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

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

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?

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).

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.

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.