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The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

politico.eu

151–160 of 979 posts

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#151
post #132
post #64

Here's the actual statement from the European Comission: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_... It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling , but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it. The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain feat…

Assuming it was "just" about banning infinite scrolling. Not saying it is a good idea, but right now I cannot think of a legitimate use case where you would need it, unless your goal is engagement.

a webgame or a document browser, e.g. side scrollers, topdown/bottom up scroller, continuous page view.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#152
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If all it took was a $300k ad campaign on tiktok to get the population of a country(Romania in this case to be specific) to vote for a shady no-name candidate that came out of nowhere, instead of the well known candidates of the establishment, that should tell you the politics of your country betrayed its electorate so badly that they would rather commit national suicide instead of voting the establishment agai…

That only worked though because Romania is using a voting method for President that is completely terrible for countries that have several viable political parties. They use a two-round system to elect their President that works like this: 1. If a candidates gets more than 50% in the first round they are the winner, and there is no second round. 2. If there is no clear winner in the first round, the top two from the…

Ranked choice is very similar to what you just described, has the same downsides, and is much more difficult to understand. What you want is approval voting which has all of the upsides ranked choice claims to have, none of the downsides, doesn't have multiple rounds, and is trivial to understand. On top of that approval voting has an additional benefit where voting third-party/moderates doesn't feel like throwing any vote away so you can just include them and they're much more likely to win.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#153

I hope this goes through. Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive. It isn't a fair fight and the existence of infinite feeds is bad both for people and democracy. Regulating consumer products that cause harm to millions is nothing new.

> Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive. Or you could just shut the phone off and/or not install the app. It's a simple solution, really, and one that is available at your disposal today at no cost.

The whole point is that these companies are spending a lot of cash making sure that their products are as addicting as possible to as many people as possible, so "just" shutting the phone off isn't a viable strategy.

It's as idiotic a statement as saying "Just stop smoking" around the time when big tobacco was lobbying politicians and bribing scientists and doctors to straight up lie about the deleterious effects of tobacco. It's engineered in such a way as to make it basically impossible for a large swathe of the population to "just not use" the apps.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#154
post #145
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to scroll my logs w/o pagination

But they ain't infinite (I assume). Maybe long, but finite. That is a big difference as it still gives meaning to the scrollbar. Infinite scroll is endlessly adding new content so you simply cannot scroll to the bottom.

if your systemlog is very active or very verbose, this will happen.

i do get the idea though. abusive infinate scroll games/exploits, the compulsion to "finish" the feed.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#155

I have a proud European coworker trying to get their H1B... They talk about how great Europe is, how they like their 1-2 hour coffee/smoke breaks... These kind of moves give me that same vibe. But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? Why isn't the opposite happening? My hypothesis is that these kind of popular policies are short sighted. They are super popular, they use intuition and feeling. But maybe…

They aren’t trying to move to the US? At least in western/Northern Europe.

Curious where you got your statistics?

If anything it’s probably the opposite, with more Americans wanting to move to Europe than the reverse.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#156
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a phone. Put it in the trash. Dude, it's 2025. A few years ago, I accidentally left my phone at home when I went to work, and when I arrived I found that because I no longer had my 2FA device, I couldn't do any work until I went home again and picked it up. I'm fine without doomscrolling. I've gone from the minimum possible service with internet, to pure PAYG with no internet, and I'm fine with that. But socie…

> Dude, it's 2025. Actually, it's 2026 and has been for six weeks. > A few years ago, I accidentally left my phone at home when I went to work, and when I arrived I found that because I no longer had my 2FA device, I couldn't do any work until I went home again and picked it up. Sounds like a personal problem. There are many other 2FA authenticators available. Yubikey, TOTP tokens, smart cards, etc. Using a smartphon…

We were literally not given the choice in the matter, in the case of $JOB. Plenty of people complained about having to use their phones to access the buildings, but that was the policy.

I suspect the next thing you're going to say is along the lines of "then just switch jobs", though.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#157
This was long overdue. I hope killing other dark patterns that feast on attention or hunt on flaws in human psychology follow. However, my only concern is how this will be taken care of. I hope they learned something from the GDPR fiasco.

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#158
post #64

Here's the actual statement from the European Comission: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_... It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling , but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it. The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain feat…

>"well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?"

Hear me out: banning advertising on the Internet. It's the only way. It's the primordial domino tile. You knock that one over, every other tile follows suit. It's the mother of chain reactions. There would be no social media, no Internet as we know it. Imagine having TikTok, YouTube or X trying to survive on subscriptions alone in their current iterations. Impossible. They'd need to change their top priority from "maximizing engagement by fostering addictive behavior" to "offering a product with enough quality for someone to pay a fee in order to be able to use it".

Re: The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

#159
post #4

[flagged]

This is pretty normal? I work for a company that develops lab machines and we have a bunch of designs we have to follow:

ISO 12100 (Safety of Machinery): Sets general, fundamental principles for design, risk assessment, and reduction (Type A standard).

ISO 13849-1 (Safety-Related Parts of Control Systems): Defines performance levels and categories for safety-related components (Type B standard).

ISO 13850 Safety of machinery – Emergency stop function – Principles for design

And that's just some of them.

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