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I wouldn't worry about that. You're ignoring politics, and what this actually is. If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago. They do not intend, not even remotely, to sabotage the profit machines that those companies are, they just want political weapons against the companies. The intention here is not to cure addiction, destroy profits, the intention is to use economic power to achieve political ends. The EU is built on this, it just didn't use to involve that many private companies.

Like most famous EU laws, this is not a law for people. Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies and certainly not against EU states, who have repeatedly shown willingness to use AI against individuals, including face recognition (which gets a lot of negative attention and strict rules in the AI act, and EU member states get to ignore both directly, and they get to allow companies to ignore the rules), violate GPDR against their own citizens (e.g. use medical data in divorce cases, or even tax debt collection, and they let private companies ignore the rules for government purposes (e.g. hospitals can be forced report if you paid for treatment rather than pay alimony, rather than pay your back taxes)). The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google.

These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies. Here's how the process works: someone "files a complaint", which is an email to the EU commission (not a complaint in the legal sense, no involvement of prosecutors, or judges, or any part of the justice system of any member state at all). Then an EU commissioner starts a negotiation process and rules on the case, usually imposing billions of euros in fines or providing publicly-backed loans (in the case of banks). The vast, vast, vast majority of these complaints are ignored or "settled in love" (French legal term: the idea is that some commission bureaucrat contacts the company and "arranges things", never involving any kind of enforcement mechanism). Then they become chairman of Goldman Sachs (oops, that just happened once, giving Goldman Sachs it's first communist chairman, yes really. In case you're wondering: Barrosso), or join Uber's and Salesforce's executive teams, paid through Panama paper companies.

In other words: these laws are not at all about addictive design, and saving you from it, they're about going after specific companies for political means. Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, ...

Ironically the EU is doing exactly what Trump did with tariffs. It's just that Trump is using a sawed-off shotgun where the EU commission is using a scalpel.

I do so too. Dark patterns should never be acceptable.

The amount of paid shills opposing this is a good indicator that it's the right move.

If a UI element crushes your democracy, that democracy wasn’t very strong to begin with.

> Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive.

Or you could just shut the phone off and/or not install the app. It's a simple solution, really, and one that is available at your disposal today at no cost.

You don't have to have a cookie popup if you don't do stupid stuff. Don't use anything other than strictly necessary cookies and you are good to go.

Disclaimer: I anal and this is not legal advice.

It is up to the websites to do that, and to the users to boycott those websites showing cookie popups.

Just so long as that means killing all the tracking, not just going back to hiding it.

ahhhh, every time the same discussion

1. GDPR consent dialogs are not cookie popups, most things you see are GDPR consent dialogs

2. GDPR consent dialogs are only required if you share data, i.e. spy on the user

3. GDPR had from the get to go a bunch of exceptions, e.g. you don't need permission to store a same site cookie indicating that you opted out of tracking _iff_ you don't use it for tracking. Same for a lot of other things where the data is needed for operation as long as the data is only used with that thing and not given away. (E.g. DDOS protection, bot detection, etc.)

4. You still had to inform the user but this doesn't need any user interacting, accepting anything nor does it need to be a popup blocking the view. A small information in the corner of the screen with a link to the data policy is good enough. But only if all what you do falls under 3. or non personal information. Furthermore I think they recently have updated it to not even require that, just having a privacy policy in a well know place is good enough but I have to double check. (And to be clear this is for data you don't need permission to collect, but like any data you collect it's strictly use case bound and you still have to list how its used, how long stored etc. even if you don't need permissions). Also to be clear if you accept the base premise of GDPR it's pretty intuitive to judge if it's an exception or not.

5. in some countries, there are highly misguided "cookie popup" laws predating GDPR (they are actually about cookies, not data collection in general). This are national laws and such the EU would prefer to have removed. Work on it is in process but takes way to long. I'm also not fully sure about the sate of that. So in that context, yes they should and want to kill "cookie popups". That just doesn't mean what most people think it does (as it has nothing to do with GDPR).

Kill cookie pop up dark patterns*

Well then where would be the incentive to download apps/not clear your cookies...? :-)

Simply banning most forms of advertising would be extremely welcome and might largely solve the cookie-popup issue, too.

and then the inventor should go to prison along with the guys who design the UI of microwave ovens (joke)

And based on some of the replies in this thread we better act fast before it's too late.

Maybe you're not the type of person who's struggled with addiction, but it can do awful things to you. Yes, including being addicted to scrolling social media. It screws with your head to the point where you don't know how to live in the moment anymore.

IMO it's a feature that's not valuable enough to justify the fact that it contributes to poor quality of life for people who can't put it down.

> Why would anyone care about something like this ...

Because it is a dangerous addiction [1] with recognised adverse effects on human health. Like sugar, tobacco, or drugs.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959832

> Whatever happened to freedom?

Freedom from, or freedom to?

    ‘Freedom does not consist in doing what we want, but in overcoming what we have for an open future; the existence of others defines my situation and is the condition of my freedom. They oppress me if they take me to prison, but they are not oppressing me if they prevent me from taking my neighbour to prison.’ -- Simone de Beauvoir

Social Media companies have actively and intentionally tried to make their products more addicting... now they have to face the very obvious consequences of that decision.

>Why would anyone care about something like this to the degree they feel like expressing the opinion publicly

Why would anyone publicly express any negative opinion about the effects of doomscrolling? I don't think I'm uncharitably paraphrasing, right?

Why would someone care about a destructive addiction that's plaguing the lives of the majority of the planet, leading to mental health issues and proliferating massive levels of misinformation. I wonder. Freedom to be manipulated by algorithms, yay!

We have great freedoms in Europe. We just need to apply in advance with our detailed plan, in three copies and the Commission will decide whether to deny our application or to deny it and fine us for unhealthy thoughts, too.

Sarcasm now, but maybe what the near future will look like...

More to the point: this is indeed a massive overreach with the Commission being the police, judge, jury, and executioner... what could go wrong? Exactly what we are seeing is taking shape, precedent by precedent.

Have you been under a rock the past 15 years?

it turns out that all those jokes about EU regulating the curvature of the cucumber were on to something

>Whatever happened to freedom?

Turns out it was a big lie you've told yourself so you can let the rich and powerful get away with atrocities.

Hey, we all have free speech, it's just that I can buy a whole lot more of it than you can.

So, like https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/07/12/2021-14... ?

Companies are part of society and we have a rule-based society.

I mean, clearly the companies at the top can't be trusted to do what's in the best interests of the users. So at some point someone has to do something. If this is the correct something that remains to be seen.

is this your first year on the internet?

This is a finding of a violation of the DSA, which only applies to services (not local reader apps), and only if they have a lot of users.

Like, a significant fraction of the country level of usage. You don't need to worry about the EU coming and taking away your HN client APK. You do need to be worried about Google doing that, though.

No it's not? It's paged.

What exactly is dystopian about protecting developing minds of children and teens from detrimental effects and social media addiction caused by companies like Meta and Bytedance. These companies profit immensely from being quasi unregulated.

Where are you suggest we move to escape this dystopian nightmare?

Scrolling through an infinity of AI slop videos can't really be classified as "getting information". If you want to read the news and stay up to date with the "embarrassing information" there's plenty of news websites out there.

Well, your freeeeedooooms include having to pay taxes when living outside of the US. I'd say that's a pretty big factor in deciding if it's worth it to leave the country.

Why are so many Americans trying to move to the EU? Turns out people have different wants and needs in life, and so they move to where they like best. I for one would never set foot in USA in fear of being shot, kidnapped by ICE (or shot by ICE), fear of being bankrupt by the healthcare options there if something happens to me, fear of the poison you call food, and the absolutely ignorant populace that seems to roam the streets there. I swear half the times I can't even tell if USA is a real place or some really bizarre reality TV show.

> But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? Why isn't the opposite happening?

Citation needed.

I took some minutes to try and find statistics, and also ChatGPT claims that the EU simply doesn't collect or publish that kind of data, so I'm wondering how you think you know.