by your username I assume you are yourself one of the droids you're looking for lol.

But also I think people forget: this is not cut and dried. This is not simple. This is not just "these companies are evil and should be stopped". It is: there is a market pressure to do these things. "I enjoy the product and use it a lot" and "I am addicted" is blurry and market pressure is not going to recognize that limit because it does not care about human suffering unless that suffering meaningfully impacts the bottom line.

If these companies hit regulations that effectively cap their advertising revenue per user (i.e. the "addictiveness"), they are dead. That may be totally fine, and I'm sure majority of people would rejoice hearing this. But remember: advertising dollars are earned, especially at tech company scale, by the effectiveness of the targeting to get get more $ / DAU since DAU cannot grow beyond the Earth's population and that is the scale that these companies have already achieved.

If you cap advertising dollars, you cap advertising effectiveness. You cap the ability for small companies to connect quickly with prospective customers without being locked out because they have to spend too much to find them. Yes you also cap scammers and other nefarious actors too, but thats arguably a different issue. The impact of reducing advertising effectiveness is disproportionately concentrated on small business where cheap and effective advertising is so important.

My hope is that there is a way to do both and I don't have to be constantly horrified when I look at my screen time hours.

> by your username I assume you are yourself one of the droids you're looking for lol.

Aside from a 6 month contracting stint, I’ve never worked on data related to humans, only machines. No payment data, no behavioral data, no website data. The closest I’ve come is human-provided labels.

I’ve probably made only 50% of my total earning potential compared to Data Scientists / ML Engineers who work in the advertising and retail spaces (Google, Meta, Amazon), but at least I can look my children in the eyes and tell them that I didn’t sell my soul for a dollar.

> My hope is that there is a way to do both and I don't have to be constantly horrified when I look at my screen time hours.

Same, but without regulations there exists no incentive for any corporation to care about whether you’re addicted to your screen. And engagement, positive or negative, only makes them richer.

> This is not just "these companies are evil and should be stopped". It is: there is a market pressure to do these things.

They are evil tho, on top of there being market pressure. Their executives are incredibly comfortable with causing large scale harm, even when they are NOT forced at all.

> If you cap advertising dollars, you cap advertising effectiveness.

And that is OK. Not just ok, but actually good. Their effectivity and their evilness are closely related. Their effectivity and harm they cause are essentially the same thing.

> The impact of reducing advertising effectiveness is disproportionately concentrated on small business where cheap and effective advertising is so important.

Nice try, but no. Who benefited the most were the bad actors, conspiracy theories, weight loss programs specifically marketted to teens who posted about being insecured about their issues.

Marketing is just an arms race. It is ok to limit how manipulative and harmful it is and force companies to compete on something else.