EU defines ‘addictive design’, defensive platforms and Ba’s exit
Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation's Week in Review, your need-to-know news and analysis about platform policy, content moderation and internet regulation. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw and supported by members like you.
This week, we’ve seen what happens when a platform makes product changes to get ahead of regulation as well as what happens if product design isn’t up to scratch in the eyes of a regulator.
The latter story — TikTok’s breach of the Digital Services Act for ‘addictive design’ — is one of the dozens of stories in today’s Week in Review and a focus of this week’s Ctrl-Alt-Speech. With Mike away, I got to pick the brains of Dr Blake Hallinan, Professor of Platform Studies in the Department of Media & Journalism Studies at Aarhus University. It was a fun conversation, have a listen.
Welcome to new responsible internet users from Salesforce, eSafety Commission, Kroll, Google, Gifct, Thorn, Besedo, Ofcom and others like them. If you missed it, read Alice Hunsberger’s deep-dive into the Interrnational AI Safety Report. And if you don’t receive T&S Insider, update your newsletter settings in your EiM account to get it every Monday.
Here’s your Week in Review. As ever, drop me a line if I missed something or you have feedback about today's edition — BW.
Online safety regulation is no longer theoretical.
With regulations like the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) now actively enforced, platforms are expected to clearly demonstrate how they identify, assess, and mitigate risk in practice.
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Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
The European Commission has told TikTok to disable features such as infinite scroll and autoplay for minors and to make changes to its recommendation systems under the Digital Services Act.
In preliminary findings of its two-year investigation, the Commission claimed the Chinese-platforms design features led to “compulsive behaviour” by users and led to reduced self-control, which is some statement. It marks the first time that any regulator has tried to set the standard for “addictive design”. TIkTok called the findings “entirely meritless” and “categorically false”, which, ironically, are the same words used to describe by description of Oliver Twist in the year 6 school play.
The UK government has published results from a snapshot survey that shows just little parents engage with their children regarding online safety. Fewer than half of 1100 parents — whose children were aged between 8-14 — have ever spoken with their kids about their online experiences and, of those that did, most were one-off conversations. The research also demonstrates a lack of online safety resources and a lack of confidence about what their child sees on internet platforms.
Control of the parental kind: This research — and the simple but effective advert put out to accompany it — suggests that the UK government have been paying attention to civil society organisations and are starting to see the downsides of a social media ban. A three-month consultation seeks to gather more views. In the meantime, try finding the aforementioned ad — it’s so hard to find online that I’ll be surprised if a parent ever sees it.