Instead of trying to whack a mole on all addictive mechanisms, just ban the business model driving all of them: targeted advertising.

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zbentley 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’m not sure that suffices. If a site has a very “good” (at keeping people glued to the screen) content ranking algorithm, they can still make money, albeit less, serving non-targeted ads. Longer engagement time by viewers = more ad impressions, targeted or not.

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annjose 4 hours ago | parent [-]

"they can still make money, albeit less, serving non-targeted ads."

- would they be able to make as much as they do now? I think it would be significantly less.

From Meta's official Financial Report for 2025 [0]:

Total Revenue: $200,966 Million

-Advertising: $196,175 million (97.6%)

-Other rev: $ 4,791 Million ( 2.4%)

[0] https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-deta...

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hatthew an hour ago | parent [-]

Presumably significantly less. But GP's point is that reducing advertising revenue doesn't remove the incentive to maximize engagement.

	▲	asadotzler an hour ago \| parent [-]
		In fact, it would almost certainly encourage them to keep you engaged even longer in an attempt to make up some of the money lost with the end of targeted advertising.

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JoshTriplett 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

s/targeted //