The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/meta-social-media-teenagers-22337724.php

by Stratoscope • 9 days ago

227 425 9 days ago

steve19774• 9 days ago

Headline makes it sound like that's a bad thing.

it's based on age and I think that the age verification it would require is pretty universally reviled, at least here on HN

narrowtux• 9 days ago

I want it to be forbidden for anybody. They have stolen our attention for years

IAmBroom• 9 days ago

Removing choice is generally a bad thing, IMO.

dijksterhuis2• 9 days ago

it doesn't remove any choice for users. users don't get a choice on the offending sites currently. they only get infinite scroll. so the eventual infinite scroll replacement will be just that, the replacement.

on removing possible UI design choices for social media companies -- i have a very small violin on hand.

kasperni• 9 days ago

We also removed choices to drive without a seat belt or sell lead paint. Was that a bad thing?

steve19774• 9 days ago

Laws are pretty much always about removing choice.

scoofy4• 9 days ago

What choice? When did I ever choose infinite scroll?

brikym• 9 days ago

That seems like cute libertarian nonsense. The key word is choice. People have less free will than you think. Every time a teen goes to insta/facebook/tiktok etc they are an individual up against a huge corporation of thousands of people and ML whose job it is to hijack their dopamine circuit. Usage of these apps decreases attention span which effectively means other activities become boring so the users experience a withdrawal symptom like a drug addict.

And it doesn't just affect them. I think most of us would rather live in a society where 50% of the population isn't brain-rotted.

oenton2• 9 days ago

"First they came for the infinite scroll, but I did not speak out - because my mind was numb from the infinite scrolling."

ticulatedspline• 9 days ago

Curious as to where the line between “addictive feature” and "good UX" is. Is deliberate pagination actual impedance to use or merely an annoyance that's been weeded out with modern UX design?

When does a feature that simply makes your product easier to use cross into a territory that it's illegal?

What about media previews, in a platform like reddit if you can preview or expand media directly from the main list is that an “addictive feature” or just convenient design?

also interested in the larger economy, if you create a plugin that restores or adds infinite scroll to a website could you be liable for providing illegal UX?

EDIT: to clarify I'm not really griping on infinite scroll in particular, more the difficulty in regulating postitive UI/UX. Dark patterns are relatively easy to identify. If the unsubscribe button is hidden behind 3 screens and is in 3 point font that's pretty clearly a dark pattern. This seeks to regulate the opposite basically "your platform is, too easy, too good at serving your content"

This is much harder to categorize and has fuzzier boundaries. For example imagine if it applied to remembering your login for more than 24 hours. Certainly people would use your service less if they had to continuously authenticate. Are long-lived sessions good UX or encouraging "addictive" behavior?

RajT88• 9 days ago

Infinite scroll is not necessarily a problem in and of itself. If the content is static, no biggie. At some point diminishing returns and you will want to use search for it.

It is the algorithm they attach to infinite scroll which is problematic. It is not a UI design problem.

ls612• 9 days ago

A lot of this is states trying to figure out a way around the first amendment to regulate social media that the courts will wink and accept. That is why you see so many convoluted laws being drawn up by state legislatures about this.

AlexandrB• 9 days ago

What should be changed is the exemption algorithmically curated feeds still get under section 230. This has always seemed like a huge loophole. Once social media feeds are picking and choosing what to show users based on opaque criteria they are no longer neutral carriers of information but more like newspaper editors. They should be liable for what the users see.

afandian2• 9 days ago

Infinite scroll evolved alongside algorithms that incentivise addictive content. So it’s “good” UX in that it’s effective for consuming addictive content…

When I’m trying to do something constructive, like search or browse, infinite scroll is IMHO disastrously bad. You can’t keep your place in the list, or jump ahead/back.

xigoi10• 9 days ago

On the contrary, pagination makes it impossible to keep your place in the list if it changes between page loads.

esafak2• 9 days ago

So you'd rather something like Slack was paginated? I think that would be disastrously bad.

Greenpants• 9 days ago

The way I see it, it's the incessant stimuli you get through these apps. There's just no point where the screen stays quiet, stimulus free. Moving elements capture our attention naturally, especially when the entire screen keeps moving. The endless scroll element just makes sure that the stimulus keeps getting renewed the moment you're done with it.

Instead, a scroll should give you a break before heading into the next video. I'm willing to bet this would help severely with addiction. People are then forced to reconsider whether they actually want to play the next video. "Done" should not always lead to "here's the next stimulus". That's what's addictive. The brain isn't made to break out of that loop easily.

TripleFFF• 9 days ago

The problem with using scrolling as a metric is it assumes satisfaction with the content presented and ignores the fact that, on certain apps, many scroll miles go into skipping around articles or ads or reposts to get to the content you want, and imo a punishment for seeking more content while also diluting said content with forced ads at an alarming ratio is not indicative of addiction but scarcity of satisfaction and engaging content

iamnothere49• 9 days ago

Hello, what right do you have to regulate the presentation of speech? If you regulate this format because it’s now considered harmful, what stops El Presidente from moving to ban “zines” because the format is “harmful to young minds” and used by “antifa”? What stops CA from moving to ban forums because threaded formats are suddenly considered “too addicting”? Maybe we should ban VR or first person shooter video games?

There is no allowable constitutional authority for actions like this. CA is literally overstepping the 1A limits of the Constitution here.

somenameforme• 9 days ago

While I would agree, I think many are missing the even more fundamental issue. Even if you get rid of every single predatory thing imaginable, social media itself is full of incessant stimuli, FOMO and other features that make it destructive for everybody, but especially young people. For instance image crafting is going to harmful for everybody, because many adults have a tendency to engage in keeping up with the Joneses, but for children it's especially harmful because of much greater personal insecurities and proclivities towards envy.

And things like image crafting are not even necessarily intentional or malicious. Somebody who posts a pic of their filet mignon dinner probably isn't posting much in the way of their microwaved leftovers mashed up in a bowl. And adults already get mistaken perceptions of others because of this bias, let alone children.

over_bridge• 9 days ago

What I like about Hacker News is each day I open it up, scan the first three pages, open 2-5 links to read, then close it again. Those pages make it easy to monitor my usage and set limits. I used to do the same with Reddit before that changed

I'd fully support removing infinite scroll or even just banning it from under 18 year olds

8note2• 9 days ago

infinite scroll breaks the back button and its really annoying

chillfox• 9 days ago

Infinite scroll is bad UX design and always has been.

It makes it impossible to click on any links in the footer of the page or even really reading what's in the footer.

I remember when it was initially introduced, everyone I spoke to about it hated it.

sureMan6• 9 days ago

Also creates a confusion that algorithm profiteers love, where before you could know a post you saw would be page 1 today and page 2 tomorrow now the homepage of every app is absolute chaos so you have to spend hours searching for something specific or you're just always seeing exactly what they want you to see (to increase engagement or whatever instead of any sensible order)

AstroJetson• 9 days ago

You must have spoken to me, I hate it today has as much as I did back then.

pfg_• 9 days ago

Steam fixes this by having a footer, and putting more content under the footer. Google search also did this on mobile for a little while.

burningChrome• 9 days ago

Its also horrendous for accessibility and screen reader users.

acchow• 9 days ago

It makes it impossible to click on any links in the footer of the page

That's a UI bug. Real infinite scroll does not have a footer.

kentm• 9 days ago

Yeah I hate infinite scroll. I have no idea what actual common sentiment is because you’d have to do broad polling to find that out. I always wonder if UI designers fall into the “everyone i talked loved it” where everyone consists of “other designers and developers who have a stake in making this a common feature” or “user surveys that are heavily loaded to arrive at the conclusion I want “

Could be I’m just an old man yelling at clouds though.

NoMoreNicksLeft• 9 days ago

It makes it impossible to click on any links in the footer of the page or even really reading what's in the footer.

But you can see the links! Maybe if your reflexes were just a little faster, if the mouse didn't lag!!!

nijave• 9 days ago

position: fixed has been around a long time

A lot of implementations also break the back button and "page" or scroll position links (you can link to a singular item but not a spot in the list)

They usually also break psuedo binary search and force linear/sequential search (you can't skip a head to page 10 when you're trying to zero in on a date unless they've added an explicit date filter and you remember the exact date versus the relative position)

Also breaks parallel loading--can't queue up the next few pages of gigantic media in new tabs while finishing the current page

They also tend to break ctrl-f and if they don't they tend to get progressively slower as more crap stays loaded in memory

ksymph• 9 days ago

This is the sort of thing that should / will be decided by courts, I think. We have many fuzzy laws where evaluating on a case-by-case basis makes more sense than deciding an arbitrary hard line. In this case, apps and platforms as a whole would be taken into account; infinite scroll alone might not be against this law, but if an app has a consistent pattern of addictive behavior and is harming its users because of it, something like infinite scroll might be forbidden for that app in a lawsuit.

inigyou27• 9 days ago

Do they have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt? If it was a crime, they would.

thaumasiotes2• 9 days ago

Curious as to where the line between “addictive feature” and "good UX" is. Is deliberate pagination actual impedance to use or merely an annoyance that's been weeded out with modern UX design?

Neither? Pagination is good UX; infinite scroll is a way to make your usable page unusable instead.

petra• 9 days ago

We know there's a big problem with addictive ux in general.

And of course we know that small changes increase engagement/addictiveness.

Html interfaces are easily configurable, technically.

The fact companies at least don't offer easy ways to configure websites to be less addicting, and some even block those, does tell us something.

dayglo• 9 days ago

Exactly correct - there is no way to disable the infinite scrolling reel nonsense in Snapchat while still allowing messaging. So, my son is either cut off from his friends or gets crap shovelled into his eyes. This is a business decision: to leverage their having insinuated themselves between him and his friends against his mental health. Ban it all immediiately

8organicbits• 9 days ago

I think it's about user agency. When we say that infinite scroll is addictive, we mean that the user keeps on scrolling even when they wish they could stop. It's also about harm. Trapping users on their phones is harmful to their well-being. A person who wants to quit should be able to do so, addictivity that prevents that is harmful.

Reading the bill I see carve-outs for things like "commercial transactions", perhaps allowing Amazon and Temu to use infinite scroll, but not Facebook and TikTok

asdfsa322• 9 days ago

I know it when I see it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

VladVladikoff2• 9 days ago

It’s the wrong fix to the problem. The correct fix is enforcing an infinite scroll limit (time), after which the app tells you to take a break (for some amount of time).

iamnothere49• 9 days ago

Whatever the right “fix” is, why is a US state involved in deciding how my app presents my speech to you? Under what authority?

You know, I hate to give the oppo any decent ideas, but maybe there’s some allowable way to subsidize apps that use “healthy” patterns rather than attempting to “ban” things!

matt123456789• 9 days ago

Get your nanny state out of my free market. I suppose next you will want some kind of warning label on my asbestos filter cigarettes.

fitzroy• 9 days ago

a feature that simply makes your product easier to use

Except it doesn't. You lose context and are now drowning in an endless morass of lazy-loaded blocks and widgets, all hiding under invisible elements. Nothing has a permanent URL, so there is zero accountably if the user was shown something that they need to reference - unless it benefits the platform. And of course, it will eventually all force reload when the page complexity exhausts the available memory, or at least when it becomes too exhausted to reliably serve ads.

Robotbeat2• 9 days ago

X posts have a permanent url.

nradov2• 9 days ago

All Facebook posts have a permanent URL that you can copy.

bcjdjsndon5• 9 days ago

now drowning in an endless morass of lazy-loaded blocks and widgets
so there is zero accountably if the user was shown something that they need to reference

You just sound angry...

victorbjorklund• 8 days ago

You can do permanent urls with infinite scrolling. Nothing that prevents you from putting the page number in the url

newguy1000• 8 days ago

says you

blini-kot• 8 days ago

god I hate infinite scrolling so much

you can't jump to the specific place on the website, you can't remember where something has been to have a map in mind, you can't go to "about" section or some sort of site settings

noripcord• 7 days ago

agree. pressing a button to go to next page is like a chore. The scrolling in itself is kind of addictive, you swipe with your finger and everything moves like you're moving a parchment or something.

croes• 9 days ago

Infinite scroll makes it only easier to use when your consumption only has one way.

A soon as you want to revisit a previous post you are lost.

You may remember it‘s ten pages back but with infinite scroll that information is missing

cloudie78• 9 days ago

Good UX for what? Maximising engagement time?

xg156• 9 days ago

First, I believe the companies would have a very easy time to distinguish those features, as they know which feature was developed with the intent of keeping users in the app.

So if they acted by the spirit of the law, this would be very easy.

Of course they won't as that goes against their core interests, so we will likely have a cat-and-mouse game of definitions and malicious compliance. I'm looking forward to a whole new era of "UI innovation" where companies scramble to think of patterns that are technically not autoscroll or autoplay, but practically have an even worse effect.

(Interestingly, the "have the user opt-in" loophole we had with cookies doesn't seem to exist here, so at least we hopefully won't see any more "consent popups" or deliberately bad alternatives)

As for the law, apparently it has this line:

...or “any other feature defined” by the attorney general “as an addictive feature.”

So essentially the attorney general has to guess the intent of a company behind a feature. It's strange that this power lies with the attorney general and not a judge or jury (not an expert on US law though), but in general, "guessing intents" is something the legal system does all the time for obvious reasons.

eviks• 9 days ago

where the line between “addictive feature” and "good UX" is.

At addiction?

friendzis• 9 days ago

Curious as to where the line between “addictive feature” and "good UX" is. Is deliberate pagination actual impedance to use or merely an annoyance that's been weeded out with modern UX design? When does a feature that simply makes your product easier to use cross into a territory that it's illegal?

These feeds couple two features together: infinite scroll and automatic refresh. Without "pages" there is no technical way to refer to (and link) to a specific view, it's always generated. The best you have is a link to a particular item. Automatic refresh adds FOMO that you will not see the post again if you stop engagement right now.

Coupled together there is nothing about "product easier to use" and all about addictiion-inducing dark patterns.

Some apps do not tack on the auto refresh, meaning you can close the app at any time, reopen it and keep scrolling from the point you left, eliminating the addictive fomo.

reformd• 9 days ago

When does a feature that simply makes your product easier to use cross into a territory that it's illegal?

Good question! Maybe when that which makes the application/product easier has more negative side effects than positive or useful intended effects?

There must be ample examples/collections on the net about convenience and/or ease of use doing ugly stuff to body and brain short-, mid-, long-term.

gnoll_of_gozag4• 9 days ago

infinite scroll/algorithms don't need to be completely gone - just no longer the default setting

grayhatter2• 9 days ago

coke cola used to have cocaine in it, it doesn't anymore, people in taste tests prefer the taste of Pepsi... Coke is still the leader in sales.

Infinite scroll doesn't have a positive UX. If it takes an infinite amount of time to use your product, your product is shit.

Unless your product is content, in which case endless scroll encourages thoughtless consumption behavior. That's not a good thing.

We as engineers shouldn't be building stuff that degrades the experience of existence (which is already shit enough), just because you can make money doing so doesn't mean it's not antisocial behavior, and because you can make money by being a really shitty human, it does require some external force to curtail that negative sum behavior.

I agree it's difficult to categorize, the solution is rapid iteration, not allowing the asshattery until the entirety of society figures out it's bad for your brain. Someone should probably fix the political system in the US so we can have rapid iteration on problems again.

iamnothere49• 9 days ago

Rapid iteration on political issues is how you end up with oppression and legal terrorism. The brakes are there for a reason. But so is the valid process for changing the fundamental system (amendments).

ozgrakkurt• 9 days ago

This is a question that needs to be answered empirically. It should be forced to a point where it is not obviously addictive and then stay there imo

KaiserPro• 9 days ago

Your edit is actually the nub of the matter.

Its all very well saying "we will ban x" but unless you can define "x" reliably in a way that stands up to court arguing, you're not banning it, you're putting a lawyer tax on it.

The issue is, the vauger the terms, or harder it is to prove, the more money can warp the outcome.

There will always been cornercases to all laws, so you need to choose what you are going to hit and why.

Dark UX patterns can be hard to prove, you need to show that a normal person is not reasonably able to understand. That changes with time. (ie in the 90s asking someone to login and press a link would have been onerous, when a phone service/postal/fax was the done thing.)

So you either build in a proof, which can be gamed, or you target a specific action or thing, which will need updating.

the Law is hard, and, increasingly made by people who are not experts.

Tade0• 9 days ago

This seeks to regulate the opposite basically "your platform is, too easy, too good at serving your content"

No, it's seeking to ban presenting content at a faster rate than a person can meaningfully digest.

There's a limit to that rate over which the platform doesn't become "too good", it just becomes worse, as it's showing too much too fast and breaking attention.

PaulRobinson• 9 days ago

If the unsubscribe button is hidden behind 3 screens and is in 3 point font that's pretty clearly a dark pattern.

According to who? US law is established as heading into this absurd notion of subjectivity, so the interpreter and viewer of the law as written is now as important as the law being written in the first place.

Gerrymandering black voters out of being able to elect a black representative? Well as long as the people doing it don't admit being racist, it's all fine! Want to take bribes from foreign governments? Well, if you're the head of the executive branch of government or a close personal friend, you can interpret that better than the bestest out there so those anti-corruption laws clearly don't apply, right?

"That's not a dark pattern, your honour!", Shady McShadeface attests in court, "we're just trying to make offers we think the customer is interested in before they confirm their final and terrible decision with awful consequences for them!". How else would the poor uninformed consumer not be aware of that special deep discount (today only, 4 hours left!), on that pillow set that they absolutely must need to consider on their way out of the door?

Infinite scroll is deemed by many a dark pattern, and by others a particularly clean way of dealing with a UX challenge. Subjective, eye of the beholder, and all that.

It reminds me a little of the "I know pornography when I see it" argument, and I think it's fair to call it a dark pattern given the evidence against it, but like pornography, consenting adults should be able to consent to exposure to it for their own "convenience", perhaps. I just personally think the button to turn it on should be hidden behind 3 screens and in a 3 point font...

oytis• 9 days ago

Good UX makes you achieve your goals on a website faster. It implies that the website has a purpose apart from spending your time on it. If it has no such purpose, and yet people are spending a lot of time there, it's probably addictive

momojo• 8 days ago

Seems like one of those situations where the outcomes should be measured, not the implementation. If you've created a product that is leading to hundreds of hours of wasted time (and the users themselves are sick of the amount of time they spend) maybe its time to investigate?

I guess I'm agreeing with your point that its hard to pre-emptively define what "bad UI" is when it's often so close to "efficient UX", so just go downstream.

hoherd• 8 days ago

One of my favorite UX stories is about my first Mac, a 12" g4 mbp. One of the best things about it was that I could open the lid and it would immediately be awake and ready to use. I would use it, do what I needed to do, then close it and put it away. It was great because it consumed so little of my time.

So to your question about the line between good UX and addictive features, at least in some cases, there is an ocean between them, though to your point, it's hard to find that line in the ocean. "Fallacy of the beard" and whatnot.

senorcrab3• 9 days ago

It should just be universally required to give an option to disable addictive features. Should prevent age verification, and giving users optionality is always a good thing (for them).

mdp20213• 9 days ago

Should prevent age verification

It won't, become some parties are proposing a narrative of "shielding the innocent from harmful content" (such as themselves).

keir starmer seems to suppose nudity would be indecent, against an implicitly stated decent itself and british politics.

senorcrab3• 9 days ago

Yeah I meant it would avoid the necessity of age verification to solve this problem.

Age verification and how enthusiastic gov'ts are about it is concerning.

iamnothere49• 9 days ago

How will you measure purely psychological addiction using a neutral process that can’t be easily captured by political interests?

That said, I like the idea of an option. Options are good!

senorcrab3• 9 days ago

Clearly there is a fuzzy line of demarcation. I was thinking for a simple opt-out of any rec-sys

seydor• 9 days ago

I find the reply button to be pretty addictive

imglorp• 9 days ago

Is infinite scroll really the problem or is it really the whole malicious toolbox and intention of "maximizing engagement"?

Cider9986• 9 days ago

I agree, I don't think an "infinite refresh" like if YouTube had a limited homepage and changed on each refresh, would be much better. But infinite scroll is likely the most addictive.

archonis• 9 days ago

Regulate the business model, not the interface.

sdh• 9 days ago

Whack-a-mole lawmaking solves nothing. All this law does is ask social media companies to find another way for their platform to be addictive to children.

Here's how to solve this ...

Social media companies measure engagement. Decide what the safe metric is, pass laws that hold social media companies to that metric for whatever age or demographic. Apply fines proportional to revenue when they are found to exceed the metric. Fines can't be reasonable to the cost of doing business.

That stops any social media company from incentivizing employees to increase engagement for that demographic.

elictronic3• 9 days ago

Or just stop social media below a certain age and enact that policy for older adults.

The tech giants have flown to close to the sun, real people are pissed.

ulrikrasmussen• 9 days ago

Instead of trying to whack a mole on all addictive mechanisms, just ban the business model driving all of them: targeted advertising.

zbentley• 9 days ago

I’m not sure that suffices. If a site has a very “good” (at keeping people glued to the screen) content ranking algorithm, they can still make money, albeit less, serving non-targeted ads. Longer engagement time by viewers = more ad impressions, targeted or not.

annjose2• 9 days ago

"they can still make money, albeit less, serving non-targeted ads."

- would they be able to make as much as they do now? I think it would be significantly less.

From Meta's official Financial Report for 2025 [0]:

Total Revenue: $200,966 Million

-Advertising: $196,175 million (97.6%)

-Other rev: $ 4,791 Million ( 2.4%)

[0] https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-deta...

JoshTriplett• 9 days ago

s/targeted //

totallyhuman• 9 days ago

That would cause most, if not all, modern tech companies to go out of business (or massively downsize). I support it.

tencentshill• 8 days ago

Facebook really didn't like that apple made device IDs optional, it's strange that they quieted down about that. They must have found an alternative fingerprinting method.

butlike• 9 days ago

The law should force social media to be subscription-only.

puppycodes2• 9 days ago

There is no way to enforce any of these types of laws without an iron curtain that clearly violates the first amendment. If you have free speech infront of children in public I don't see how having infinite scroll on your website or app is any different. Parents should parent their children instead of the state. Its crazy how avoident California is of solving actually important problems like homelessness, mental health resources, housing crisis, yet infinite scrolling somehow is a priority.

elictronic3• 9 days ago

Pretty sure most parents care about their kids more than nearly any other issue you mention. Social media excess has pushed to far and become less well liked than lawyers at this point. Thats only going to end one way.

puppycodes2• 9 days ago

Parents certainly care about all the things I mentioned, it even impacts their kids. This approach to safeguard kids online is completely impractical and utterly unenforceable and seems like a total waste of time.

cmoski• 9 days ago

If you have free speech in front of children in public I don't see how having infinite scroll on your website or app is any different.

Have you seen many people mindlessly watching people talk in public for hours on end? When a plane lands, people aren't zombified listening to another passenger talk, they're zombified doom scrolling on tic-tok etc.

inigyou27• 8 days ago

I didn't realize that putting labels on cigarette packs made the country literally East Germany (the original iron curtain).

kiaansaraiya• 9 days ago

I honestly think that this may have some benefit as the infinite scroll has made our attention spans incredibly short. Although, I'm sure people will find there way around it.

sys_64738• 9 days ago

What does this mean for a large Word document? Will people using OpenOffice.org get arrested for loading a novel?

OptionOfT• 9 days ago

That's not infinite. There is an end to the novel.

dmvjs2• 9 days ago

this is a ridiculous proposal

dmvjs2• 8 days ago

there is no correlation between the implementation of infinite scroll and the actual forces that are the problem

pillmillipedes• 9 days ago

note that this is going after "psychologically exploitative features intended to maximize engagement" of all kinds, not just infinite feeds. it also poses an ultimatum banning people under 16 from websites that provide such addictive features to anyone.

personally I am against internet identification, and I think teenagers should be allowed on social media, so I have to ask: why only children? if these features are so bad, ban them outright.

inigyou27• 9 days ago

same as alcohol, we've decided adults are fair prey

asadotzler2• 9 days ago

Adults are supposed to have acquired enough life experience to make more reasonable decisions than children.

Having said that, we also expect adults to make all kinds of bad decisions so they too are prohibited from many things, like shooting smack or freebasing meth.

I think there's a good case to be made not for banning kids from social media, but for banning everyone. In that case, it'd be easier to do it from the supply side than the demand side.

hexage1814• 9 days ago

The problem with infinity scroll is the lack of "pagination", which essentialy make most of content to get hidden away. For instance. Let assume you have 3000 comments on a YouTube video, your browser will crash way before it "infinite scroll" to the end (I know that that are tools to bypass this, but I'm talking about the default experience).

Jzush• 9 days ago

Old people who think that the "scrolling" part of Doom Scrolling is literal. Ugh, I'm sorry for California.

Calvin02• 9 days ago

I (personally) think this is the wrong kind of solution.

I think a better solution would to mandate that platforms offer a ranked feed and a chronological feed and make the setting sticky for users.

I think giving users the agency over how much they consume is good but mandating a “UX” pattern feels too specific.

ChrisArchitect• 9 days ago

EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858292)

The investigation focuses on features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and the platforms' highly personalised recommender systems.

pinkmuffinere• 9 days ago

As somebody with not-enough self control, I would love this for myself. Self-locks help, but the temptation is always there.

silexia2• 9 days ago

Yes, I need this too. I'd pay 20x if I could keep the usefulness of my phone and its apps but get rid of the addictive stuff.

inigyou27• 8 days ago

I've heard people claim tiny-screen phones (like the Unihertz Jelly) help them not be addicted.

anderber• 9 days ago

I think the most frustrating thing for me is when a website has infinite scroll, but also a footer with links that you want to access. I end up going to the dev tools to look at the code.

heohk• 9 days ago

Good riddance

lucasrufkahr• 9 days ago

I hate infinite scroll. Also how do you really prohibit a software feature? Seriously..

AmazingEveryDay• 9 days ago

Don't most people have AI agent that consumes the infinite scroll and then presents a custom summarization? I don't see how this ban is a good idea.

letmeinhere• 9 days ago

If you don't have an agent swarm that's already trained to re-scroll all the unscrolled feeds and translate them to binaural beats during your micronaps you're ngmi

bigstrat2003• 9 days ago

No, they do not.

micromacrofoot• 9 days ago

misses the mark, it's not about the functionality it's about the algorithm populating it

Robdel12• 9 days ago

I’m going to be honest, this kind of regulation would make me disable the site(s) for the state (if there are fines, etc). I don’t have the time to play these games for my tiny projects

chupchap• 9 days ago

It was a good UX in FriendFeed as it was still a chronological feed. However once it was mixed with algorithmic feed it shifted from better UX to keep em' hooked.

Varelion2• 9 days ago

Thank God. We need more legislation against the cognitive poisoning of two generations.

protocolture2• 9 days ago

The article isn't making moralistic grandstanding illegal so I don't know how you got to cognitive poisoning.

Varelion2• 9 days ago

The source of the disease isn't moralistic grandstanding -- it's the lack of empathy and biblical greed behind the machine.

manoweb• 9 days ago

This is exactly why I force my kids to always create accounts as 30-years old (by specifying a birth data in the 90s), to avoid as much State interference as possible. Did you know that if your child has a "kid" account you cannot follow him on google maps? We had to make one for "adults" in order to be able to do so.

inigyou27• 9 days ago

How about OwnTracks?

NoGravitas• 8 days ago

Zood Location is pretty good. Open source, location data is end-to-end encrypted (encrypted to the keys of the people you are sharing with before it leaves your device).

scoofy4• 9 days ago

We can all agree that the internet was great and now it is less great, but the second someone articulates a very, very simple rule, the "well ackchyually" crew comes out of the woodwork.

Infinite scroll is very obviously unnecessary. It is very obviously intended to keep people on an app longer than they would otherwise use it. You can lazy load into a finite scroll. Just make people click something every once in a while.

crubier3• 9 days ago

Just make people click something every once in a while

But why? This is EU Cookies Banner level of state interference making UX worse for everyone just because some lawmaker doesn't like something.

scoofy4• 9 days ago

"Some lawmaker" is democracy. The point is that people are pissed off about the addictive UX, same as cigarettes, and candy. If you want to make a serious argument, just argue that you should be able to opt out, which is an entirely reasonable position.

Insimwytim• 9 days ago

As many have said before:

  it's basically malicious compliance. They're supposed to be super annoying ... Instead of complying, they choose this obnoxious practice so they could continue ... monitoring every action a visitor does.

  You don't need a cookie banner to be allowed to create Cookies. You only need them if you're using them for something like tracking. [1]

  Regulators didn't enforce cookie banners. Cookie banners are a form of malicious compliance. When you complain about them, you are doing the lobbying work of ad companies for free. The correct solution is to just not spy on people, and the problem is that the EU didn't go far enough and just ban the behavior altogether. [2]

  Cookie pops are malicious compliance to regulations that legitimately protect consumers. You’ve cherry picked one bad side effect to throw out all the ways the EU is way ahead of anyone else in protecting consumers [3]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29529148

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38299135

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46552795

Paracompact3• 9 days ago

When it came time for website owners to decide whether they (1) would remove unnecessary cookies, (2) receive consent from their users for extra cookies via reasonable banners, or (3) circumvent consent from their users for extra cookies via dark-patterned banners...

... virtually no website owners opted for (1), a minority opted for (2), and most opted for (3). Yet every technolibertarian thinks (3) is the law's doing and not the consequence of other technolibertarians.

peder2• 9 days ago

Infinite scroll is very obviously unnecessary

All the different flavors of yogurt in the grocery store are unnecessary. We only need 2.

dghlsakjg2• 9 days ago

Nobody has ever been guided down an extremist rabbit hole ending in a misogynist shooting because of yogurt. At least, not to my knowledge.

There is a very real harm to allowing an engagement optimizing algorithm (which, if programmed effectively, almost always ends up a negative emotion firehose).

I don't know if this is the right solution, but I don't see that an extensive yogurt selection is the same thing as whatever the fuck is going on with Facebook feeding an endless stream of corrosive bullshit to users.

breuleux• 9 days ago

I mean, unironically, yeah. If you want flavor, just mix jam in your plain yogurt.

ckosidows• 9 days ago

This is a false equivalence. I don't use a product _because_ it's got an endless scroll. I use a product and then they add that "feature" without giving me an option. I would, and have, turned it off when possible. But it's not currently possible to do so on apps like Reddit.

In no way is this like yogurt. If I don't like that one yogurt has trace amounts of heroin in it, I can buy a different yogurt. If I don't like that reddit has an infinite scroll, I have to miss out on conversations in communities I like. There simply aren't similar communities I've ever been able to find for certain topics. And anything similar also has an infinite scroll (Facebook, twitter, etc.).

If, in your example, all yogurts had trace amounts of heroin in them, I would agree with the comparison.

ahnick4• 9 days ago

What's very obviously unnecessary is the need for a law to police this. You can just not use things you don't like. This need to project one's own morality upon others will be the source of endless conflict.

mindwok• 9 days ago

This isn't useful advice for addictive things that have high short term reward and high long term regret though. Especially so when the other party has a strong incentive to keep you trapped in that loop of regret.

semilin• 9 days ago

Absolutely. While we're at it, why should asbestos be regulated? You can just not go in buildings that have it.

bigmadshoe5• 9 days ago

We can decide to pass laws to protect people from addictive behaviors. Do you support bringing cigarette advertising back for example?

afavour2• 9 days ago

That statement leans very hard on the word “like”. Do addicts “like” their addictive behaviors? In a way it doesn’t matter, they’re going to keep doing it anyway.

zeroonetwothree• 9 days ago

The law being discussed is for minors. As a society we don't think minors have sufficient executive function to make those decisions, so we find it acceptable to ban them in those context.

xg156• 9 days ago

You can just not use things you don't like.

The entire point of talking about addiction (or even harmless things like FOMO, network effect, etc) is that this is not true.

an0malous3• 9 days ago

Should all buttons require a confirmation dialog to prevent people from making decisions too hastily? Should we ensure all interactions have at least 100ms of latency so users don’t get mesmerized by a smooth experience? Maybe we should set a max color saturation so nothing looks too enticing. We also don’t really need box shadows or gradients, they’re clearly meant to mesmerize users into making bad decisions.

What an absurd and pointless precedent to set.

kelseyfrog2• 9 days ago

Either all buttons should require a confirmation or no buttons should. There is no in-between. There is no good judgement. There is no middle ground. All or nothing. It's black or white!

halestock4• 9 days ago

Is your argument that unless we can make a law that is perfect and covers every conceivable use case of coercive design, then we shouldn't bother to make a law that covers any of them?

tgv• 9 days ago

"Should all inhaleable substances be controlled? But then people won't be able to breathe. So smoking must be permitted unconditionally!"

meindnoch• 9 days ago

Should we ensure all interactions have at least 100ms of latency

Web developers are already hard at work on this.

plopilop• 9 days ago

Don't quote me on this but I once heard that in the EU you always need to confirm purchases, ie. you cannot have the Amazon 1-click system.

But in general, yes, having a confirmation dialog on important buttons is good UX; similarly as to setting minimum/maximum saturation will increase accessibility by visually impaired people, epileptic people etc.

frou_dh• 9 days ago

Talking of heavy-handed confirmation dialogs, there's a good example of this in Apple's Preview.app (PDF viewer). They made an unconfigurable change a few years ago, such that every single time you click any web link in a PDF, you have to confirm with a dialog that you want to open the link. You used to be able to just click links!

alastairr2• 9 days ago

The point is that - unrestricted - digital media maximises for time and attention. Given that incentive, addictive behaviours are not only inevitable, but an ideal outcome financially.

It's easy to say that it's absurd, but what would you do?

slopinthebag4• 9 days ago

Is it? It appears consumers prefer it. Are they all wrong? Should we ignore the preferences of other people because you are the all-knowing lord of the internet?

Give me a break

ShinyLeftPad4• 9 days ago

Not only it's unnecessary, it also bad GUI. In apps with infinite scrolling your position doesn't get its own state, so if you eg. go view a post & return to Instagram timeline it opens at the beginning. If you use media more thoughtfully as opposed to mindless scrolling, it just doesn't work.

With pagination you could say return to IG after a week, go through 5 pages of whoever you're following, check out a post, go back knowing you stopped at 5th, and continue from there. You can also set a limit (I'll check 10 pages tops and then go to sleep), which is helpful even with algorithmic feed.

I'm sure they can screw up pagination too if they wanted, but typical implementations don't have this issue

harshreality• 9 days ago

They can randomize (with bias for hot/recent content) entries on each page, but paginate them. FOMO will keep people clicking next even once they recognize some entries.

mock-possum• 9 days ago

Stateless infinite scroll is just lazy/incomplete implementation though - there’s no reason you can’t keep your place via permalink. Just pop the state into history using the uuid of each card as it shows in the viewport, then when the user returns using that url, drop them in at that point in the feed with some reasonable before/after preloaded.

xg156• 9 days ago

but the second someone articulates a very, very simple rule, the "well ackchyually" crew comes out of the woodwork.

On HN definitely, if half of the people here are really invested in that stuff themselves.

asdfsa322• 9 days ago

The issue is that "Infinite Scroll" is just a manifestation of a deeper problem. You can't cure a problem by legislating away symptoms.

bcjdjsndon5• 9 days ago

It is very obviously intended to keep people on an app longer than they would otherwise use it.

What are you, protoplasm with eyes? Exert some willpower and get a grip. I've never known such a wimpy whining generation as this one

Pulcinella• 9 days ago

"Exert some willpower!"

People exert willpower through the democratically elected legislature

"No not like that!"

ahmed_1000• 9 days ago

State-approved UI components lmao

socalgal2• 9 days ago

Good

beanjuiceII• 9 days ago

why are we making laws about how scrolling works this is crazy

inigyou27• 8 days ago

because it's a problem

but it's not the actual problem, but it's a part of the problem, and it's also something really easy to identify.

momentmaker• 9 days ago

I think Tristan from The Social Dilemma documentary - his co-founder's dad - was the one who invented the infinite scroll and he deeply regretted it.

nullbio• 9 days ago

This will accomplish nothing.

cobbzilla• 9 days ago

Watch if there's a carve-out for business apps, or it only applies to consumer apps. Then watch as your enterprise apps adopt infinite-scroll sidebars of "useful" stuff...

pdonis• 9 days ago

I'm no fan of the government trying to regulate such things, but I won't shed any tears if infinite scroll is forced to go away. It's one of the things I hate the most about the so-called "modern" web.

aeternum• 9 days ago

One again CA trying very hard to become the EU and turn regulation into their main export.

keane• 9 days ago

Other industries wisely self-police before this happens, eg how the film industry adopted the MPA Ratings System

m3kw9• 9 days ago

Infinite scroll is a real drug

silexia2• 9 days ago

Adults like me need these protections too.

etdznots• 9 days ago

This seems like an arms race that will be very hard for the state to win, meta is prepared to spend billions throwing engineers phds and compute at making the most addicting platform possible within the bounds set by the law, while this kind of law would make it hard for small entrants into the market, I’m not against trying to do things that are reasonable to prevent addictive behavior, but I hope these rules are gated on size somehow so that indie developers and random websites don’t get caught in the dragnet of needing to comply, like what happened with the UK moderation bill.

xg156• 9 days ago

What would be the alternative though?

iamnothere49• 9 days ago

This is exactly what will happen, Meta will just add a “next page” thing after 100 items that does a cool animation when you click it and the feed will continue as usual. Meanwhile we’ll start stacking up similar bills everywhere else and small operators will close down when they start getting worried about keeping up with 50 states worth of different regulations.

Goal achieved: media centralized.

dudefeliciano10• 9 days ago

I'm trying to think of a small operator that absolutely needs inifinite scroll on their site for their product to "work" and nothing comes to mind.

petterroea• 9 days ago

I've heard a lot of negative talk about Californian politicians, but compared to how the discussion is going on in Norway about the same issue, this is great. It's very refreshing to see politicians actually understand the problem at hand instead of just throwing age checks at it.

For reference, in Norway, you basically have 3 camps:

* Age verification is a detriment to democracy if implemented at a large scale as a requirement to speak in public. Well documented (activists and subject matter experts generally agree on this)

* We will solve the problem of kids online and we will solve it now. The solution must be age verification. Experts loud protest, and even committee findings that warn against are completely ignored (usually people who want a quick and easy solution, politicians who want the bragging rights of having saved the kids)

* We want to solve the problem, but the only obvious solution is age verification so I guess it can't be helped (not really educated on the topic. Just like most of us when it comes to a random political question. Not really a matter of intelligence)

Absolute circus.

I think most people here used the internet as a kid to learn about things and talk to adults in the field there were interested in. For today's kids this happens mostly on the few big sites like twitter and discord.

I'm more than happy to sacrifice endless scroll and recommendation algorithms (at least the type that is thrown at you without consent) to not have to verify my age to speak online.

Symbiote• 9 days ago

These Estonian MEPs are at least suggesting general regulations rather than age limits.

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-should-stand-up-to-bi...

inigyou27• 8 days ago

The California solution to age verification was a really good alternative. Instead of actually verifying anything, it just asks you when you buy the device. Presumably adults buy devices for their kids, and by the time you're old enough to buy your own, you're old enough to be in the grey area where it doesn't really matter if you lie.

animuchan• 9 days ago

It is amusing we pass laws to fix bad UX. But if it works, can't argue with it. I would like a law against unwanted popovers now please.

xg156• 9 days ago

Everyone clutching their pearls over this bill should take note that this is already the massively watered-down version. The precedent from other countries was a blanket ban of everyone below 16. That was reduced to "well, don't use those specific UI elements and we're fine".

emsign• 9 days ago

Endangered? This is great news! It's one of the things that make social media a drug.

bertili• 9 days ago

Legislators, please require 10 seconds of load screen with a picture of a tree, for every online video. It worked for cigarette packs.

gnoll_of_gozag4• 9 days ago

tumblr still has pages and it has never impeded me

on the contrary, infinite scrolls are impossible to get back to after some time away and eventually start lagging

aussieguy1234• 9 days ago

Good riddance

gnoll_of_gozag4• 9 days ago

best solution would be to serve paginated by default but you can change page size in the settings or even enable infinite. whoever really wants infinite can use it, it's just not forced on everyone. sated wolves, intact sheep

invalidusernam3• 9 days ago

Why only focus on youngsters? Many of the older generations that I see online seem to have been impacted massively by social media in a negative way. Yes in theory adults should have freedom to choose, but when your app is the digital version of crack cocaine I think there should be some rules.

lrpe• 9 days ago

Oh my god yes, kill it, please.

justin662• 9 days ago

Oh no. First the Europeans took away Lightning connectors and now this.

philipwhiuk• 8 days ago

What's European about a Californian law?

justin662• 8 days ago

Sometimes the jokes just don't land.

erelong• 8 days ago

people will just ask AI how to create an infinite scroll that complies with CA law

and the technology marches onward

ChoGGi• 8 days ago

Oh, I might be able to use bookmarks again?

I know I spend more time on Reddit than I should, so... Oh well.

thenatureboy• 8 days ago

It's stupid laws like this that continue to drive innovation out of California.

pmuw• 8 days ago

Its the combination of infinite scroll and algorithmic curation of audiovisual media, that is addictive. Its equivalent to a TV channel tailored just for your interests, and TV was considered very addictive in the past.

I wrote an infinite-scroll implementation for my blog. Infinite scrolling through a static bank of content (even with some randomized elements) is not engaging. You eventually make it to the bottom and think "that's it?"

There are other types of Internet communities where people can connect with each other, that do not involve infinite scrolling, algorithmic curation, and using your collected interests for targeted advertising. I would love to see regulation, just to see the value of Meta's user-profiling-data-assets shrink.

dinfinity• 8 days ago

Brainstorming here, hear me out: after 2 pages or 3 minutes of infinite scrolling the only content that shows up is various forms of goatse. We could make a browser extension for this.

pwdisswordfishq• 8 days ago

If you ever make it to the bottom, it was never infinite in the first place.

tancop• 8 days ago

its the same wrong answer again and again. how long will it take for lawmakers to realize that the best way to fight big tech is give people choice. infinite scroll, recommender systems, targeted ads, all the other "toxic" features should be optional with massive fines for anyone who tries to force people into using them (that includes making them inconvenient to turn off or charging for it).

the most enforceable way to do this is making open apis mandatory. any user should be able to get api keys that let them do all the basic operations like view posts for a user, consume the firehose, read their own likes and follows, you get the idea. your api is incomplete? you get fined. needs a paid subscription or signing a contract? all views go through the recommender system? straight to jail.

we need to play hard with platforms but let users do what they want, at least if its not disruptive to other users.

ndriscoll3• 8 days ago

Worries about particulars like infinite scroll miss the point: fundamentally, the advertising business model is a market distorting one that companies use to provide goods and services below cost. It is paid advertising that should be banned. Doing so would eliminate the incentive to create addictive products in the first place since increased usage would no longer drive increased revenue.

inigyou27• 8 days ago

If advertising was banned I suspect the entire capitalism would collapse.

ndriscoll3• 8 days ago

Alternatively, products would be cheaper as we'd legislate away defection in that particular instance of the prisoners dilemma.

grapeorangesoda• 8 days ago

Guitar Hero is an infinite scroll of notes coming at you. Will that game be allowed in the dystopia?

opan• 8 days ago

The notes end when the song does, then you can start another song or stop playing. Do you ever run out of posts when scrolling?

Sindisil• 8 days ago

That would be amazing.

Ubiquitous infinite scroll is one of the things I hate most about "modern" UI design.

moritzwarhier• 8 days ago

I know this is about addictive social media feeds as a whole, but I'd like to think a law is being passed to "endanger", no, better outright ban infinite scrolling.

Call it the "pagination law" and combine it with banning personalized feeds as a whole, apart from fully transparent choices made by the user (e.g. follows).

One can dream...

wormius• 8 days ago

Infinite scroll/death of the page as model is one of the reasons we're at where we are. Plus iPhone, plus share button, and of course ads and data harvesting and siloed walls.

The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

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