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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

#141

Post by asadotzler »

hatthew wrote: post #135
annjose wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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...

Presumably significantly less. But GP's point is that reducing advertising revenue doesn't remove the incentive to maximize engagement.

In fact, it would almost certainly encourage them to keep you engaged even longer in an attempt to make up some of the money lost with the end of targeted advertising.

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

#142

Post by Insimwytim »

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.

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

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

#143

Post by asadotzler »

iamnothere wrote: post #106

[flagged]

Let's bring back child labor and asbestos and leaded gasoline and banks discriminating against women and all manner of businesses discriminating against Blacks, because banning those was terrible and should never have been done.

Banning anything is always bad. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

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

#144

Post by peder »

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…

> Infinite scroll is very obviously unnecessary

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

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

#145

Post by [deleted] »

Robotbeat wrote: post #137
fitzroy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

X posts have a permanent url.

[deleted]

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

#146

Post by iamnothere »

asadotzler wrote: post #143
iamnothere wrote: post #106

[flagged]

Let's bring back child labor and asbestos and leaded gasoline and banks discriminating against women and all manner of businesses discriminating against Blacks, because banning those was terrible and should never have been done. Banning anything is always bad. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Fantastic, I’m a big fan of all of these. (Heavily invested in a promising child labor startup.)

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

#147

Post by Paracompact »

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.

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.

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

#148

Post by coldbrewed »

iamnothere wrote: post #136
coldbrewed wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already do limit harmful speech, at presence it's limited to speech and will immediately cause harm (the whole "shouting fire" thing) and the demonstrable addiction properties can be reasonably shown as harmful. It's also telling that only corporations seem to be the ones demanding the right to infinite scroll; what's the scenario where an individual can only express themselves and their ideas through implementing…

“Shouting fire” was a bad decision denying the right to protest the draft, and it’s since been overturned. (Thankfully, as we may need that right soon!) The First Amendment is clear: there shall be no law abridging freedom of speech. Courts have bent around that in the past, in earlier eras, but they were wrong to do so. Their mistakes have mostly been corrected although there’s still a few left. The document that go…

Hang on, let's go back - clarify for me how we're calling an addictive feature in a product built by the wealthiest corporations on the planet a matter of individual free speech? Precisely whose free speech would be harmed here?

Seriously, this diffusion of individual liberties into corporations has no presence in the constitution, and courts have fabricated this wholesale. There is no idea, no concept, no notion that infinite scroll provides. We regulate the size, location, and brightness of billboards; is this also a matter of speech?

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

#149

Post by asadotzler »

pillmillipedes wrote: post #28

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 s…

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.

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

#150

Post by ahnick »

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…

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.
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