You hire the same kinds of people that these companies hire to design their products to be addictive and then you draft legislation banning the things that they say are addictive.

Nonsense. There is no way to write such a law that would comply with the vagueness doctrine. It's impossible.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vagueness_doctrine

A better solution would be to teach how to get out of addiction and treat it more effectively vs banning. Banning only makes the addiction features more taboo and thus even more addictive. See prohibition, 1920-1930.

Do you really foresee a future where addictive aspects of social media are banned and the descendents of moonshiners are setting up servers next to rusted out stills in abandoned shacks in the Kentucky mountains so that people can get their doom scrolling fix over Tor?

Now that I reread that, I think it's entirely possible. Man the future is weird.

>"A better solution would be to teach how to get out of addiction"

It's hard to say no to the idea of more education, but I believe this is a non impactful solution. We've been teaching about the dangers of alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, unhealthy food, and much more for decades - if not generations. It only goes so far. I don't believe most addicts are addicted because of ignorance or a lack of rationality. I believe the primary driver is biological rather than a lack of knowing better.

How sure are you about that? There are countries that are successfully fighting addiction (such as Portugal) to drugs[1].

The US has massively failed addicts for some time, wanting to just put them in jail instead of treating them.

1: https://deserthopetreatment.com/addiction-guide/drug-industr...

I think we're talking about two different aspects to the problem. The methods and approaches taken in regards to treating addiction is not the same thing as teaching people about the harm of drugs. I'm not saying we shouldn't have drug / substance abuse education, but rather, its not the cure-all people think it will be.

what's the "addictive" part of tiktok to ban? Scrolling? Providing recommendations? Seems quite nebulous to legislate against.

The core problem with most social media, including TikTok, is that they fully control how you can consume the content, be it the endless-recommendations-scrolling of TikTok or the Twitter or Facebook timeline. You can't browse it in a non-addicting fashion, even if you tried, as third party clients are not allowed.

So the solution should be to force them to open up to third party clients. This won't magically make the problem go away completely, but not having so much content locked inside a Skinner box would certainly be helpful.

And how much should those third-party clients have to pay for access? Who sets the price?

Ah, you'd set up the revolving door system of regulation the likes of which is used to ensure banks, stock markets, and military procurement don't operate against the public good. Well that takes care of "addictive".

Now how about "bad habits"? Have Republican politicians appoint their "experts" to draft it? Or perhaps your politics sway the other way and you'd prefer Democrats to appoint their experts, perhaps the Catholic Church, given the persuasion of their current leaders.