Isn't it fascinating that the people making the most extensive use of infinite feeds and A/B testing for maximum user engagement are also the massive platforms with dominating network effects and captive audiences? It's like _specifically regulating large social media conglomerates with outsized impact, capacity for harm, and demonstrated propensity to maximize user addiction might provide an ideal balance of societal improvement without harming smaller actors_.
Re, source code: you can print out an implementation of your infinite feed and put it on GitHub. Go nuts. That's your freedom of speech. Likewise, I can write DDoS control software and clients. However I can't run said software as a service because that specific act is illegal. Same thing applies to the application feeds we're discussing; hosting content and offering software as a service has different semantics.
If you think that UX is a matter of free speech then I have an illuminated freeway sign running at 3000 nits to sell you.
We can have nice things. We can push corporations to act in pro-social manners. We can put individuals at a better footing with respect to large corporations while ensuring the liberty of individuals and small businesses. This libertarian idea that we cannot constrain obviously harmful behavior from massive corporations without immediately turning into an authoritarian both flies in the face of historical precedent and basic reason.
Sophistry. The question is not whether or not regulation is authoritarian, it’s whether or not it’s constitutional. As in, whether or not the government is even allowed to make such a law.
A law doesn’t just get a constitutional bypass because it’s addressing known harms or “anti-social” behavior or whatever. This is not the UK.
Illuminated signs exist in the real, physical world. They can beam bright light into your home, involuntarily. Design and presentation exists in the realm of a printed page, or on the display of your device. Can we regulate how a book lays out its type?
The First Amendment is quite possibly the most uniquely American thing about our Constitution, and its most defining feature. It’s worth defending.