alt Hacker News> The thing which measures your preferences and usage patterns then decides what to show you
That (plus a clause that exempts algorithms with user controls with full informedness and ability to confidently and reliably predict the outcome = old good filters and such) is the thing that should be in the legislation’s definitions section.
But then in the actual law it’s worse than “algorithm”, they’re actually banning broad over generalizations and design patterns instead, stuff like this:
>> recommender features – content selected and displayed based on information associated with the user’s account;
(Obvious legit use cases are regional content and user preferences.)
>> endless-feed features – continuous feeds of end-user content;
(Pure design pattern, pagination can be addictive at any span size.)
Replies
Your claims that these specific features provide no harm are belied by our knowledge that they do.
If "recommender" algorithms were the same as "just show me what my friends posted in chronological order", then there would not be such resistance to implementing the latter.
If endless scrolling were the same as pagination, then apps optimized for addictiveness would show a roughly equal distribution of both. But they do not.
Dark patterns are called that for a reason. Having to click "next page" is a point of friction that slows and stops consumption. Pageless increases engagement in an addictive way - it's why companies do it.
I disagree that any of this is "overly broad" - it's all long overdue