Of course it’s better when we do it to ourselves than when an outsider does it. It’s rational for a country to prevent its main adversary from collecting massive amounts of data on its people and to prevent its adversary from getting people addicted to an app that has negative social consequences. After banning TikTok people will naturally start to wonder about regulating Facebook and other social media and this would be a good thing.
Europe's main adversary and existential threat ain't no China, its russia. Has been, is and probably always will be. Next, at least historically, with a huge gap from first, would be Turkey. We are not top dog and thus don't compete with China in any way apart from usual economical stuff.
I bet this move is more to please US to show we are still aligned, otherwise we would be banning all meta products and couple more left and right.
> After banning TikTok people will naturally start to wonder about regulating Facebook and other social media and this would be a good thing.
It's not 'people' demanding anything. It's the elites. Why would the elites want to ban facebook or any social media they control. Not to mention facebook, reddit, youtube, etc are much older than tiktok.
except that you're essentially endorsing a dangerous form of nationalism and rationalizing domestic surveillance by suggesting it's acceptable for our own government and companies to manipulate and monitor us but not for foreign entities, to say nothing about how naive it is to think domestic companies will later come around to regulating themselves. this is exactly the double standard that not only undermines the principles of fairness and privacy but also paves the way for greater acceptance of intrusive surveillance under the guise of security.....
I’m pretty sure the EU has established time and time again that creating toxic and addictive experiences isn’t OK when Facebook do it, either.
There is plenty to criticise in the hysterical response we’ve seen particularly in US government to the mere existence of TikTok. But IMO the EU has been pretty consistent about this stuff, grouping everyone together as “the West” isn’t that helpful.
I will admit I don't follow the regulations that the EU applies but most of social media has become worse for me as an EU citizen where the recommendation algorithm has become more aggressive and now with lots of little rewards like the "achievements" on Twitch to make you feel like you accomplished something just for consuming. I feel like I'm the mice in a Skinner Box, so whatever "regulation" they have in place doesn't seem to be working.
Sort buy fine and the top companies are meta, amazon, google, whatsapp .. but yes also TikTok. But no, it's not fine if other EU countries are doing this.
> brainwashing people, propaganda
I don't remember the details, but did meta and youtube not have to implement tools to combat "anti vacs fakenews" during the rona times? Or was that not forced they did it on their own?
I don't know man, It seems you are wrong. It's not all fine when "we do it"
I mean if you properly label loot boxes as gambling and dont let kids do it then it seems reasonable. Thats how casinos and sportsbetting operate and no problem there
It's interesting since China is restrictive on everything, but they're allowed to play ball in other people's fields. They need to be banned from the WTO and the West in general until they change their tactics.
Western economies depend on outsourcing to China and taking full advantage of their corruption and lack of labor rights and regulations. Talk about "tactics" and rules is simply hypocrisy when the West has no problem using autocratic regimes to undermine their own principles for the sake of their own self interest.
Well the play was obvious in the US TikTok case wasn't it? They weren't REALLY about banning it, they just want to force sale of a massively profitable apps to western owners (selected ones, obviously).
No, not obviously. If you have any evidence that the government was trying to influence which non-Chinese firm would end up owning TikTok or collecting TikTok's profits, lay it out for us. I always thought that the government was leaving that choice up to the current owners of TikTok.
Well for a while Trump just wanted to ban it because people used it to register for his rallies and then not show up to give him a comically small turnout.
Later it became more nuanced and economical. But the EU does have a point and they're not just targeting Chinese apps.
Did people forget all about the leaked Instagram research papers? I don't really use either, but at least TikTok's parental controls are vastly superior to Facebooks.
> Why can we not just call a spade a shovel - its not really about this app it is about "China"
That's probably justified, but TikTok IS far more addictive than the competing western developed apps, particularly with children and the young. The EU would also be pushing them if it was developed elsewhere.
If it gives Bytedance the incentive to produce app that are less harmful to our mental health, i'll switch to it overnight. Good bye to all the metacrap.
Nah, the EU is being very aggressive with the DMA and DSA. See the whole Apple thing, Facebook delaying the launch of Threads in Europe to make DSA-friendly changes (mostly the ability to browse without a login wall) etc. All this for rules that have only been in force for a few months.
I think the EC has learned its lesson from the GDPR; “you might one day be fined, maybe in five years” (Facebook, say, was recently fined a billion of so for behaviour going back years) is not a sufficient deterrent.
That's an extremely heavy burden that we've never forced on consumer products before.
Requiring every company to prove why something us suitable for their market also means the government has absolute control over what is and isn't acceptable for any citizen to have access to. That's some seriously distopian shit in my opinion.
I feel like we’re approaching a level where absolutely any government regulation is seen as “dystopian”.
We absolutely have regulations like this already. I’d almost argue there are more consumer products subject to regulation than not.
For a more specific example, teens are not allowed to use gambling apps. I don’t see many people arguing that is tyrannical government overreach. Here, TikTok is creating an addictive app that offers you monetary rewards for watching videos and completing menial tasks. It sounds more like employment than leisure activity, why shouldn’t we interrogate the suitability of something like that? Why give these social media companies, which have proven themselves untrustworthy time and time again, the benefit of the doubt?
> That's an extremely heavy burden that we've never forced on consumer products before.
That's a heavy burden that we enforce on many other consumer products. That's why we have certification processes in place, quality testing and compliance testing. From airplanes, to cars, to bikes, to helmets, to food, to medication, to toys, to appliances, to paints and chemicals, etc.
> That's an extremely heavy burden that we've never forced on consumer products before.
Isn't it what the CE marking means on physical products though? It means the manufacturer claims the product is conform to regulation, which presumably includes "not harmful to the intended users".
While CE marking can be a self-declaration depending on the type of product (some products require third-party control) at any moment each EU state can check it, and in any case a control process has to be documented.
The parent comment just wishes to apply the same to non-physical products, which doesn't strike me as extremely heavy or unreasonable.
Is it? That's entirely unprecedented. Teens are one of the biggest demographics for games. Are game developers now requires to be adolescent behavioralists?
"EXPLAIN THIS FUN GAME!"
"Well we wanted to make a fun game, so we made it fun."
"explain this non-fun, stress-inducing addiction generator"
"well, we wanted to make a lot of money with incredibly low effort, so we just found out how to best psychologically manipulate users into being unable to leave and stress them into giving us money while they're there in various ways."
"wait why was this not already illegal"
The difference to a game is that a game is first and foremost designed to be entertaining and the user starts playing and stick around with it because they like the entertainment. An addiction to a non-malicious game could be considered like an addiction to good food. Not great, but you're addicted to what you like. Some games (and foods) are more addictive than others, and some games are particularly malicious and are occasionally struck down against or hung out for their methods, but it's overall seen as okay.
These apps are not meant to be entertaining. They use stress, FOMO or outright manipulation to make you return. This addiction is more like being addicted to cigarettes. One can argue whether even self-harm should be up to the individual, but no sane individual would argue that cigarettes are good or that tobacco companies are anything other than evil. If the cigarette was invented now, would we have allowed them to proliferate?
Drawing the line is hard, and I don't like others making decisions for me, but I also don't like society forcing you to join an abusive platform as you'd otherwise miss out on whatever basic societal functions people put there, so enforcing that platforms play nice seems fair.
In what way is assessing the age suitability of a game unprecedented? Games have had movie-like age guidelines for decades now.
And besides:
> The app is called TikTok Lite and offers the chance to "to complete challenging tasks and earn great rewards!"
> Tasks include watching vids, liking content, or following other users. Rewards include Amazon vouchers, PayPal gift cards, or TikTok's in-app currency that can be used to tip other members.
If the game is deliberately made to be addictive, leads to emotional distress and is overall harmful then curbs should be put in place. Game developers should not be adolescent behavioralists; the regulators should be.
The EU asking questions is dystopian? Hysteria like in the 80s and 90s? Or is it good to ask some proper questions before some huge enterprise unfolds their social credit system?
This really is starting to sound like all the hysteria from the 80s, 90s about Doom, baggy pants, gangster rap music, punk rock music, satanism in the woods, I could go on and on.
Data collection is bad, and I wish I could raise kids without the need for smartphones, but it does feel a bit overkill now all this hysteria.
It’s not just hysteria because previous hysterias were from a position of ignorance, whereas with TikTok, etc. everyone has experienced the negative effects of social media, and secondly no teens ever said that their listening to rock music was a problem for them, but when surveyed most teens agree social media is bad for them.
As a parent today, I often wonder if my concerns are the same as every parent of prior generations and that things will turn out just fine.
But I can’t shake the thought that the impact of social media and addictive games for some kids can’t be written off as just a phase they are going through. I worry so much that they will carry the negative impacts into adulthood.
I think that rewarding kids to watch garbage they don’t like (or do like: it doesn’t actually matter) is a bridge too far. I cannot think of anything from the 80s-90s in my youth that would compare in any way. I mean; for adults this is pretty horrible as well, but they can decide themselves, but for kids it should be forbidden imho.
This has nothing to do with being exposed to the same content as their peers (which is indeed often needed to grow up). Give them pocket money and/or chores and not this bollocks.
It's also worth considering whether the concerns of previous generations were really as exaggerated as we think. We might believe that things "turned out just fine" simply because this is the world we're used to. However, it's possible that we're actually heading in the wrong direction, and many of those worries were - in fact - valid.
The effect is real, every generation will feel an effect that is slightly new and relevant to their time.
But if it's going to lead to the complete downfall of society and lethargic adults who cannot deal with life, I doubt it.
I'm playing devil's advocate here because I truly believe that kids should not have smartphones at all. But that's because I was raised without them.
And also I've seen in practice a great example of a relative who raised his first child (male) with no screens, and his second child (female) allowing screen time. The son is now 15 and the girl 9 and the difference is shocking. Most well behaved, calm, focused young man I've ever seen. Compared to a little animal who snarls at you for taking away her phone at dinner time.
It's the false dichotomy that makes for histeria. TikTok is either on or off. the alternative, handing control of the algorithm over to the Department of Education, has never been discussed.
You could use the same reasoning about anything that is called “addictive and toxic”. Sometimes something really is addictive and toxic and should have curbs on it. Instead of talking about what it sounds like we should discuss what it actually is. Is this app more like 80s satanism and is really much ado about nothing or is it more like social heroin?
Well, watching content you like (it seems young people do on TikTok) is one thing, giving rewards to watch whatever content really is another. It’s grooming a new generation for the race-to-the-bottom gig economy.
No, it resembles the campaign against drinking and smoking and having sex without condoms: sometimes a bit overbearing but everyone knows the message itself is sound. Tiktok and similar apps or 'services' - Youtube shorts, Instagram reels, etc - do to video what Twitter did to online discourse and the world would be a better place without them. Maybe not for the 'influencers' who are on it but who cares, they are part of the problem both by feeding the machine as well as by serving as bad role models. Go ahead and ask some children what they want to be later and be dismayed by how many of them say they want to be 'influencers'.
That said I'd prefer for parents to keep their children off Tiktok and the like or - better still - keep them smartphone-free until they're at an age where this is no longer feasible or legally possible (~16). If they do have phones make sure you have control over which apps they run and for how long they can use these, on Android that can be accomplished using something like Timelimit [1]. This is what I use (server and clients), to good effect.
I could not disagree more. To me this is a type of "slippery slope fallacy fallacy", a fallacy, where you call every "slippery slope" type of argument a fallacy.
Just because we have been mistaken in the past doesn't mean that every instance of "hysteria" is irrational. There is a wealth of research demonstrating the bad and detrimental effects of social media.
Given the abundance of real data proving social and educational regressions caused by the overuse of these kinds of apps (by design), I think this panic is more deserving of worry than the others you've listed here (which were all moral panics, I.e. "$THING doesn't align with my belief system!).
> This really is starting to sound like all the hysteria from the 80s, 90s about Doom, baggy pants, gangster rap music, punk rock music, satanism in the woods, I could go on and on.
With the exception that none of these is proven to fry the teenager mind.
Maybe that is what we need. Maybe we are in need of a moral panic to address the massive concerns of mental health, surveillance, misinformation and others that built up over the years with the rise of social media, smartphones and the centralisation of the internet.
The reviews on the app are wild - people talking about loving getting paid a couple bucks for watching it all day, and that it's their new side gig. It's pretty sad, to be honest. Get outside and live life! (Or stay inside and live life, but we need to get away from this dopamine high of doom scrolling)
If the mobile app makes 7.5 billion revenue or has 45m monthly active users, then the company should definitely do their risk assessment. That's the exception though and doesn't affect many mobile phone apps.
Why are you assuming that regulation that applies to a billion dollar company would apply to everyone? Isn't it way more useful to just regulate the large players?
Small players can't make a lot of damage, and the cost of regulation in an entire market (millions of apps) is huge compared to regulating maybe a dozen apps with a half billion users.
Readit News
Toxic and Addictive, collecting data, brainwashing people, propaganda etc is all fine when we do it.
Go for it and ban it - but there is no need to treat everyone like an idiot with the stupid excuses.
I bet this move is more to please US to show we are still aligned, otherwise we would be banning all meta products and couple more left and right.
It's not 'people' demanding anything. It's the elites. Why would the elites want to ban facebook or any social media they control. Not to mention facebook, reddit, youtube, etc are much older than tiktok.
There is plenty to criticise in the hysterical response we’ve seen particularly in US government to the mere existence of TikTok. But IMO the EU has been pretty consistent about this stuff, grouping everyone together as “the West” isn’t that helpful.
Tons of new laws to reduce cigarette usage in the UK and EU have been implemented or talked since .. a long time. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68824493
Some EU countries have rules against lootboxes. https://www.simmons-simmons.com/en/publications/clgm1i0ko002...
Sadly it seems Casinos and sportsbetting is making a comeback :/
> collecting data
https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
Sort buy fine and the top companies are meta, amazon, google, whatsapp .. but yes also TikTok. But no, it's not fine if other EU countries are doing this.
> brainwashing people, propaganda
I don't remember the details, but did meta and youtube not have to implement tools to combat "anti vacs fakenews" during the rona times? Or was that not forced they did it on their own?
I don't know man, It seems you are wrong. It's not all fine when "we do it"
No, not obviously. If you have any evidence that the government was trying to influence which non-Chinese firm would end up owning TikTok or collecting TikTok's profits, lay it out for us. I always thought that the government was leaving that choice up to the current owners of TikTok.
Later it became more nuanced and economical. But the EU does have a point and they're not just targeting Chinese apps.
That's probably justified, but TikTok IS far more addictive than the competing western developed apps, particularly with children and the young. The EU would also be pushing them if it was developed elsewhere.
Deleted my account after a week and i see plenty of kids waisting a ton of time on it.
We, as our socity, do protect ourselves from thinks like lead in wallcolors, etc. why not addiction?
In all hopes an EU company is storing and treating the data it collects under the EU law. In China there is no such thing.
This is specifically the opinion of one person from the EU who has issues with a lot of what is going on in tech. Regardless of who owns the app.
No it's not. Ban that shit.
At least in the EU those things are regulated, so it’s not particularly surprising the that the EU gets involved.
The speed is unusual, it probably would have taken month if this was American and not Chinese.
I think the EC has learned its lesson from the GDPR; “you might one day be fined, maybe in five years” (Facebook, say, was recently fined a billion of so for behaviour going back years) is not a sufficient deterrent.
Requiring every company to prove why something us suitable for their market also means the government has absolute control over what is and isn't acceptable for any citizen to have access to. That's some seriously distopian shit in my opinion.
We absolutely have regulations like this already. I’d almost argue there are more consumer products subject to regulation than not.
For a more specific example, teens are not allowed to use gambling apps. I don’t see many people arguing that is tyrannical government overreach. Here, TikTok is creating an addictive app that offers you monetary rewards for watching videos and completing menial tasks. It sounds more like employment than leisure activity, why shouldn’t we interrogate the suitability of something like that? Why give these social media companies, which have proven themselves untrustworthy time and time again, the benefit of the doubt?
That's a heavy burden that we enforce on many other consumer products. That's why we have certification processes in place, quality testing and compliance testing. From airplanes, to cars, to bikes, to helmets, to food, to medication, to toys, to appliances, to paints and chemicals, etc.
Isn't it what the CE marking means on physical products though? It means the manufacturer claims the product is conform to regulation, which presumably includes "not harmful to the intended users".
While CE marking can be a self-declaration depending on the type of product (some products require third-party control) at any moment each EU state can check it, and in any case a control process has to be documented.
The parent comment just wishes to apply the same to non-physical products, which doesn't strike me as extremely heavy or unreasonable.
It's so dystopian that people can't access weapons or poison from their local shop, with no limitations.
they dont require every company. Just the largest in this segment.
"EXPLAIN THIS FUN GAME!"
"Well we wanted to make a fun game, so we made it fun."
"THAT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL!!"
"explain this non-fun, stress-inducing addiction generator"
"well, we wanted to make a lot of money with incredibly low effort, so we just found out how to best psychologically manipulate users into being unable to leave and stress them into giving us money while they're there in various ways."
"wait why was this not already illegal"
The difference to a game is that a game is first and foremost designed to be entertaining and the user starts playing and stick around with it because they like the entertainment. An addiction to a non-malicious game could be considered like an addiction to good food. Not great, but you're addicted to what you like. Some games (and foods) are more addictive than others, and some games are particularly malicious and are occasionally struck down against or hung out for their methods, but it's overall seen as okay.
These apps are not meant to be entertaining. They use stress, FOMO or outright manipulation to make you return. This addiction is more like being addicted to cigarettes. One can argue whether even self-harm should be up to the individual, but no sane individual would argue that cigarettes are good or that tobacco companies are anything other than evil. If the cigarette was invented now, would we have allowed them to proliferate?
Drawing the line is hard, and I don't like others making decisions for me, but I also don't like society forcing you to join an abusive platform as you'd otherwise miss out on whatever basic societal functions people put there, so enforcing that platforms play nice seems fair.
And besides:
> The app is called TikTok Lite and offers the chance to "to complete challenging tasks and earn great rewards!"
> Tasks include watching vids, liking content, or following other users. Rewards include Amazon vouchers, PayPal gift cards, or TikTok's in-app currency that can be used to tip other members.
Is this a “game”? Really?
Data collection is bad, and I wish I could raise kids without the need for smartphones, but it does feel a bit overkill now all this hysteria.
But I can’t shake the thought that the impact of social media and addictive games for some kids can’t be written off as just a phase they are going through. I worry so much that they will carry the negative impacts into adulthood.
This has nothing to do with being exposed to the same content as their peers (which is indeed often needed to grow up). Give them pocket money and/or chores and not this bollocks.
But if it's going to lead to the complete downfall of society and lethargic adults who cannot deal with life, I doubt it.
I'm playing devil's advocate here because I truly believe that kids should not have smartphones at all. But that's because I was raised without them.
And also I've seen in practice a great example of a relative who raised his first child (male) with no screens, and his second child (female) allowing screen time. The son is now 15 and the girl 9 and the difference is shocking. Most well behaved, calm, focused young man I've ever seen. Compared to a little animal who snarls at you for taking away her phone at dinner time.
That said I'd prefer for parents to keep their children off Tiktok and the like or - better still - keep them smartphone-free until they're at an age where this is no longer feasible or legally possible (~16). If they do have phones make sure you have control over which apps they run and for how long they can use these, on Android that can be accomplished using something like Timelimit [1]. This is what I use (server and clients), to good effect.
[1] https://codeberg.org/timelimit
Just because we have been mistaken in the past doesn't mean that every instance of "hysteria" is irrational. There is a wealth of research demonstrating the bad and detrimental effects of social media.
With the exception that none of these is proven to fry the teenager mind.
Exactly, same with the hysteria about teenage sex, smoking, drinking, bullying, or recreational use of opiates. The kids are alright.
Deleted Comment
The precautionary principle has destroyed the EU.
https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/commission-designat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act#Criteria_d...
Small players can't make a lot of damage, and the cost of regulation in an entire market (millions of apps) is huge compared to regulating maybe a dozen apps with a half billion users.
No wonder when dark patterns become norm.