not to say "dopamine".
I don't believe any evidence would be sufficient to meet your requirements to make policy actions legitimate unfortunately. The harm is diffuse, so while action to counteract it (regulatory and policy) will be imperfect, it is still necessary based on the evidence collected so far (imho). The cost to regulate is low, and the harm by regulating is also low. Good enough.
> “Addictive feed” means an internet website, online service, online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users are, either concurrently or sequentially, recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information provided by the user, or otherwise associated with the user or the user’s device, unless any of the following conditions are met, alone or in combination with one another: (1) The information is not persistently associated with the user or user’s device, and does not concern the user’s previous interactions with media generated or shared by others. [And some other more trivial exceptions.]
So basically it's banning suggestion algorithms accompanied by tracking. And since I personally hate suggestion algorithms accompanied by tracking, it's hard to feel very upset by a law against it ... except that makes me feel sleazy and unprincipled if I base this only on my own preferences. The general idea is to prevent the unwitting sinking into echo-chambers where the world is made to look a particular way by a feedback effect (an automated one, in fact). That might be a good law.
I do, as I think you asked somebody else, [edit: as somebody
else asked somebody else] object to the inaccurate use of the word "addiction".
>many previous examples of x entertaining thing supposedly corrupting young minds
My reply to that is that in fact newspapers, paperback romance and adventure novels, jazz, rhythm and blues, rock music, television, video games and pornography probably have been broadly harmful (particularly to children and teenagers) but we didn't have a detailed neuroscientific description of the mechanism of harm when they were introduced, so the people pointing out the harms were ignored or shouted down, and now that those things are no longer in the news, people believe they know all they need to know about them, with the result that most believe that the verdict of history is that those thing are benign.
And it is tricky because all of those things plus social media and Youtube can be and often are used in such a way that they do not cause harm. And they all have positive effects as well as harmful effects.
