Do you mean regulating "watch time and comment count" at the presentation (to the client) or the server (business/analytics) level? If the later, how would you even enforce that?

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throwaway13337 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Like all good regulation, it would only kick in after a company has a large reach. So as to not snuff out startups and cause regulatory capture problems that are already so common.

Telling big companies to be transparent about their suggestion algorithms would not be hard. I think governments already do this? wasn't that a tiktok thing in the US? Anyway, it's well within government's reach.

Telling companies to only use signals that people consciously give seems like a no-brainer.

Well, I mean, if you believe that a goal of civilization is to respect the free will of individuals up until the point that that free will becomes a problem for other people.

The alternative is something less than respectful of human dignity.

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stephen_cagle 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm only partially convinced. I just can't see how you could really know if a company is using a hidden metric (or some sort of proxy for that metric so that they are not technically in violation) for figuring out what to promote. Short of having constants audits, how would you ever really know?

But my skepticism may be unfounded. Do you have examples of companies that are currently working with regulators to allow full auditing of their content promotion policies? Are they actually auditing these partnerships or are they simply accepting promises from the companies?

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sneak 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Laws that don’t apply to all people equally are unjust laws.

Penalizing the successful is also inherently rewarding the unsuccessful. You can’t do one without the other.

	▲	roughly 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They apply equally to all people who run a company of a particular size with a particular user count.