The Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act would ban various popular features employed by every major social media platform that intentionally deprive users of the opportunity to interrupt their use of the product.
“Big tech has embraced a business model of addiction. Too much of the ‘innovation’ in this space is designed not to create better products, but to capture more attention by using psychological tricks that make it difficult to look away. This legislation will put an end to that and encourage true innovation by tech companies,” Hawley said in a statement.
The targeted features include Twitter’s “infinite scroll,” which allows users to scroll through new information endlessly without reloading the page; Youtube’s “Autoplay,” which loads a new video as soon as the current one ends; and Snapchat’s “streaks,” which incentivizes users to maintain an unbroken string of messages with another user.
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