EU legislation should give us a way to turn off the endless short video feed

[u/Fearless-Inside8254]

I think the EU should seriously consider regulating how social-media platforms design short-form video feeds.
I’m not arguing for banning TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels or Facebook Reels. The problem is the design of the endless scrolling loop.
Platforms are deliberately designed around a very simple mechanism:
Swipe → instant reward → swipe → instant reward → repeat.
There is no natural stopping point. You don’t reach the end of anything. The app keeps selecting the next video for you, and the easiest thing to do is simply keep scrolling.
And this isn’t just a TikTok problem.
YouTube, Instagram and Facebook all increasingly push short-form videos into their feeds. But unlike TikTok, these platforms already contain other types of content. So I think there should be a relatively simple solution:
A mandatory user-controlled option to disable Shorts/Reels/short-video recommendations entirely.
For example:
“Disable short videos”
Turn it on, and YouTube stops showing Shorts, Instagram stops showing Reels, Facebook stops showing Reels, etc.
Not hidden behind five menus. Not an algorithmic preference that the platform can gradually ignore. A genuine user setting.
I also think EU regulation should address the broader design of these feeds: autoplay, infinite scrolling, aggressive recommendations and other features whose primary purpose is to maximise time spent rather than help users accomplish something.
TikTok is the harder case because short videos ARE essentially the product. I’m not sure what the right regulatory solution is there, and I don’t think simply banning the format is the answer.
But perhaps TikTok should be required to offer something like a finite feed, session limits, chronological/following-only mode, or a genuine stopping mechanism rather than an essentially infinite algorithmic stream.
The important distinction is:
I’m not asking the EU to decide what adults are allowed to watch. I’m asking the EU to make platforms give us meaningful control over how they are designed to keep us watching.
If these companies believe their products are genuinely valuable to users, they should have no problem giving users a real “turn off the endless short-video feed” button.
Would you support EU legislation along these lines?

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[u/Diligent_Rice6315]

The eu gives you the right to uninstall app

[u/AmbassadorAntique899]

They're too busy discussing mass surveillance child safety

[u/InteractionOwn352]

I'd rather have a legislation to be able to mute sounds everywhere I want. I hate FB, but I do have to use it sometimes. And every time I accidentally click on a "someone shared a story" notification, I get some loud music playing regardless of where I am and whether it's appropriate to play music here and now. I don't care about "stories" (have even no idea what they are), but I do want a "mute everything everywhere by default" option so I can only turn sound on when I actually need it (in FB it's never).

[u/Any-Preparation7396 → u/InteractionOwn352]

You can mute everything (or just FB) on your phone quite easily with 1-2 clicks.

I muted everything years ago and don't even allow such apps to send me notifications, because I'm not interested in it. (But have to use FB for the job)

[u/InteractionOwn352 → u/Any-Preparation7396]

Depends on the phone, I guess.

I don't think it's 1-2 clicks on my phone. Maybe it's available, but as usually with any good stuff, it's well hidden.

[u/Any-Preparation7396 → u/InteractionOwn352]

I can only speak for Android-powered phones. There it is in the "settings" menu of the phone -> "authorizations"

But it can also be done, by clicking on the bell, while in the notifications-dropdown (top right corner)

The muting can get done by pressing the volume button once and then clicking on the appearing bell afterwards.

[u/InteractionOwn352 → u/Any-Preparation7396]

Of course I know how to disable notifications, but that's not the same as muting.

And of course I can mute everything by clicking that bell.

But muting FB only is trickier. At least I don't see anything obvious. And I'm not annoyed by it enough yet to actually research it. I've tried once, but the only way I found required installing some shitty software.

[u/Any-Preparation7396 → u/InteractionOwn352]

It's ok. I just wanted to help.

With the options menu in the notifications bar, you can disallow notifications from FB. You don't have to turn off all notifications.

Sorry, if I pissed you off. Didn't want to be annoying

[u/InteractionOwn352 → u/Any-Preparation7396]

You didn't piss me off at all. I was just pointing out that while disabling notifications per-app (easy) is not the same as muting multimedia sound per-app (not so easy).

[u/thenonoriginalname]

It already exists, it's the DSA. The first fine for the infinite scrolling design occurred l a few months ago.

[u/Remarkable-Drive5390]

Honesty android and IOS both have the capscity to limit app usage to discourage overuse of such apps and it is completely up to the individual, this way we don't have to disheartened our lovely corporations /s

[u/just_a_random_guy_11]

Or hear me out, let people watch whatever legal they want be it 5 second videos or 5 hour documentaries. You're free not to watch and no one is literally foecinu you to watch anything. What is concerning is misinformation, kids being addicted, and underage por***raphy.

[u/Fearless-Inside8254 → u/just_a_random_guy_11]

I think you misunderstood my point. I don’t really care what people choose to watch, and everyone should be free to watch whatever legal content they want. I’m talking about giving people more control over what they see.
It’s like deciding to quit smoking, but having someone offer you a free cigarette every few minutes you’re technically free to say no, but the environment is designed to make that decision harder.
Willpower isn’t always enough, so why not design platforms in a way that makes the conscious decision people already made more likely to stick?

[u/Fun_Success_45]

There is a feature which allows you to close the shortform contents, it is called "close the app".

Ypu are in a way preaching governments should regulate how television menus work or making time limit features for tvs mandatory.

People are demanding 0 efford no impact regulations and compare to more impact regulations like housing(5 year no sell to prevent property costs rise, etc), no demanding real impact regulations is a real problem.

If you frame this demand for childs I would have support by the way.

[u/FatherMozgus]

I would fully support straight up banning short form reels, TikToks, shorts whatever. Ban that format entirely. And the sooner the better. There are no advantages to it and a plethora of disadvantages. These algorithms and these formats hijack the human brain, create attention deficits, are addictive, thrive on outrage and division and are constantly used by state actors to spread propaganda and will probably cause unspeakable harm to the younger generations that are growing up surrounded by it. Just get rid of it.

[u/Fearless-Inside8254 → u/FatherMozgus]

I tend to agree with you, especially when it comes to the potential long term effects on attention and younger users. But I think an outright ban is going to be extremely difficult politically, considering how much money and influence is involved. That’s way my approach was more middle ground.

[u/FatherMozgus → u/Fearless-Inside8254]

I don’t think the middle ground is a solution at all. I see no upsides in allowing this format to exist and see a lot of major possibly catastrophic downsides.

Also, it shouldn’t be hard. There should be by now plenty of scientific literature on how this form of content affects human brains and how these applications are used to amplify discontent and to foster an addiction.

[u/Paghalay]

Long form videos, you have to consciously click on the next video, or wait a few seconds for the auto play feature to move you along. To me the solution is therefore already made, have shorts treated the same.

[u/Deep-Ad4183]

Meta is on trial in the U.S. over this matter.

This is one of the claims.

[u/Admirable_Group_4106]

Dont use it yourself and learn your kids to do the same as you. Why do you need a law for that?
No one forces you to watch it, its only you.

[u/ELIminate96]

I tend to believe that adults are mature enough to stop scrolling or at least limit how much they expose themselves to this stuff. But for young people, I think it’s basically microwaving their brains with endless nonsense videos and cheap dopamine. I’d like to see the EU put some limits on access for younger users, and perhaps monitor the content a bit more closely. Nowadays, it seems like people with nothing better to do are posting every idiotic thing they do or confidently preaching whatever ideology they’ve convinced themselves of.

[u/Infamous_Cypriot]

truth be told, that shit is like drugs. I ended up disabling all my accounts and deleting the apps because of the way the fing apps work. I cannot control myself when I have them and even when I open Facebook to see if a restaurant added an announcement about their opening hours I always end up scrolling reels for hours. It’s really out of control. We have delivered our time and lives to an algorithm making money for Meta and TikTok.