The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

2/13/2026 at 9:20:50 PM

Here's the actual statement from the European Comission: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...

It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling, but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it. The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do.

My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent, but after thinking on it more I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". Everything I thought of would have some way or workaround that could be found, and equally would have terrible consequences on situations where this is actually quite valuable. IE if you disallow infinite scrolling, what page sizes are allowed? Can I just have a page of 10,000 elements that lazy load?

Regardless of your take around whether this is EU overreach, I'm glad they're not implementing strict laws around what you can/can't do - there are valuable situations for these UI patterns, even if in combination they can create addictive experiences. Still, I do think that overregulation here will lead to services being fractured. I was writing about this earlier this morning (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005367), but the regulated friction of major platforms (ie discord w/ ID laws) is on a collision course with the ease of vibe coding up your own. When that happens, these comissions are going to need to think long and hard around having a few large companies to watch over is better than millions of small micro-niche ones.

by jjcm

2/14/2026 at 1:26:10 AM

No, this is far worse. This is just a license for bureaucrats to selectively choose winners or losers in social media. Once regulatory capture happens it merely turns into a special privilehe for pre-established businesses or a vehicle for one business to destroy another without outcompeting it

by sophrosyne42

2/13/2026 at 11:39:19 PM

>"well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?"

Hear me out: banning advertising on the Internet. It's the only way. It's the primordial domino tile. You knock that one over, every other tile follows suit. It's the mother of chain reactions. There would be no social media, no Internet as we know it. Imagine having TikTok, YouTube or X trying to survive on subscriptions alone in their current iterations. Impossible. They'd need to change their top priority from "maximizing engagement by fostering addictive behavior" to "offering a product with enough quality for someone to pay a fee in order to be able to use it".

by Funes-

2/14/2026 at 1:23:51 AM

Then X will become the only social media as Musk can keep it free unlike any competition and us it to push politics he likes or finds it beneficial for his other companies. In fact, according to reports X is already not making much ad money so it’s already there.

by mrtksn

2/14/2026 at 12:42:32 AM

Infrastructure costs money. There's no way around it. I'm all up for banning ads. But there should be another viable business model to replace it.

by gchamonlive

2/14/2026 at 1:16:55 AM

I don't think we have a right to a business model. Either you figure one out for your particular site (selling access to the website, donations, etc) or you don't and stop and either is ok.

by gpm

2/14/2026 at 1:06:29 AM

Banning ads? That's just so authoritarian and absurd. I hope you never become king

by ahallock

2/14/2026 at 1:12:18 AM

Have we come to such a low cultural point that ads are seen as some kind of basic human right?

Fuck ads. What's absurd is tolerating them and the damage they do to media, consumers, kids, lesser and/or more honest businesses, culture, products, and so on all the way to the Windows and macOS system UIs.

by coldtea

2/14/2026 at 1:11:29 AM

If it can't only be funded by ads, it shouldn't be funded and is not essential to exist.

by coldtea

2/14/2026 at 1:05:29 AM

HTTP Error 402: Payment Required was created for a reason. Maybe we need to rethink micropayments.

by tokyobreakfast

2/14/2026 at 12:48:42 AM

Why? Serious question. The internet was a mistake.

by recursive

2/14/2026 at 1:25:51 AM

[delayed]

by gchamonlive

2/13/2026 at 11:51:16 PM

How will you ban that without infringing on free speech. That is a thing in the US and a lot of countries outside the EU.

by thesmtsolver2

2/13/2026 at 11:57:53 PM

"Commercial speech" being protected by free speech laws anywhere is abhorrent. The advertising industry, in and of itself, seems abhorrent to me. It's one of the worst things humans have come up with, ever.

by Funes-

2/14/2026 at 12:07:25 AM

Could one not categorize material published in a book, magazine, or on television as 'commercial speech', liable to restrictive licensing and censorship? This seems like a slippery slope which the USA is on the correct side of.

by nickff

2/14/2026 at 1:19:23 AM

Commercial speech is not the same as advertising.

The product is the same as the speech, whereas in advertising the speech is in sycophantic service of another product.

by coldtea

2/14/2026 at 12:28:10 AM

I'm kind of curious how people think a new business should make its existence known to prospective customers.

by AnthonyMouse

2/14/2026 at 1:22:38 AM

It's 2026.

We can have word of mouth, genuine, in forums and social media. We can have

We can have reviews, genuine, in websites.

We can have websites which present new products and business, not as paid sponsorships.

We can search on our own initiative and go to their website.

We can have online catalogs.

And tons of other ways.

by coldtea

2/14/2026 at 12:36:28 AM

Searchable catalogues of products with prices and features listed.

by mrob

2/14/2026 at 12:47:27 AM

That assumes the customer is aware that the product exists.

by AnthonyMouse

2/14/2026 at 12:51:05 AM

It only assumes they are aware that the category of products exists, and ordinary word-of-mouth communication is sufficient to propagate that knowledge.

by mrob

2/14/2026 at 1:01:47 AM

How does word-of-mouth communication propagate knowledge that is currently in the possession of zero existing customers? Or operate for products that people have little reason to discuss with other people?

Suppose you sell insulation and replacing the insulation in an existing house could save $2 in heating and cooling for each $1 the insulation costs. Most people know that insulation exists, but what causes them to realize that they should be in the market for it when they "already have it"?

by AnthonyMouse

2/14/2026 at 1:24:53 AM

>Suppose you sell insulation and replacing the insulation in an existing house could save $2 in heating and cooling for each $1 the insulation costs. Most people know that insulation exists, but what causes them to realize that they should be in the market for it when they "already have it"?

The same legit things that can cause them to realize it today. Word of mouth, a product review, a personal search that landed them on a new company website, a curated catalog (as long as those things are not selling their placements).

An ad is the worse thing to find such things out - the huge majority ranges from misleading to criminally misleading to bullshit.

by coldtea

2/14/2026 at 1:13:29 AM

People don't need to discuss specific products, they only need to be aware of the existence of product categories. If it's genuinely the case that whole product categories are unknown to many people who could realistically benefit from them, as determined by a disinterested third party, an exception could be made for advertising that does not mention specific products or brands.

The insulation example can be solved by publication of data on average heating costs. When people learn that their neighbors are paying less they will be naturally incentivized to investigate why. Equivalent problems can be solved with the same general technique.

by mrob

2/14/2026 at 12:13:33 AM

True, you can't separate ads vs sponsored content quite easily.

but you can help this by banning all forms of active tracking.

Static ads only, no click tracking, and complete ban on profiling clients and especially on adjusting prices based on client/possible client behavior patterns.

by Xelbair

2/14/2026 at 1:18:16 AM

Easy: free speech was never meant for and fought for advertising. Any judicial body who says otherwise is bullshiting people.

Conflating advertising with free speech is like conflating sex work with reproductive rights.

by coldtea

2/14/2026 at 12:53:37 AM

Free speech is a thing in the EU too.

To become a member of the EU, you have to first join the Council of Europe and its European Convention on Human Rights – article 10 of which guarantees the right to free expression. The EU also has its own Charter of Fundamental Rights which says the same thing. And the plan is for the EU to become a party to the Convention in its own right, although that's got bogged down in technical legal disputes and still hasn't happened, despite the 2009 Lisbon Treaty mandating it.

The US First Amendment has no exceptions as worded, but the US Supreme Court has read some into it. The Convention has exceptions listed in the text, although they are vaguely defined – but like the US, the European Court of Human Rights has developed extensive case law on the scope of those exceptions.

The big difference in practice is the US exceptions end up being significantly more narrow than those in Europe. However, given in both, the details of the exceptions are in case law – courts can and do change their mind, so this difference could potentially change (either by narrowing or broadening) in the decades to come.

by skissane

2/14/2026 at 1:07:42 AM

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/human-rights/human-right...

> "Article 10 of the Human Rights Act: Freedom of expression

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary."

Seems to be about as strong as the Soviet Constitution's protections: https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02....

by nickff

2/14/2026 at 12:11:59 AM

It would be worth a try to outlaw compensation for advertising. The spirit of free speech is usually that you aren’t being paid for it.

by layer8

2/14/2026 at 12:41:56 AM

Suppose a company wants to write some product documentation so customers and prospective customers know what features their product has and how to use them. They hire someone to write the documentation and then someone else to distribute it. Is there a good way to distinguish this from advertising?

The most plausible way would be if the one you're paying to distribute it has some kind of exclusive control or market power over the distribution channel so that you're paying them a premium over competing distributors. But then wouldn't the best way to prevent them from extracting that premium to be to make it so nobody has exclusive control over distribution channels, e.g. by breaking up concentrated markets or requiring federated protocols?

by AnthonyMouse

2/14/2026 at 1:26:18 AM

>Suppose a company wants to write some product documentation so customers and prospective customers know what features their product has and how to use them. They hire someone to write the documentation and then someone else to distribute it. Is there a good way to distinguish this from advertising?

Yes. You self host it as a company, and it can only be reproduced (if they wish) in outlets (say review sites) when there's no payment or compensation of any kind involved for that.

by coldtea

2/14/2026 at 1:01:50 AM

There are legal definitions of advertising, I’m sure the courts will be able to figure it out.

by layer8

2/14/2026 at 1:10:40 AM

The "legal definition of advertising" is the thing you have to write into the law you want to enact. If you can't answer the question as the proponent of the proposal then how is a judge expected to do it?

by AnthonyMouse

2/13/2026 at 11:53:36 PM

Outside of US free speech isn't the carte blanche it is stateside. There are guardrails, there are limitations pretty much everywhere else. Even in the US This militant application is fairly recent, post 1980s.

by admadguy

2/14/2026 at 12:37:30 AM

You don't need to ban advertising, you just need to ban paying for advertising. That doesn't harm free speech. When there's no money to be made the problem will sort itself out.

by mrob

2/14/2026 at 1:11:26 AM

That's gonna probably just create a bunch of loopholes or hacks like paying with favors instead of cash

by initramfs2

2/14/2026 at 1:14:46 AM

Loopholes can be addressed on a case-by-case basis. A solution being imperfect is not a good reason to leave the problem completely unaddressed.

by mrob

2/14/2026 at 12:04:37 AM

I'm not following the relationship - because you'd have to pay, thus it's not "free" speech? It's hard to argue that having to pay a minimal fee (of let's say $1 per month) would be something against free speech. But the payment shall remain anonymous obviously.

by WinstonSmith84

2/14/2026 at 12:46:35 AM

What are you on about? Who’s speech? The speech of a massive multinational corporation? No thanks. I want the freedom to browse without getting pointless products shoved down my throat.

by whackernews

2/14/2026 at 12:24:12 AM

I'd say the first amendment is due for an overhaul anyway for a variety of reasons. (Heck, the whole constitution is.)

by BrenBarn

2/14/2026 at 1:11:50 AM

You can't say something like that and refuse to elaborate

by initramfs2

2/14/2026 at 12:48:30 AM

Which parts specifically?

by whackernews

2/14/2026 at 12:18:03 AM

>How will you ban that without infringing on free speech

You don't, but the EU doesn't need to care about American ideas of free speech. This is actually in some sense the biggest hurdle to all of this, the psychologically defensive posture that somehow assumes that on European territory this should even be a concern. Also as a sidenote this is even within America a kind of revisionist history, the 20th century had plenty of broadcasting and licensing rules. This unfettered, deregulated commercial environment is even in the US a creature of the last ~40-50 years, and those unchained companies, not unironically, then went on to convince everyone to defend that state of affairs given each opportunity.

by Barrin92

2/14/2026 at 1:08:35 AM

Perfect idea, the internet should only be for rich people. After all, who cares about the 50% of the planet that can barely afford a coffee? Or the millions of small businesses that are only able to survive because of targeted ads? Fuck 'em all, because people can't be trusted to use their own devices properly!

by xvector

2/14/2026 at 1:17:11 AM

Poor people pay more for ads (as part of product price), and suffer more because of ads (from misleading advertising for shit products like junk food and drugs, to having certain out of reach lifestyles based on purchasing crap they don't need hammered on them and getting in debt). They also pay with having a worse media landscape, worse social media, and many more.

People would also be better of without 90% of the ad-driven internet.

by coldtea

2/14/2026 at 1:19:30 AM

Plain text with no tracking is cheaper than coffee.

by mrob

2/13/2026 at 11:46:48 PM

They already effectively banned the mechanism behind most online advertising with the GDPR, it’s just been really, really poorly enforced.

by iamacyborg

2/14/2026 at 12:12:08 AM

So much so that one wonders whether that was the point.

Make a lot of noise about privacy, force massive spend in the general direction of the EU, fund a new layer of bureaucracy, and actually do nothing to harm the toxic business models that were nominally the impetus for all this. Because someone’s gotta pay for all this new “privacy” infrastructure…

by biztos

2/14/2026 at 12:30:56 AM

Ads per se are not evil. The motherfucker we'd want to shoot, however, is targeted advertising and especially those that rely on harvested user data.

In a sense, I'm just agreeing with a fellow comment in the vicinity of this thread that said GDPR is already the EU's shot at banning (targeted) ads---it's just implemented piss-poorly. Personally formulated, my sentiment is that GDPR as it stands today is a step in the right direction towards scaling back advertisement overreach but we have a long way to go still.

Ofc it's impossible to blanket ban targeted ads because at best you end up in a philosophical argument about what counts as "targeting", at worse you either (a) indiscriminately kill a whole industry with a lot of collateral casualties or (b) just make internet advertising even worse for all of us.

My position here is that ads can be fine if they

1. are even somewhat relevant to me.

2. didn't harvest user data to target me.

3. are not annoyingly placed.

4. are not malware vectors/do not hijack your experience with dark patterns when you do click them.

To be super clear on the kind of guy talking from his soapbox here: I only browse YT on a browser with ad blockers but I don't mind sponsor segments in the videos I watch. They're a small annoyance but IMO trying to skip them is already a bigger annoyance hence why I don't even bother at all. That said, I've never converted from eyeball to even customer from sponsor segments.

I'd call this the "pre-algorithmic" advertising approach. It's how your eyeballs crossed ads in the 90s and IMO if we can impose this approach/model in the internet, then we can strike a good balance of having corporations make money off the internet and keeping the internet healthy.

by yallpendantools

2/14/2026 at 12:35:30 AM

what if ads were displayed only on request? “hi, ad page, I need some shoes, let’s go!”

by ulbu

2/14/2026 at 1:17:48 AM

So basically what Google & Amazon does and ban what Meta & Apple does ?

by knowriju

2/14/2026 at 12:35:54 AM

Can I get an amen.

by almostdeadguy

2/13/2026 at 11:32:15 PM

>The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes"

This is not such an unusual thing in law, as much as us stem-brained people want legal systems to work like code. The most famous example is determining art vs pornography - "I know it when I see it" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)

by sincerely

2/13/2026 at 11:53:43 PM

Which is of course the only way it makes sense to write laws, since code can't model infinite reality.

Not, at least, until our machine overlords arrive.

by idiotsecant

2/14/2026 at 12:16:15 AM

> The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do.

The issue is: If you do a precise wording of what you don't want a lawyer will go through it wird by word and the company finds a way to build something which violated the spirit, but not the exact wording. By being more generic in the wording they can reach such cases and future development with very little oversight for later corrections and courts can interpret the intention and current state of art.

There are areas where law has to be precise (calculation of tax, criteria for criminal offenses, permissions for authorities, ...), but in many cases good laws are just as precise as needed and as flexible as possible.

by johannes1234321

2/13/2026 at 11:35:17 PM

Life is complex and beautiful and trying to regulate every possible outcome beforehand just makes it boring and depressing.

by randomNumber7

2/13/2026 at 11:41:58 PM

We should just let people with overwhelming amounts of money research and fund new ways to trick people's lizard brains into giving them even more money.

by torlok

2/14/2026 at 12:01:28 AM

If you’re going to organize your society around the theory that humans don’t actually possess free will, you’re going to produce a fair number of outcomes that a classical liberal would find abhorrent.

by twoodfin

2/14/2026 at 12:05:42 AM

People aren't lizards, however. You demonstrate that by engaging in the distinctly unlizardlike behavior of employing a false dichotomy to imply the opposite.

by replooda

2/13/2026 at 11:52:28 PM

What it does is allow for selective enforcement, making it possible to go after any company at will.

When rules are vague enough you can pretty much always find a rule someone is 'breaking' depending on how you argue it.

It's why countries don't just have a single law that says "don't be evil".

by ApolloFortyNine

2/13/2026 at 11:54:53 PM

No, that's what case law is for. Modelling the zillion little details. One party claims something breaks a law another claims it doesn't, and then we decide which is true. The only alternative is an infinitely detailed law.

by idiotsecant

2/13/2026 at 11:40:45 PM

But how do you stop the boring and depressing - and abusive and manipulative parts?

I'm not saying legislation is a good solution but you seem to be making a poetic plea that benefits the abusers.

by andybak

2/13/2026 at 11:55:47 PM

>I'm not saying legislation is a good solution but you seem to be making a poetic plea that benefits the abusers.

Only if you believe everyone else has no agency of their own. I think most people outgrow these things once they have something more interesting in their lives. Or once they're just bored.

Back when this thing was new, everyone was posting pictures of every food item they try, every place they've been to etc.. that seems to slowly change to now where there are a lot more passive consumers compared to a few polished producers.

If you're calling people delivering the content "abusers", what would you call people creating the content for the same machine?

by saidinesh5

2/14/2026 at 12:16:55 AM

I don't believe people have no agency.

But I do believe we overestimate our own agency. Or more importantly society is often structured on the assumption that we have more agency then we actually do.

by andybak

2/14/2026 at 12:33:54 AM

because some people suffer from mental health issues and need help and encouragement to break these behaviours.

And companies should not be allowed to predate on the vulnerable.

by 2muchcoffeeman

2/14/2026 at 12:37:56 AM

where does it stop though? I suffer from cant-stop-eating-nutella but should we shut down ferrero? it is simply not possible to protect the vulnerable in a free society. any protection only gives power into the wrong hands and will eventually get weaponized to protect “vulnerable” (e.g. our kids from learning math cause some ruling party likes their future voters dumb)

by bdangubic

2/13/2026 at 11:52:12 PM

I would say the core problem is that we lack a goal as society. If you only care about making money stuff like this happens regardless how many regulations you do.

by randomNumber7

2/14/2026 at 12:37:20 AM

> It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling, but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it.

If the EU passes a law that seems general but start giving out specific examples ahead of time, they’re outlawing those specific examples. That’s how they work, even if you read the law closely and comply with the letter of the law. And they’ll take a percentage of your global revenue while people shout “malicious compliance” in the virtual streets if they don’t get their way.

by SllX

2/13/2026 at 11:21:54 PM

I thought about it for only a few seconds, but here is one way to do it. Have users self-report an "addiction factor", then fine the company based on the aggregate score using a progressive scale.

There is obviously a lot of detail to work out here-- which specific question do you ask users, who administers the survey, what function do you use scale the fines, etc. But this would force the companies to pay for the addiction externality without prescribing any specific feature changes they'd need to make.

by coffeemug

2/13/2026 at 11:59:58 PM

> having a few large companies to watch over is better than millions of small micro-niche ones

Not necessarily. The consequences of a few bad micro-niche ones would be, well, micro.

by kawera

2/13/2026 at 11:11:37 PM

> I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?".

Only allowing algorithmic feeds/recommendations on dedicated subpages to which the user has to navigate, and which are not allowed to integrate viewing the content would be an excellent start IMO.

by Llamamoe

2/13/2026 at 11:45:46 PM

to me it isn't about addictive design, it is about infinite scrolling jerking/straining my eyes (and thanks to that strain, it brings me back to reality, and i immediately disconnect from the content thus avoiding whatever addiction it could have sucked me in).

That actually makes me think that any page containing addictive design elements should, similar to cigarette warning, carry a blinking, geocities style, header or footer with "WARNING: Ophthalmologist General and Narcologist General warn about dangers of addictive elements on this page".

by trhway

2/13/2026 at 11:09:54 PM

Assuming it was "just" about banning infinite scrolling. Not saying it is a good idea, but right now I cannot think of a legitimate use case where you would need it, unless your goal is engagement.

by lukan

2/14/2026 at 1:22:36 AM

I've seen it used in non-addictive ways for search results (both specialized[1] and generic global search engines) and portfolios (for showcasing work progressively not merely constantly appending content to the end of singularly viewed work like say news sites do now), off the top of my head.

[1] Eg: printables.com (for open source, 3D print files)

by Springtime

2/13/2026 at 11:58:55 PM

Or just help you avoid clicking next next while searching for something you want.

Although there is a special place in hell for those who put a website options for customer care at the bottom of an infinite scrolling page...

by saidinesh5

2/13/2026 at 11:36:13 PM

a webgame or a document browser, e.g. side scrollers, topdown/bottom up scroller, continuous page view.

by rolph

2/13/2026 at 11:21:52 PM

I like to scroll my logs w/o pagination

by Yiin

2/13/2026 at 11:23:23 PM

But they ain't infinite (I assume). Maybe long, but finite. That is a big difference as it still gives meaning to the scrollbar. Infinite scroll is endlessly adding new content so you simply cannot scroll to the bottom.

by lukan

2/14/2026 at 1:19:00 AM

I dunno, have you tried? Maybe you just need to scroll faster.

by nradov

2/13/2026 at 11:54:10 PM

Technically, infinite scroll is of course finite, too. Unless it adds newly created content, but if you count that as infinite then logs can be infinite too.

That's exactly why you don't write legislation to ban infinite scroll but 'addictive' design. Then it's ultimately up to the courts to decide, and they have the necessary leeway to judge that journalctl -f isn't addictive but TikTok is, even if they both use a version of infinite scroll.

by c7b

2/13/2026 at 11:37:30 PM

if your systemlog is very active or very verbose, this will happen.

i do get the idea though. abusive infinate scroll games/exploits, the compulsion to "finish" the feed.

by rolph

2/13/2026 at 11:10:04 PM

> My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent

These laws are harsh... but, as much as I hate to say it, the impact social media has had on the world has been worse.

by asdfman123

2/13/2026 at 10:42:45 PM

[dead]

by golemiprague

2/13/2026 at 9:49:57 PM

I wouldn't worry about that. You're ignoring politics, and what this actually is. If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago. They do not intend, not even remotely, to sabotage the profit machines that those companies are, they just want political weapons against the companies. The intention here is not to cure addiction, destroy profits, the intention is to use economic power to achieve political ends. The EU is built on this, it just didn't use to involve that many private companies.

Like most famous EU laws, this is not a law for people. Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies and certainly not against EU states, who have repeatedly shown willingness to use AI against individuals, including face recognition (which gets a lot of negative attention and strict rules in the AI act, and EU member states get to ignore both directly, and they get to allow companies to ignore the rules), violate GPDR against their own citizens (e.g. use medical data in divorce cases, or even tax debt collection, and they let private companies ignore the rules for government purposes (e.g. hospitals can be forced report if you paid for treatment rather than pay alimony, rather than pay your back taxes)). The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google.

These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies. Here's how the process works: someone "files a complaint", which is an email to the EU commission (not a complaint in the legal sense, no involvement of prosecutors, or judges, or any part of the justice system of any member state at all). Then an EU commissioner starts a negotiation process and rules on the case, usually imposing billions of euros in fines or providing publicly-backed loans (in the case of banks). The vast, vast, vast majority of these complaints are ignored or "settled in love" (French legal term: the idea is that some commission bureaucrat contacts the company and "arranges things", never involving any kind of enforcement mechanism). Then they become chairman of Goldman Sachs (oops, that just happened once, giving Goldman Sachs it's first communist chairman, yes really. In case you're wondering: Barrosso), or join Uber's and Salesforce's executive teams, paid through Panama paper companies.

In other words: these laws are not at all about addictive design, and saving you from it, they're about going after specific companies for political means. Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, ...

Ironically the EU is doing exactly what Trump did with tariffs. It's just that Trump is using a sawed-off shotgun where the EU commission is using a scalpel.

by spwa4

2/13/2026 at 10:17:47 PM

> If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago.

Addictive designs and social media have changed a lot in the last 10 years, for one. But more importantly, there's no statute of limitation on making laws.

by wasabi991011

2/13/2026 at 10:43:03 PM

You are in all likelihood correct, it's the more realpolitik reading of it. One other more charitable interpretation would be that the EU was under the US's thumb so they never took action, but now that there is some more separation, they are willing to act against these design patterns. It's probably some combination of both elements, weighting each according to how cynical you are, and high cynicism is justified.

by tehjoker

2/13/2026 at 10:08:33 PM

> Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies

Of course the GDPR gives individuals rights, counter example:

> The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google.

by Aarchive

2/13/2026 at 11:16:08 PM

The GDPR is a joke. Such a law should have prevented companies from collecting data in the first place. All we got are annoying pop-ups that do nothing for our privacy.

by drnick1

2/13/2026 at 11:08:18 PM

Is it really so hard for you people to imagine that MAYBE, there's politicians that see what social media look like these days and think they might want to do something against that?

The fact that all of these companies aren't European certainly doesn't help, but if you think this and GDPR, DMA etc. are purely schemes to milk foreign companies then you've been drinking way too much cynicism juice.

by ginko

2/13/2026 at 10:31:30 PM

> These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies.

In the UK at least, the GDPR was incorporated into UK law (where it remains, essentially unmodified, even after Brexit). So it is certainly not necessary to get the EU commission involved to enforce the law. In the UK, the ICO is the relevant regulator. There are other national regulators that enforce the GDPR, such as the French CNIL.

by foldr

2/13/2026 at 10:38:10 PM

One of the best replies on hackernews in years. Hear. Hear.

The EU realized they can extort the US big tech. The EU will now just focus on laws and taxing (the war in Ukraine isn't their problem). And frankly, we should just ignore EU laws in the US.

by jamestest2e4p6x

2/13/2026 at 11:07:19 PM

And the rest of the world should ignore US laws. Drug law, copyright law and of course, patent law. Let's throw it all in the bin, where it belongs.

by theshackleford

2/13/2026 at 11:08:28 PM

> They do not intend, not even remotely, to sabotage the profit machines that those companies are

I think you are projecting values on entities that don't share those values. I don't think they'd have any problem destroying a pile of companies and not enabling replacements; they are not pro-business, and they have not shown a history of regulating in a fashion that's particularly designed to enable home-grown EU businesses. Predictability and consistency of enforcement are not their values, either. They don't seem to have any problem saying "act in what we think the spirit of the law is, and if you think you can just understand and follow the letter of it we'll hurt you until you stop".

by JoshTriplett

2/13/2026 at 11:57:53 PM

"The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes"."

   Wikitionary (2026)
   Noun
   vibe (plural vibes)
    1. (informal, originally New Age jargon, often in the plural) An atmosphere or aura felt to belong to a person, place or thing. [c. 1960s]

by 1vuio0pswjnm7

2/13/2026 at 9:09:48 PM

I hope this goes through. Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive. It isn't a fair fight and the existence of infinite feeds is bad both for people and democracy. Regulating consumer products that cause harm to millions is nothing new.

by poncho_romero

2/13/2026 at 9:18:46 PM

I do so too. Dark patterns should never be acceptable.

The amount of paid shills opposing this is a good indicator that it's the right move.

by erxam

2/13/2026 at 9:14:19 PM

[flagged]

by woodpanel

2/13/2026 at 9:22:01 PM

I imagine there was a similar argument a century ago about how if alcohol kills your marriage, it wasn't a very strong marriage.

I wonder if we'll get speakeasies where people can get endogenous dopamine kicks from experiencing dark patterns?

by ben_w

2/13/2026 at 9:18:03 PM

This. If all it took was a $300k ad campaign on tiktok to get the population of a country(Romania in this case to be specific) to vote for a shady no-name candidate that came out of nowhere, instead of the well known candidates of the establishment, that should tell you the politics of your country betrayed its electorate so badly that they would rather commit national suicide instead of voting the establishment again to screw them over for the n-th time. Tiktok only exposed that, it didn't cause that.

I'm not saying social media isn't cancerous and shouldn't be regulated, because it is and it should, I'm saying that in this specific case it's a symptom of a much bigger existing disease and not the root cause of it.

What I'm mostly afraid of now, is that the lesson governments took from this is not that social media should be regulated and defanged of data collection and addictiveness, but instead that governments should keep and seize control of said data collection and addictiveness so they can weaponize it themselves to advance their agendas over the population.

Case in point, the now US-controlled tiktok does more data harvesting than when it was Chinese owned.[1] At least China couldn't send ICE to your house using that data.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tiktok-new-terms-of-service-pri...

by joe_mamba

2/13/2026 at 9:19:33 PM

> tiktok only exposed that, it didn't cause that

Actually both can be true.

by cbg0

2/13/2026 at 9:22:14 PM

Not in this case. Romanian people hated their corrupt politicians since way before tiktok was invented, so much so, that it's not even a partisan issue, all of them are equally unpopular. Tiktok only acted as release valve for that pent-up anger, but it's not the cause of it. The cause is 35+ years of rampant theft and corruption leading to misery and cases of death of innocent people.

So blaming of tiktok is a convenient scapegoat for Romania's corrupt establishment to legitimize themselves and deflect their unpopularity as if it's caused by Russian interference and not their own actions. NO, Russian interference just weaponized the massive unpopularity they already had.

So here's a wild idea on how to protect your democracy: how about instead of banning social media, politicians actually get off their kiddie fiddling islands, stop stealing everything not nailed to the ground and do right by their people, so that the voters don't feel compelled to pour gasoline on their country and light it on fire out of spite just to watch the establishment burn with it.

Because when people are educated, healthy, financially well off and taken care of by their government who acts in their best interest, then no amount of foreign social media propaganda can convince people to throw that all away on a dime. But if your people are their wits end and want to see you guillotined, then that negative capital can and will be exploited by foreign adversaries. Like how come you don't see Swiss or Norwegians trying to vote Russian puppets off TikTok to power and it's not because they have more control on social media than Romania.

This isn't a Romanian problem BTW, many western countries see similar political disenfranchisement today, and why you see western leaders rushing to ban or seize control of social media and free speech, instead of actually fixing their countries according to the pains of the voters.

by joe_mamba

2/13/2026 at 10:21:52 PM

That only worked though because Romania is using a voting method for President that is completely terrible for countries that have several viable political parties.

They use a two-round system to elect their President that works like this:

1. If a candidates gets more than 50% in the first round they are the winner, and there is no second round.

2. If there is no clear winner in the first round, the top two from the first round advance to the second round to determine the winner.

In that election there were 14 candidates. 6 from right-wing parties, 4 from left-wing parties, and 4 independents. The most anyone got in the first round was 22.94%, and the second most was 19.18%. Third was 19.15%. Fourth was 13.86%, then 8.79%.

With that many candidates, and with there being quite a lot of overlap in the positions of the candidates closer to the center, you can easily end up with the candidates that are more extreme finishing higher because they have fewer overlap on positions with the others, and so the voters that find those issues most important don't get split.

You can easily end up with two candidates in the runoff that a large majority disagree with on all major issues.

They really need to be using something like ranked choice.

by tzs

2/13/2026 at 11:36:15 PM

Ranked choice is very similar to what you just described, has the same downsides, and is much more difficult to understand. What you want is approval voting which has all of the upsides ranked choice claims to have, none of the downsides, doesn't have multiple rounds, and is trivial to understand. On top of that approval voting has an additional benefit where voting third-party/moderates doesn't feel like throwing any vote away so you can just include them and they're much more likely to win.

by Izkata

2/13/2026 at 10:26:18 PM

>That only worked though because Romania is using a voting method for President that is completely terrible for countries that have several viable political parties. [...] They really need to be using something like ranked choice.

Firstly, there's many forms of elections, each with their own pros and cons, but I don't think the voting method is the core problem here.

Let's assume Norway would have the exact same system and parties like Romania. Do you think Norwegians would have been swayed by a an online ad campaign to vote a Russian puppet off tiktok to the last round?

Maybe the education level, standard of living of the population and being a high trust society, is actually what filters malicious candidates, and not some magic election method.

Secondly, what if that faulty election system, is a actually a feature and not a bug, inserted since the formation of modern Romania after the 1989 revolution, when the people from the (former) commies and securitatea(intelligence services and secret police) now still running the country but under different org names and flags, had to patch up a new constitution virtually overnight, so they made sure to create a new one where they themselves and their parties have an easier time gaming the system in their favor to always end up on top in the new democratic system, but now that backdoor is being exploited by foreign actors.

by joe_mamba

2/13/2026 at 9:25:15 PM

No. It's us humans that aren't very strong to begin with. To not admit it is to deny reality at this point.

by thinkingtoilet

2/13/2026 at 9:16:53 PM

Eh, its not like it is happening overnight. Its like a cancer that slowly spreads without much notice and then one day the democracy collapses and its too late to do anything about it.

by mym1990

2/13/2026 at 9:18:08 PM

Ah yes, let's destroy all the weak democracies; they're not strong to begin with.

by dataflow

2/13/2026 at 11:12:46 PM

It's like saying ww2 started because of a few grams of lead and ended because of a few kilo of uranium

You'd be technically true but your missing 99.9% of the point, you can't dilute these complex topics in such dumb ways and use it as an argument

by lm28469

2/13/2026 at 9:15:26 PM

> Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive.

Or you could just shut the phone off and/or not install the app. It's a simple solution, really, and one that is available at your disposal today at no cost.

by tokyobreakfast

2/13/2026 at 9:19:31 PM

Just stop using heroin. Just stop eating fast food. Just stop going to the casino. Just don't smoke anymore.

We know plenty of things are quite bad for us, and yet we find them difficult to stop. Somewhat famously difficult to stop.

I think telling people, "just don't..." trivializes how difficult that is.

by ahhhhnoooo

2/13/2026 at 9:24:42 PM

It's a phone. Put it in the trash. You will not go through physiological withdrawal symptoms.

The amount of people in here right now clamoring for legislation to keep them away from electronics which they themselves purchased is mind-bogglingly insane.

by tokyobreakfast

2/14/2026 at 1:22:48 AM

If it's so easy to do this, then it should also be easy to not make addictive apps right? Why are multi billion dollar companies unable to make a compliant app? They clearly have no issues paying for labor and since this is software, the labor is the true cost for compliance. Are they unable to hire devs that are unethical or what?

Shesh, maybe we should start fining individual developers too if companies aren't able to do it themselves.

by shimman

2/13/2026 at 10:21:31 PM

Oooooof. Can I recommend you spend some time developing some empathy?

The world is complicated. People's lives are complicated (and often meditated by their phones). People's emotional and social wellbeing is complicated, and simply ghosting all your social groups on a random Tuesday is likely to cause significant problems.

by ahhhhnoooo

2/13/2026 at 11:39:43 PM

It's already annoying to buy drugs just because some % of people get too addicted. Now you also want to forbid doomscrolling?

by randomNumber7

2/13/2026 at 11:41:19 PM

Yes. To be clear, the implication of this comment is that you would like to deregulate addictive drugs...?

by happytoexplain

2/13/2026 at 11:57:42 PM

If ~20% of users get an addiction problem I think its not that clear it should be forbidden for everyone.

If basically everyone who takes it for a while gets addicted and dies of course it should be forbidden.

So I would argue that cigaretts should not be allowed but we could discuss cocaine.

by randomNumber7

2/14/2026 at 12:18:23 AM

Empathy? For the doomscrollers?

Please tell me you're trolling, Mr. 6-day-old Account, I'll feel better.

If "scrolling == heroin" is the comparison we're working with here, then SF, Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver BC are living examples that empathy doesn't work.

by tokyobreakfast

2/14/2026 at 12:34:31 AM

Why write like this? This is what sick internet communities look like. Mocking people for their account age, advocating for hating people for the sin of being addicted to social media. This is antisocial behavior, and we should do everything in our power to eject it from the small remaining pockets of sanity on the internet.

by happytoexplain

2/14/2026 at 1:08:53 AM

If we weren't meant to judge someone for his account age, it wouldn't show up in green.

Social media addiction is a mental illness worthy of public mockery. Imagine if alcoholism could be cured by putting your phone in a drawer.

Next time I see a guy in a doorway with a needle sticking out of his arm I'll be sure to tell him, "I know how you feel man, I can't stop scrolling through Instagram. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, a girl will DM me her boobs. It's tough, these addictions."

Enough with the melodrama. Grow up.

by tokyobreakfast

2/13/2026 at 11:26:54 PM

The brain is part of your physiology. And people do go through withdrawal symptoms when they stop using social media that’s been designed for addiction.

by danny_codes

2/13/2026 at 9:31:20 PM

This is unrealistic.

by happytoexplain

2/13/2026 at 9:33:53 PM

It's unrealistic to not install TikTok?

Laws are not created to be malleable about the population's trivial mental illnesses.

We don't need new laws on the books because some people are incapable of turning their phones off. They have addictive personalities and will fulfill this by other means, while everyone high-fives claiming success.

by tokyobreakfast

2/13/2026 at 10:24:07 PM

For many people, it is unrealistic to uninstall Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, Bluesky, whatever the fuck else all at the same time.

I'm proud of you that you are as disconnected as you are. I'm the same -- ditched my addictive social media accounts back in like 2011 -- but not everyone is like us.

by ahhhhnoooo

2/13/2026 at 11:22:53 PM

> but not everyone is like us

There will never be anything close to uniformity, so we must decide if we cripple freedom to protect the weak while increasing bureaucracy and authoritarianism, or allow natural selection to take its course while improving treatment of symptoms.

I'm empathetic to the struggle of addiction, which is a real and terrible thing, but I don't think we should create vague nanny laws as a solution. Even if you're an addict, personal responsibility is still a thing.

by chickensong

2/13/2026 at 11:45:22 PM

> allow natural selection to take its course while improving treatment of symptoms.

I have a feeling natural selection will take its course at the level of nations, with nations that do protect their weak surviving and the ones that let profit extractors exploit and abuse theirs dying off.

by TFYS

2/14/2026 at 12:16:51 AM

Darwinism exists at the level of nations, but I think you may have the outcome exactly backwards.

by kbelder

2/13/2026 at 11:43:17 PM

>cripple freedom to protect the weak

This is an exaggeration intended to provoke.

>allow natural selection to take its course

This is hideous.

>I'm empathetic to the struggle of addiction

You are very strongly implying that this is untrue.

by happytoexplain

2/14/2026 at 1:03:14 AM

> we must decide if we cripple freedom to protect the weak

Well, we do want to protect the weak (that's a function of society, after all), and I'm totally okay with removing infinite scrolling from social media apps (or "crippling freedom" as you put it). I don't see any significant benefit it provides to individuals or society. Indeed, it has a negative impact on both. So it sounds like a win/win.

by ImPostingOnHN

2/14/2026 at 12:36:39 AM

Don't put words in my mouth. I called your comment unrealistic, holistically.

by happytoexplain

2/13/2026 at 9:35:43 PM

> It's a phone. Put it in the trash.

Dude, it's 2025.

A few years ago, I accidentally left my phone at home when I went to work, and when I arrived I found that because I no longer had my 2FA device, I couldn't do any work until I went home again and picked it up.

I'm fine without doomscrolling. I've gone from the minimum possible service with internet, to pure PAYG with no internet, and I'm fine with that. But society has moved on, and for a lot of people, phones are no longer an option.

And for a meaningful fraction of people, somehow, I don't get it either, TikTok is the news. Not metaphorically, it's actually where they get news from.

by ben_w

2/13/2026 at 9:39:18 PM

> Dude, it's 2025.

Actually, it's 2026 and has been for six weeks.

> A few years ago, I accidentally left my phone at home when I went to work, and when I arrived I found that because I no longer had my 2FA device, I couldn't do any work until I went home again and picked it up.

Sounds like a personal problem. There are many other 2FA authenticators available. Yubikey, TOTP tokens, smart cards, etc. Using a smartphone (which can lose power at any time) for critical authentication was a silly idea to begin with. I would refuse anything work-related on my personal phone.

by tokyobreakfast

2/13/2026 at 9:54:02 PM

> Actually, it's 2026 and has been for six weeks.

D'oh. But fair.

> There are many other 2FA authenticators available.

Specified by job, so no choice in this matter.

> I would refuse anything work-related on my personal phone.

Quite reasonable as a general rule, though my then-employer only required the 2FA app and nothing else, and in this case it would've just meant "get an additional phone".

by ben_w

2/13/2026 at 11:38:15 PM

We were literally not given the choice in the matter, in the case of $JOB. Plenty of people complained about having to use their phones to access the buildings, but that was the policy.

I suspect the next thing you're going to say is along the lines of "then just switch jobs", though.

by sensanaty

2/13/2026 at 11:44:40 PM

> I suspect the next thing you're going to say is along the lines of "then just switch jobs", though.

I mean even that might not work out. We just switched to MS Teams last year and Microsoft uses a push-based app, not TOTP or other offline keys like we'd used before. And Teams just seems to be getting more popular...

by Izkata

2/13/2026 at 11:13:08 PM

> I would refuse anything work-related on my personal phone.

What a wonderful privileged position you hold. If only everyone could afford to tell their employer to pound sand in the same heroic manner you have undertaken.

So brave.

by theshackleford

2/13/2026 at 9:20:51 PM

Engineering addiction should be a punishable offense. It already is if you’re a chemist.

by baq

2/13/2026 at 9:20:14 PM

"Just" is the all time champion weight lifter of the English language.

by happytoexplain

2/13/2026 at 9:21:30 PM

You could say that about literally every single type of addictive behavior present on the face of the planet. You could just stop smoking and/or not buying cigarettes. You could just stop drinking and/or stop buying alcohol. It's a completely pointless observation. There's a reason why these are addictions.

by manuelmoreale

2/13/2026 at 9:18:46 PM

Drug stores should stock morphine available without age restriction and if you don't want it, just don't buy it.

by kelseyfrog

2/13/2026 at 9:23:20 PM

[flagged]

by tokyobreakfast

2/13/2026 at 9:50:08 PM

Endogenous drugs, exogenous drugs. Same effect on the brain, and in some cases the actual literal same substances. The difference is that endo-/exo- prefix, the former is made in your body, the latter is supplied from outside.

We have been learning how to induce certain experiences, which correspond to certain substances, for a long time; we're getting more competent at it; this includes social media A/B testing itself to be so sticky that a lot of people find it hard to put down; this is bad, so something* is being done about it.

* The risk being "something should be done; this is something, therefore it should be done"

by ben_w

2/13/2026 at 9:29:44 PM

Yes. The amount of emotional deregulation apparent in your response only advances my point.

by kelseyfrog

2/13/2026 at 11:36:23 PM

The whole point is that these companies are spending a lot of cash making sure that their products are as addicting as possible to as many people as possible, so "just" shutting the phone off isn't a viable strategy.

It's as idiotic a statement as saying "Just stop smoking" around the time when big tobacco was lobbying politicians and bribing scientists and doctors to straight up lie about the deleterious effects of tobacco. It's engineered in such a way as to make it basically impossible for a large swathe of the population to "just not use" the apps.

by sensanaty

2/13/2026 at 10:53:58 PM

Or the people can decide how their society functions.

This learned (or lobbied) helplessness of never changing any laws and we are just stuck with this way of life is silly.

by 2OEH8eoCRo0

2/14/2026 at 12:59:35 AM

The hunt has started: EU burocracy vs TK. In the past EU has rarely directly attacked a single company with so specific points. But anytime they remained consistent and dedicaded to their target and usually won. It just took a long time (from a few years till decades). The only time they lost a policy was at stopping summer-time switch which was cancelled when Covid started.

They avoid to mention the rest of social media platforms, which happen to be US based. It seems they choose a single quick and easy China-based target more like an experiment to decide for the rest. The key point is when: either the current kids will experience it or those that are not yet born.

by tsoukase

2/13/2026 at 9:16:29 PM

Given how badly scrolling has cooked the brain of the average American, seems like a smart thing for the EU to ban.

by OGEnthusiast

2/13/2026 at 9:23:18 PM

And based on some of the replies in this thread we better act fast before it's too late.

by manuelmoreale

2/13/2026 at 11:46:29 PM

This comes from the same EU that's wholeheartedly embracing gambling across their member states, gambling mind you that children can just as easily jump into with their phones and some will, but devastating for grown-ups just as much.

They're not alone in this by any means, America has also opened their doors for all forms of gambling like Kalshi which now even sponsors news networks of all things.

The EU has this disconnect with the things they push, which makes sense considering their size and the speed at which it moves. One example that comes to mind is how they're both pushing for more privacy online while also pushing for things such as chat control which is antithetical to privacy.

Does social media need regulating? Yeah. Is infinite scrolling where they should be focusing? Probably not, there's more important aspects that should be tackled and are seemingly ignored.

by lemoncookiechip

2/13/2026 at 9:03:16 PM

This sounds like a type of insanity. Why would anyone care about something like this to the degree they feel like expressing the opinion publicly let alone in a political regulatory body is beyond me.

Whatever happened to freedom?

by linuxdude314

2/13/2026 at 9:11:02 PM

Maybe you're not the type of person who's struggled with addiction, but it can do awful things to you. Yes, including being addicted to scrolling social media. It screws with your head to the point where you don't know how to live in the moment anymore.

IMO it's a feature that's not valuable enough to justify the fact that it contributes to poor quality of life for people who can't put it down.

by ktm5j

2/13/2026 at 11:45:34 PM

The first step to get on track in life is to stop blaming the outside for all problems. Yes some people had really bad luck but in the end you can only change yourself.

by randomNumber7

2/14/2026 at 12:26:00 AM

I suspect there's not a huge amount of overlap between those who would like this banned and those who are targeted by it.

by MrScruff

2/13/2026 at 9:07:06 PM

> Why would anyone care about something like this ...

Because it is a dangerous addiction [1] with recognised adverse effects on human health. Like sugar, tobacco, or drugs.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959832

by Rygian

2/13/2026 at 9:10:08 PM

While I agree it's not a net positive, I find it dangerous to equate all addictions.

by rockskon

2/13/2026 at 9:11:07 PM

He’s not equating all addictions beyond saying they are all addictions and should be treated as such.

by Forgeties79

2/13/2026 at 9:17:37 PM

But that's the problem - different substances require different solutions.

You reduce sugar intake, not eliminate it.

You eliminate cocaine intake, not just reduce it.

Treating social media design as equal to something that can kill people in excess unnerves me.

by rockskon

2/13/2026 at 9:28:58 PM

> Treating social media design as equal to something that can kill people in excess unnerves me.

As it should, because there's a really obvious "slippery slope" argument right there.

But… it can kill people.

There is a certain fraction of the population who, for whatever reason, can be manipulated, to the point of becoming killers or of causing injury to themselves. Social media… actually, worse than that, all A/B testing everywhere, can stumble upon this even when it isn't trying to (I would like to believe that OpenAI's experience with 4o-induced psychosis was unintentional).

When we know which tools can be used for manipulation, it's bad to keep allowing it to run unchecked. Unchecked, they are the tool of propagandists.

But… I see that slippery slope, I know that any government which successfully argues itself the power to regulate this, even for good, is one bad election away from a dictatorship that will abuse the same reasoning and powers to evil ends.

by ben_w

2/13/2026 at 11:19:23 PM

There's literally a name for using this on purpose: stochastic terrorism.

There's also a very good TED talk on this topic from 8 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI

by DarkUranium

2/13/2026 at 9:23:03 PM

It looks to me like you're adding the conflation to "all addictions" because you can clearly distinguish between "sugar" and "cocaine" as both forms of addictions.

Why would you not be willing to include "scrolling" as another form of addiction? Just because it's labeled the same way you yourself are demonstrating that we handle that in different ways.

Social Media is being treated as "sugar" in this instance instead of as "cocaine".

by xracy

2/13/2026 at 9:11:49 PM

Lets do the nanny state!

(As I get older, unironically. I want my productive worker bees to be drug free, addiction free, enjoying simple pleasures that do not put me at risk. They pay Social Security. Everything is nice and safe. Freedom? Yeah no thanks, get to work and pay your taxes.)

by PlatoIsADisease

2/13/2026 at 9:19:03 PM

The thing is, why do you care? We like it this way. These companies are a cancer and they should be erradicated.

You think that attacking these horrible companies is bad for our freedoms, we think our freedoms are fine with it.

by ekjhgkejhgk

2/13/2026 at 9:15:28 PM

I mean, lets do the opposite where a large corporation gets people intentionally addicted to drugs and then bilks them for every penny they have until they are husks. Remember, free market comes first!

by pixl97

2/13/2026 at 9:14:20 PM

Thank you from talking about the Holy Freedom, my brother. Looking forward to enjoying further freedoms thanks to laws that protect me from behavior that makes me unfree and in need to constantly control me and my surroundings!

by rendx

2/13/2026 at 9:09:15 PM

> Whatever happened to freedom?

Freedom from, or freedom to?

    ‘Freedom does not consist in doing what we want, but in overcoming what we have for an open future; the existence of others defines my situation and is the condition of my freedom. They oppress me if they take me to prison, but they are not oppressing me if they prevent me from taking my neighbour to prison.’ -- Simone de Beauvoir

by rendx

2/13/2026 at 9:26:54 PM

>Why would anyone care about something like this to the degree they feel like expressing the opinion publicly

Why would anyone publicly express any negative opinion about the effects of doomscrolling? I don't think I'm uncharitably paraphrasing, right?

by happytoexplain

2/13/2026 at 11:28:42 PM

We live in a society. We chose rules that we think will make society better. Freedom is meaningless without context. Freedom to doomscroll or freedom from doomscrolling. American propaganda really likes to divorce the concept from reality.

by danny_codes

2/13/2026 at 9:09:46 PM

Social Media companies have actively and intentionally tried to make their products more addicting... now they have to face the very obvious consequences of that decision.

by Jon_Lowtek

2/13/2026 at 11:41:06 PM

Out of curiosity, do you or have you ever worked for one of the FAANGs?

by sensanaty

2/13/2026 at 9:21:02 PM

We have great freedoms in Europe. We just need to apply in advance with our detailed plan, in three copies and the Commission will decide whether to deny our application or to deny it and fine us for unhealthy thoughts, too.

Sarcasm now, but maybe what the near future will look like...

More to the point: this is indeed a massive overreach with the Commission being the police, judge, jury, and executioner... what could go wrong? Exactly what we are seeing is taking shape, precedent by precedent.

by mytailorisrich

2/13/2026 at 9:16:41 PM

Why would someone care about a destructive addiction that's plaguing the lives of the majority of the planet, leading to mental health issues and proliferating massive levels of misinformation. I wonder. Freedom to be manipulated by algorithms, yay!

by solumunus

2/13/2026 at 9:04:51 PM

[dead]

by scottscambaugh

2/13/2026 at 11:09:03 PM

[flagged]

by 928570490687298

2/13/2026 at 9:17:04 PM

it turns out that all those jokes about EU regulating the curvature of the cucumber were on to something

by slopusila

2/13/2026 at 9:31:39 PM

>Whatever happened to freedom?

Turns out it was a big lie you've told yourself so you can let the rich and powerful get away with atrocities.

Hey, we all have free speech, it's just that I can buy a whole lot more of it than you can.

by pixl97

2/14/2026 at 12:17:25 AM

The EU's mission statement seems to be to make the internet as difficult to legally utilize as possible.

I'm interested to see what measures people will use to get around the increasingly bizarre restrictions. Perhaps an official browser extension for each platform that reimplements bureaucrat-banned features?

by GaryBluto

2/13/2026 at 8:59:04 PM

They should move to kill the cookie popup

by peterisza

2/13/2026 at 9:03:04 PM

You don't have to have a cookie popup if you don't do stupid stuff. Don't use anything other than strictly necessary cookies and you are good to go.

Disclaimer: I anal and this is not legal advice.

by mcny

2/13/2026 at 9:07:07 PM

Having worked at multiple companies and talked to multiple legal teams about this, they tend to be very conservative. So the guidance I've gotten is that if we store any information at all on the person's computer, even to know whether they've visited the site before, we still need a cookie banner.

Basically, the law created enough fear among the lawyers that software developers are being advised to include the cookie banner in cases where it isn't strictly needed.

by rpdillon

2/13/2026 at 9:09:32 PM

But it should not be obnoxious, look at steam how is a small banner with two simple actions, vs all other cookie banners.

by norman784

2/13/2026 at 9:15:51 PM

Agreed! Many sites don't actually comply with the GDPR because they don't provide simple tools to control the cookies and instead force you through a flow. Part of my gripe with the law is the way those violations are not being systematically cited.

by rpdillon

2/13/2026 at 11:00:23 PM

If I see a cookie banner I often bounce.

You'd have much better retention rates if you don't cover up the content the viewer is trying to view.

How would you like it if I shoved a banner in your face the moment you walked into a store and forced you to punch a hole in it in order to view items on the shelves?

by dheera

2/13/2026 at 11:56:36 PM

There is a push for something like that: https://www.adweek.com/commerce/cooler-screens-rolls-out-to-...

by Izkata

2/13/2026 at 9:10:41 PM

So? You're not arguing that we should get rid of 'reasonable' laws out of misinterpretations of them, are you?

by rendx

2/13/2026 at 9:12:49 PM

Laws should be evaluated on the effect they actually have on society, rather than the effect that we wish they had on society. I am very critical of laws that fail this test, and I think they should be updated to improve their performance. We want the right outcome, not the right rules.

by rpdillon

2/13/2026 at 9:12:17 PM

> even to know whether they've visited the site before

So uh, don't do that.

You don't need to notify if you use cookies for required functionality like login sessions or remembering a functional setting.

If you're tracking whether they're returning or not your activity is exactly the kind of behaviour the rule is covering because, in legal terms, it's skeezy as fuck.

by stephenr

2/13/2026 at 9:14:07 PM

It's a site where they log in and we store a cookie.

by rpdillon

2/13/2026 at 9:27:16 PM

"Strictly necessary cookies — These cookies are essential for you to browse the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Cookies that allow web shops to hold your items in your cart while you are shopping online are an example of strictly necessary cookies. These cookies will generally be first-party session cookies. While it is not required to obtain consent for these cookies, what they do and why they are necessary should be explained to the user."

https://gdpr.eu/cookies/

by rendx

2/13/2026 at 10:35:43 PM

Right, and then the legal teams tell me they don't care, and we should put up the cookie banner anyway. I feel like you didn't read my original comment.

by rpdillon

2/13/2026 at 11:43:40 PM

That just means your legal team is lazy or incompetent. I work for a massive company that handles extremely sensitive PII and we don't have a cookie banner, because we don't need to have a cookie banner. GitHub doesn't have one, Gitlab doesn't have one.

by sensanaty

2/13/2026 at 9:21:38 PM

> You don't need to notify if you use cookies for required functionality like login sessions or remembering a functional setting

Nobody wants to be the EU test case on precisely how "required functionality" is defined. Regardless of what the plaintext of the law says, it should be self-evident that companies will be more conservative than that, especially when the cost is as low as adding one cooke banner and tracking one preference.

by shadowgovt

2/13/2026 at 11:01:30 PM

Yep. GitHub wrote a blog post on removing their cookie banner years ago.

https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/no-cookie-for...

by tikkabhuna

2/14/2026 at 12:26:17 AM

>At GitHub, we want to protect developer privacy, and we find cookie banners quite irritating, so we decided to look for a solution. After a brief search, we found one: just don’t use any non-essential cookies. Pretty simple, really.

Go to that link, these are the cookies it writes (at least for me):

    * _ga
    * _gcl_au
    * octo
    * ai_session
    * cfz_adobe
    * cfz_google-analytics_v4
    * GHCC
    * kndctr_
    *_AdobeOrg_identity
    * MicrosoftApplicationsTelemtryDeviceId
    * OptanonConsent
    * zaraz-consent

Some are from github.blog, some are from the cloudflare.com hosting. Not sure how the laws apply to that. But obviously there's several analytics cookies.

by kbelder

2/14/2026 at 12:36:00 AM

Sounds like the marketing team finally won.

by veeti

2/13/2026 at 11:08:26 PM

I get a cookie banner accessing that page.

by Devorlon

2/13/2026 at 9:36:11 PM

Don't several of the EU's own government information websites use cookie popups?

by nozzlegear

2/13/2026 at 9:32:44 PM

if you don't track users you don't need GDPR consent dialogs

I think in the past you still needed some info box in the corner with a link to the data policy. But I think that isn't needed anymore (to be clear not a consent dialog, a informational only thing). Also you can without additional consent store a same site/domain cookie remembering you dismissing or clicking on it and not showing it again (btw. same for opting out of being tracked).

But there are some old pre-GDPR laws in some countries (not EU wide AFIK) which do require actual cookie banners (in difference to GDPR consent dialogs or informational things). EU want them removed, but politic moves slow AF so not sure what the sate of this is.

So yes without checking if all the older misguided laws have been dismissed, you probably should have a small banner at the bottom telling people "we don't track you but for ... reasons .. [link] [ok]" even if you don't track people :(. But also if they haven't gotten dismissed they should be dismissed very soon.

Still such a banner is non obnoxious, little annoying (on PC, Tablet, a bit more annoying on Phone). And isn't that harass people to allow you to spy on them nonsense we have everywhere.

by dathinab

2/13/2026 at 9:04:49 PM

It is up to the websites to do that, and to the users to boycott those websites showing cookie popups.

by prmoustache

2/13/2026 at 9:08:52 PM

The regulatory body could clarify that a DO NOT TRACK header should be interpreted as a "functional/necessary cookies only" request, so sites may not interrupt visitors with a popup modal/banner if it's set.

by idle_zealot

2/13/2026 at 9:24:03 PM

The do not track header was good enough in this German case: https://dig.watch/updates/german-court-affirms-legal-signifi...

Having the EU decide on a technical implementation is more of a last ditch effort, like what happened with more than a decade of the EU telling the industry to get its shit together and unify under a common charging port.

by jeroenhd

2/13/2026 at 9:02:53 PM

Just so long as that means killing all the tracking, not just going back to hiding it.

by ben_w

2/13/2026 at 9:26:12 PM

ahhhh, every time the same discussion

1. GDPR consent dialogs are not cookie popups, most things you see are GDPR consent dialogs

2. GDPR consent dialogs are only required if you share data, i.e. spy on the user

3. GDPR had from the get to go a bunch of exceptions, e.g. you don't need permission to store a same site cookie indicating that you opted out of tracking _iff_ you don't use it for tracking. Same for a lot of other things where the data is needed for operation as long as the data is only used with that thing and not given away. (E.g. DDOS protection, bot detection, etc.)

4. You still had to inform the user but this doesn't need any user interacting, accepting anything nor does it need to be a popup blocking the view. A small information in the corner of the screen with a link to the data policy is good enough. But only if all what you do falls under 3. or non personal information. Furthermore I think they recently have updated it to not even require that, just having a privacy policy in a well know place is good enough but I have to double check. (And to be clear this is for data you don't need permission to collect, but like any data you collect it's strictly use case bound and you still have to list how its used, how long stored etc. even if you don't need permissions). Also to be clear if you accept the base premise of GDPR it's pretty intuitive to judge if it's an exception or not.

5. in some countries, there are highly misguided "cookie popup" laws predating GDPR (they are actually about cookies, not data collection in general). This are national laws and such the EU would prefer to have removed. Work on it is in process but takes way to long. I'm also not fully sure about the sate of that. So in that context, yes they should and want to kill "cookie popups". That just doesn't mean what most people think it does (as it has nothing to do with GDPR).

by dathinab

2/13/2026 at 9:07:32 PM

Kill cookie pop up dark patterns*

by kuerbel

2/13/2026 at 9:18:09 PM

But that would require directing the anger at specific companies (and their 2137 ad partners) rather than at an easy target of the banana-regulating evil authority.

Sadly whenever this kind of discussion pops up it's usually a very unpopular take.

by saithir

2/13/2026 at 9:08:43 PM

Simply banning most forms of advertising would be extremely welcome and might largely solve the cookie-popup issue, too.

by bubblewand

2/13/2026 at 11:22:11 PM

Note that, back when it started (pre-GDPR cookie banners), this was pure malicious compliance in 90% of cases.

Most sites didn't need a banner. Even post-GDPR, many use-cases don't need one.

by DarkUranium

2/13/2026 at 9:20:45 PM

Well then where would be the incentive to download apps/not clear your cookies...? :-)

by gib444

2/13/2026 at 9:09:24 PM

and then the inventor should go to prison along with the guys who design the UI of microwave ovens (joke)

by peterisza

2/13/2026 at 9:05:12 PM

Its addictive design in general, but only for Tik-tok. If it works and is applied to others it will be the best thing the EU has ever done.

by graemep

2/13/2026 at 9:02:42 PM

Forcing designs on companies... wtf is going on here

by mocmoc

2/13/2026 at 9:05:37 PM

So, like https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/07/12/2021-14... ?

by ben_w

2/13/2026 at 11:39:27 PM

This is pretty normal? I work for a company that develops lab machines and we have a bunch of designs we have to follow:

ISO 12100 (Safety of Machinery): Sets general, fundamental principles for design, risk assessment, and reduction (Type A standard).

ISO 13849-1 (Safety-Related Parts of Control Systems): Defines performance levels and categories for safety-related components (Type B standard).

ISO 13850 Safety of machinery – Emergency stop function – Principles for design

And that's just some of them.

by lksaar

2/13/2026 at 9:46:05 PM

Companies are part of society and we have a rule-based society.

by simlevesque

2/13/2026 at 11:08:19 PM

Imagine a society that had rules on the designs of haircuts, and punishments to enforce those rules.

by RiverCrochet

2/13/2026 at 11:30:11 PM

Except people aren’t addicted to haircuts and presumably don’t spend 8 hours a day staring at their hair in the mirror.

by danny_codes

2/13/2026 at 11:41:04 PM

I should be able to stare at my phone 8 hours a day without government interference if I want to. No one is holding me at gunpoint. It's my phone and it doesn't hurt anyone else.

by RiverCrochet

2/14/2026 at 1:15:35 AM

Nobody is holding you or other addicts at gunpoint to stop that, so what are you complaining about?

by ImPostingOnHN

2/13/2026 at 9:07:19 PM

I mean, clearly the companies at the top can't be trusted to do what's in the best interests of the users. So at some point someone has to do something. If this is the correct something that remains to be seen.

by manuelmoreale

2/13/2026 at 9:06:34 PM

is this your first year on the internet?

by mplewis

2/13/2026 at 11:42:33 PM

How many days before the only legal social media in the EU is the official government run platform?

by observationist

2/13/2026 at 9:27:40 PM

Facinating that they landed on infinite scrolling as the problem to spend time and energy on instead of all the other things happening online that have an impact on society.

Genuinely curious about the actual data on this.

Does anyone have a link to a reputable, sizable study?

by puppycodes

2/14/2026 at 1:13:05 AM

Here here. Nothing is infinite except for God, I say.

by booleandilemma

2/13/2026 at 9:11:29 PM

I see some synergy between this and the "iOS keyboard sucks" thread. Maybe they can regulate that next.

I'm curious how they plan to pretend to enforce this. Will you need a loisence to implement infinite scroll?

by tokyobreakfast

2/13/2026 at 11:55:35 PM

Early on in the internet age it somewhat bothered me that every page on the www either acts like it is the first thing one reads on a topic or assumes great knowledge of the subject. With nothing in between.

Wondering about a technical solution I couldn't find anything besides fold out explanations and links to explain jargon. Neither would really bridge the gap.

One obvious theory was to keep track of what the user knows and hide things they don't need or unhide things they do. This is of course was not acceptable from a privacy perspective.

Today however you could forge a curriculum for countless topics and [artificially] promote a great diversity of entry level videos. If the user is into something they can be made to watch more entry level videos until they are ready for slightly more advanced things. You can reward creators for filling gaps between novice and expert level regardless of view count.

Almost like Khan academy but much slower, more playful and less linear.

Imagine programming videos that assume the reader knows everything about each and every tool involved. The algorithm could seek out the missing parts and feed them directly into your addiction or put bounties on the scope.

by econ

2/13/2026 at 10:49:32 PM

Looks like the EU can just get a feature flag to use pagination or a "Load More" button? Doesn't seem as big of a deal as enforcing USB-C.

Though if it applies to the YouTube, seems annoying when trying to find a video to watch. I usually trigger a few infinite scrolling loads to look for videos.

And I assume they'd have to specify a maximum number of items per page, or else devs could just load a huge number of items up front which would technically not be infinite scrolling but enough content to keep someone occupied for a long time.

by pedroma

2/13/2026 at 11:47:04 PM

Next: Gaming company sued because a game is fun to play.

by randomNumber7

2/14/2026 at 12:56:03 AM

Good. Infinite scrolling is a scourge. Give me back my time ordered feed that if I navigate away stays on the page where I left off.

by relaxing

2/14/2026 at 1:10:52 AM

Oh, no, this will kill all slop innovation!

by coldtea

2/14/2026 at 12:47:41 AM

As long as this doesn't create yet another cookie popup UX nonsense we've ended up with...

by Lorin

2/13/2026 at 11:39:05 PM

This was long overdue. I hope killing other dark patterns that feast on attention or hunt on flaws in human psychology follow. However, my only concern is how this will be taken care of. I hope they learned something from the GDPR fiasco.

by tartoran

2/13/2026 at 9:26:40 PM

I admire the EU's attempts at things like the cookie law, age verification, and tackling the addictiveness of infinite scrolling, but the implementation is pure theater.

Trackers have much more effective techniques than "cookies", kids trivially bypass verification, and designers will make a joke of tell me you have infinite scrolling without telling me you have infinite scrolling. When you are facing trillions of dollars of competition to your law, what do you think is going to happen?

Maybe if there was an independent commission that had the authority to rapidly investigate and punish (i.e. within weeks) big tech for attempting engagement engineering practices it might actually have some effect. But trying to mandate end user interfaces is wasting everyone's time putting lipstick on a pig.

by avaer

2/14/2026 at 1:11:23 AM

Technically this is about Tiktok's "addictive design", and their examples include "infinite scroll over time". It's totally unclear what they mean by that, or what Tiktok would have to change it to in order to be in compliance. The whole thing seems like it was written by a boomer bureaucrat who has never used Tiktok, let alone a computer.

by phendrenad2

2/13/2026 at 9:17:49 PM

Dunno about using legislative moves, but yes please. The stupidest solution to a problem no one had. Moving layouts, unreachable footers, no or unsatisfactory indication of one's position.

All just to remove navigation clicks no one minded and reduce server loads, in exchange for users suffering laggy lazy loading (or, what a hate-inducing pattern!) inability to preload, print, search or link.

by ZoomZoomZoom

2/13/2026 at 11:22:49 PM

From another article:

>"Social media app TikTok has been accused of purposefully designing its app to be “addictive” by the European Commission, citing its infinite scroll, autoplay, push notification, and recommendation features."

All of these have immediate and easy replacements or workarounds. Nothing will substantially change (for the better; maybe it does for the worse, even).

Moreover, "purposefully designing something to be addictive" (and cheap to make) is the fundamental basis of late stage capitalism.

by Funes-

2/13/2026 at 9:28:51 PM

Infinite scrolling combined with the algorithmic feed is the real nasty.

Feeds should be heavily regulated, effectively they are a (personalized!) broadcast, and maybe the same strictures should apply. Definitely they should be transparent (e.g. chronological from subscribed topics), and things like veering more extreme in order to drive engagement should be outlawed.

by somewhereoutth

2/13/2026 at 9:16:24 PM

Would it affect HackerNews? The list of topics on the main page is a form of infinite scroll.

by badpun

2/13/2026 at 9:20:41 PM

No it's not? It's paged.

by asib

2/13/2026 at 10:58:07 PM

> We value your privacy

> We use cookies and other technologies to store and access personal data on your device

Evidently you don't value privacy.

by dheera

2/13/2026 at 9:22:45 PM

I don't know how the EU has time for this kind of thing right now. Honestly

by gib444

2/13/2026 at 10:57:17 PM

Yes they should be banning the political propaganda instead.

by amelius

2/13/2026 at 9:15:37 PM

another cookie warning disaster incoming

hopefully AI will wake them up and save us from all this nonsense

by slopusila

2/13/2026 at 9:18:47 PM

Jesus the EU is becoming a dystopian nightmare.

by spiderice

2/13/2026 at 9:36:48 PM

What exactly is dystopian about protecting developing minds of children and teens from detrimental effects and social media addiction caused by companies like Meta and Bytedance. These companies profit immensely from being quasi unregulated.

by uxcolumbo

2/13/2026 at 9:28:06 PM

Where are you suggest we move to escape this dystopian nightmare?

by manuelmoreale

2/13/2026 at 9:34:02 PM

To Muskland where corporations own everything including the infinite scroll feeds.

You can buy as much freedom as you want there.

by pixl97

2/13/2026 at 9:39:29 PM

Yeah exactly, right? Europe is the dystopian nightmare, sure.

by manuelmoreale

2/13/2026 at 11:17:55 PM

How low do you have to sink to defend a legislature attacking the privacy of the sovereign again and again? Pathetic.

Von der Leyen, who illegally deleted her SMS and is being investigated for corruption, conflict of interest and destruction of evidence, must be glad she can count on you to defend spying on every citizen via "Chat Control" and forcing browser developers to accept any state-mandated root certificates via eIDAS.

by 928570490687298

2/13/2026 at 11:39:30 PM

[flagged]

by flanked-evergl

2/13/2026 at 9:14:43 PM

Watch what governments do, not what they say.

This isn’t about addiction, it’s about censorship. If you limit the amount of time someone can spend getting information, and make it inconvenient with UI changes, it’s much harder to have embarrassing information spread to the masses.

Amazingly, the public will generally nod along anyway when they read governmental press releases and say “yes, yes, it’s for my safety.”

by ARandomerDude

2/13/2026 at 9:18:46 PM

Scrolling through an infinity of AI slop videos can't really be classified as "getting information". If you want to read the news and stay up to date with the "embarrassing information" there's plenty of news websites out there.

by cbg0

2/13/2026 at 9:09:18 PM

I have a proud European coworker trying to get their H1B...

They talk about how great Europe is, how they like their 1-2 hour coffee/smoke breaks... These kind of moves give me that same vibe.

But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? Why isn't the opposite happening?

My hypothesis is that these kind of popular policies are short sighted. They are super popular, they use intuition and feeling. But maybe there is something missing. The unadulterated freedom has led people to enjoy these platforms. Obviously it affects the economy. So much so, even the US military has moved from Europe to Asia.

I don't typically like fiction, but it seems "I, Robot" was spot on about Europe. (Maybe mistaking new Africa for Asia)

by PlatoIsADisease

2/13/2026 at 11:38:08 PM

They aren’t trying to move to the US? At least in western/Northern Europe.

Curious where you got your statistics?

If anything it’s probably the opposite, with more Americans wanting to move to Europe than the reverse.

by danny_codes

2/13/2026 at 9:28:55 PM

Well, your freeeeedooooms include having to pay taxes when living outside of the US. I'd say that's a pretty big factor in deciding if it's worth it to leave the country.

by kuerbel

2/13/2026 at 9:30:46 PM

Why are so many Americans trying to move to the EU? Turns out people have different wants and needs in life, and so they move to where they like best. I for one would never set foot in USA in fear of being shot, kidnapped by ICE (or shot by ICE), fear of being bankrupt by the healthcare options there if something happens to me, fear of the poison you call food, and the absolutely ignorant populace that seems to roam the streets there. I swear half the times I can't even tell if USA is a real place or some really bizarre reality TV show.

by askonomm

2/13/2026 at 9:19:03 PM

> But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? Why isn't the opposite happening?

Citation needed.

I took some minutes to try and find statistics, and also ChatGPT claims that the EU simply doesn't collect or publish that kind of data, so I'm wondering how you think you know.

by rendx

2/13/2026 at 9:30:28 PM

> But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US?

All I see in my circle is people refusing to even go on vacation in the US, let alone move there.

by manuelmoreale

2/14/2026 at 12:14:07 AM

And in two of my circles there is concern about people who do live in the US but are not citizens. Both married US citizens, both have clean paperwork, but whereas normally it'd take considerable paranoia to expect any trouble today it seems entirely on brand. One of the US citizens is angry because of course her rural hospital is going bankrupt and she'll be left in the middle of nowhere with her foreign-born sick and gradually dying husband and somehow that's not even near the top of the agenda. The other is just keeping her head down, crossing fingers, maybe in all the excitement they won't get around to undoing Obergefell and she can stay married to the love of her life?

I do know people who've gone, only on vacation and they were exactly the sort of unthreatening rich white folks that you'd expect to have least trouble. Oh, and some US citizens who went "home" to see family at Xmas but work here.

by tialaramex

2/13/2026 at 10:28:17 PM

Same here, to the point I would even avoid layovers in the US and take a more expensive flight instead. I don't want to deal with some power tripping immigration officer insisting to search my phone and social media to send me to some camp because I wrote critical comments about the current administration.

by OKRainbowKid

2/14/2026 at 12:53:56 AM

Irrational fear. So who do you think funds this propaganda? Russia or China?

by PlatoIsADisease

2/14/2026 at 1:22:16 AM

Irrational fear in whose opinion?

by ImPostingOnHN

2/13/2026 at 9:22:37 PM

Does this only apply to companies the commission doesn't like or will it apply to the hn app I use, my email clients, shopping sites, etc? Because it seems like the actual concern how good the algorithms are and not the UI.

by causalmodels

2/13/2026 at 9:30:09 PM

This is a finding of a violation of the DSA, which only applies to services (not local reader apps), and only if they have a lot of users.

Like, a significant fraction of the country level of usage. You don't need to worry about the EU coming and taking away your HN client APK. You do need to be worried about Google doing that, though.

by idle_zealot

2/13/2026 at 11:57:35 PM

I bet 100$ the good intention will outcome as a terrible joke, EU dumb bureaucrats are famous for.

by aristofun