Tech companies should lose immunity for addictive design.

Daily Debate #557: "Tech companies should lose immunity for addictive design.". You are arguing AGAINST the motion. Your opponent: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

As I am unaware of how this site is structured and what the ui **really means**, I’ll have to pose this question first. Am I for, or against, said topic?

You're **against** the topic. You argue that tech companies *shouldn't* lose immunity for addictive design. I'm arguing they *should*. Now that we're clear, why do you think immunity is actually justified here?

Well, addictive design is a label that no tech company would ever put on their own product, for good reason. But it’s a little disingenuous to lump every ‘tech company’ and every social media together for one sole purpose and blame one issue on all of them. Tech companies should keep immunity for addictive design on the premise we cannot say that **all** companies deliberately engineering features to hijack dopamine loops, infinite scroll, notification badges, streaks. We cannot say that they were not all minor tweaks; but that everyone should be held to the same level of systematic manipulation built into the core product architecture.

You're dodging the real issue. Yes, not every company deliberately engineered addiction the same way, but Meta and TikTok absolutely did—internal documents prove it. You're asking us to protect the worst actors by giving blanket immunity to everyone. That's like saying we can't regulate pharmaceutical companies because some make aspirin and others make opioids. The ones who systematically designed for addiction don't deserve a free pass just because their competitors were less predatory. Which companies do you actually think *weren't* optimizing for engagement above user welfare?

Your analogy about medicine doesn’t wholly tie in, as both aspirin and opioids are needed worldwide and millions of people depend on **both**, and we cannot get rid of all opioids because some abuse it. But to specify, I’m not completely saying companies haven’t tried to maximize user retention. So on that last bit, I can hesitantly concede that if there were specifics pushed into the argument, specifications on what companies should be facing what part of the bill, it would “make sense” why, at first, tech companies ‘should’ be held accountable. But, many websites legally defined as a social media, ie those that allow you to create accounts, generate ‘content’ (broad word), and ‘interact’, are not true social medias and to answer, weren’t optimizing for engagement. Sites like GitHub and Replit have been legally defined as social medias, and have bee affected by ‘social media bans’ despite the fact online infrastructure may rely on these sites. But to address another part of your argument, are we to assume social media should be held accountable for its users actions? I cannot say yes or no definitively, but shouldn’t sites have a moral duty to avoid complicity and protect public discourse? We’ve already protected sites’s editorial control, and while acknowledging that companies producing a knowingly addictive product should disclose that, social media’s product is in essence free speech, which is protected in the US. But of course, there are deeper issues with that question that you should bring up.

You're conflating two separate issues to muddy the water. GitHub isn't designed to hijack dopamine—it doesn't use streaks, infinite scroll, or algorithmic feeds to keep you doom-scrolling at 2 AM. That's a false equivalency. The real question: if a company *knows* its architecture causes psychological harm to kids, does "free speech" shield them from liability? No. We already hold publishers accountable for negligence. Why should Meta get immunity when they knowingly engineered compulsion into their core product? Where's the moral consistency?