The problem is not the contents. The problem is the entire structure. Starting from here the two senators of the Democratic Party Lorenzo Basso And Antonio Nicita they presented a bill dedicated to algorithmic addictionlinked above all to platforms. This time there is a distinction. The objective of the bill is not work on content moderation. To be clear, the point is not the posts, photos or videos we scroll through every time we are on social media. This text aims to address precisely that the structure: the context in which we see this content.
Specifically, we are talking about three phenomena related to the design of the algorithms: algorithmic dependency, algorithmic influence And selective algorithmic manipulation. There are three phenomena that influence the environment in different ways our way of looking at content. Algorithmic addiction is a formula that holds together all those mechanisms that lead us to stay attached to the screen. THE’algorithmic influence concerns the choices made in the selection of contents without our knowledge and the handling it is the way in which platforms alter the visibility of a single piece of content.
For manipulation, the proposal mentions cases known to the news: from the change in visibility recorded by some account X to the role of TikTok in the 2024 Romanian elections, elections which were later annulled by Constitutional Court of the country after a series of reports from domestic agencies on Russian interference.
Instagram must compensate a girl 4.2 million dollars: according to the court, social media is addictive
Judgments on social network addiction
In recent days the topic of social network addiction has become the protagonist of a sentence in California. A Los Angeles court condemned Meta and Google because their platforms allegedly caused a form of addiction in a 20-year-old womanknown in the news as Kaley MG According to her testimony, Kaley went as far as to go on Instagram until 16 hours a day.
The Los Angeles jury recognized for the first time that the addiction was not caused by the contents on the platform but by the design of the platform itself. Meta and Google have already announced that they will appeal but in the meantime a fine has been imposed on them by 6 million dollars.
What are the objectives of the bill
Fanpage.it spoke with Lorenzo Basso to understand the points of the bill, with a premise. It’s not easy to enforce regulations on Big Tech, especially if they result in the loss of users or the loss of time spent on the platform. For now, a strategy that has worked has been to move at a European level. The European market is made up of approximately 446 million of people with good spending power. Making requests for access is usually a good way to get people to listen to you.
“The idea behind the proposal is not to discourage the use of social networks but to build a healthy environment,” explains Lorenzo Basso. And then he makes a comparison with another type of addiction: “I had a long battle with it compulsive gamblingon the mechanisms that transform a player into a pathological patient. Some of these are also used in social networks, precisely to keep us glued to the screen.”
One of these mechanisms is lo infinite scrollingthat system whereby we can scroll through the videos in our feed without ever having an end. Every time we scroll down we find a new video. A surprise content that could please or disgust us. We can win or lose, as if we had a virtual slot machine in front of us.
Basso continues: “To give an analogical example, what we want to avoid is a sort of subliminal advertising. In the past there were forms of advertising in which hidden messages were inserted from users which however influenced them in some way, like imperceptible images placed in a video. Here, we want to avoid social media having the same effect”.
