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

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

#101

Post by thaumasiotes »

ticulatedspline wrote: post #4

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 t…

> 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.

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

#102

Post by iamnothere »

senorcrab wrote: post #6

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).

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!

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

#104

Post by thaumasiotes »

xigoi wrote: post #29
afandian wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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

Well, that's obviously false. There are two styles of pagination:

    https://yourblog.zox/archives?page=4

    https://yourblog.zox/archives?before=2019-06-03&count=10
That second style will never change (unless you insert entries into the past). The first style will change. But it hardly makes it impossible to keep your place in the list; if you come back three years later, you'll find that that link goes to a random location, but if you come back next week, that link is going to go to a place that is very close to the place you left off, requiring minimal adjustment to find your place again.

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

#105

Post by scoofy »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #89
scoofy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What choice? When did I ever choose infinite scroll?

You never had an option to have Google show a list of curated links or Yahoo show a simple search bar. You chose to go to the site you liked better and in aggregate the market chose the simple search. I could still be going to Slashdot or Things You Wouldn't Know Unless We Blogged It, but I and the content creators found that we preferred infinite scroll instead.

You could say the same thing about nutritional facts being printed on foods. The entire point is externalities that favor the company. These things are never going to be on products unless they are regulated. If you're going to make an argument for "choice" at least argue for opt out rather than "fuck it, let them put trans fats in the food and if you don't like it eat broccoli."

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

#107

Post by petra »

ticulatedspline wrote: post #4

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 t…

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.

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

#109

Post by scoofy »

crubier wrote: post #96
scoofy wrote: post #81

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 w…

> 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.

"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.

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

#110

Post by iamnothere »

scoofy wrote: post #81

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 w…

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