HN lets users opt to automatically lock themselves out after a while (noprocrast). Fortnite and WoW do not. Sounds like one knows they have users with problems, no?

I think the term addiction is way overused in this stuff. If a company makes a product you enjoy using that doesn't mean you can just describe it as addictive and get out of jail free. If there's some chemical in it that messes with your brain, fine, otherwise people need to take ownership of their own choices.

I think the disturbing reality is these countries are wanting to control social media to control the population politically. There was even a Labour MP in the UK who admitted it on television. If it weren't the case they'd just tell concerned parents to turn on the parental controls devices already have, problem solved. Instead they pass laws to end internet anonymity, but only on the big networks, which won't do anything for kids but is an excellent way to control political discontent.

Parental controls don’t work, they’re too coarse grained and too easy to get past. Source: am a parent.

They do work. You may not feel they work perfectly, but government mandated ID verification on social media will work far worse and be far more coarse grained. You don't even have any control with government regulation, so being "coarse grained" isn't even worth discussing because with one-size-fits-all laws imposed by the providers there is no grain.

> I think the disturbing reality is these countries are wanting to control social media to control the population politically

The current alternative is that unaccountable private interests control this, so some regulation in this regard seems reasonable to me. However, swapping private control for public control is only barely better.

The best solution that I can think of is ending algorithmic feeds, and having subscription feeds, or maybe user curated feeds, only.

I think moving algorithmic feeds out of section 230 would do the trick. Once you’re curating the feed, you’re no longer a neutral platform.

This is the best idea I’ve heard in a long time. This would solve so much.

Could already be argued it's not, right? The post is from another user, and the platform isn't liable for hosting it, but the feed is from the platform and the platform can be held liable for it.

The difference is whether or not the platform is for-profit. If the goal of the platform is to make money, decisions will be made to keep people more addicted than would otherwise be natural. And that's the problem.

Karma and thread-ranking are adaptations that directly increase addictiveness while doing little else...

thread ranking is useful and doesn't increase addictiveness

I do agree that karma increases addictiveness and adds little value; I can see it being useful for certain permissions (so new accounts can't do thinks like downvoting), but it could just not be visible to the user; then there's no motivation to "increase my karma"

> thread ranking is useful and doesn't increase addictiveness

Can you please elaborate on what you find useful about thread-ranking? It's an anti-feature that only serves to increase addictiveness (by making top-level comments into a competition) and make it impossible to reload an active discussion and find your place again, in my opinion.

I find it useful because when browsing a post, you have the most upvoted or commented on at the top. I don't see how it increases top-level comment competition unless commenters are trying to get their comment up to the top? I think if you hide the karma, and that would also including hiding how many upvotes/downvotes your comment got, then you can't really track the "competition" and makes it much less competitive (and potentially addictive).

(I do see your point about not being able to keep your place, though I don't systematically go through all comments in a post -- or very rarely -- more just quickly browse for things that catch my attention, interesting info, etc.)

An infinite stream of user generated content with direct engagement possibilities is enough to fry our brains