They’re Finally Regulating Sludge

Photo by Nick Coleman on Unsplash

On April 9th a Bill that has been nicknamed The DETOUR Act was proposed to Congress. I should be clear in saying that it has not been passed by Congress yet and is still just a piece of potential legislation¹.

It’s still important to take note of, though, because it is one of the first in what is sure to be a long line of regulation around experimental testing on users.

In its own verbiage, the Deceptive Experiences To Online Users Reduction Act was created

“To prohibit the usage of exploitative and deceptive practices by large online operators and to promote consumer welfare in the use of behavioral research by such providers.”

So, what does that all mean? Good question.

The Act starts off by clearing a few things up:

• The term ‘‘behavioral psychological experiment or research’’ means experimenting on humans. I.e watching what people do, inferring what they’re thinking, and creeping on how they talk to each other.
• The term “large online operator” means any provider of an online service with more than 100,000,000 authenticated users in a 30 day period. This is Facebook, Google, Amazon, Uber… the unicorns of the tech world.