Josh Hawley has bad ideas for fixing social media
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator desperate to brand himself as the future of the conservative movement, has spent the last few months attaching his name to pretty much any legislation that addresses problems with the tech industry. That includes pushing for antitrust inquiries, criticizing YouTube recommendations, looking into Big Tech censorship concerns, and banning loot boxes in video games.
Hawley is correct that these features increase users’ time on site, but placed in a larger context, explicitly targeting them with legislation seems absurd. Imagine if television channels were required to get users to opt-in before proceeding to the next program, or had a message pop up every half hour informing the viewer how long they’d spent watching cable news .
What is ironic about this is that Hawley, in announcing this legislation, betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of cause and effect. “Big tech has embraced a business model of addiction,” he writes. “Too much of the ‘innovation’ in this space is designed not to create better products, but to capture more attention by using psychological tricks that make it difficult to look away.” Sure, he’s not wrong, but the key words here are “business model.
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