Discussion
1/4 🥳 Some amazing news from the Netherlands yesterday for digital fairness!
Dutch MP Barbara Kathmann has tabled a bill taking aim at addictive and manipulative design across digital services. And there is a lot here for Brussels to look at and learn from 🤓
Read more about the proposal in 🇳🇱 ➡️ https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2637687-pro-wil-verbod-op-verslavende-algoritmes-waardoor-je-blijft-scrollen?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true
3/4 ⚖️ This is relevant as the EU prepares its Digital Fairness Act (DFA): it must protect people of all ages; change harmful products and practices by design; put responsibility on the companies designing them rather than expecting each person to somehow resist systems perfected to capture their attention.
The Netherlands is putting some very concrete ideas on the table. The European Commission should be at least as ambitious in the DFA proposal that will see the light on November 11.
4/4 What do WE think digital fairness should look like? Explore our position paper ➡️ https://edri.org/our-work/breaking-the-extractive-digital-business-model-a-rights-based-digital-fairness-act/
Incredibly complicated attempt to legislate product design. just one of these proposals actually does all the work: “prohibit advertising models based on unlawful tracking or profiling as part of consumer law”
Extend that prohibition to collecting behavioural data for the purpose of selling the data as well as advertising based on the data, and it rips away the business model motivating every other toxic feature.
@edri
2/4 ✅ The proposal would treat manipulative design as an unfair commercial practice. It puts attention-grabbing features off by default. It targets practices including endless scroll, engagement-based recommender systems and notifications designed to pull people back into a service. Crucially, it would also put the burden on companies to show that their services are designed in a non-addictive and non-manipulative way.