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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

#431

Post by halestock »

an0malous wrote: post #381
halestock wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No my point is that none of these are by themselves even coercive design, there’s no distinction between a smooth or pleasant UX experience and a coercive design without context.

But this isn't about banning those things, it's about banning endless scrolling.

edit: I get that you're trying to provide counterexamples to be able to say "here's something that _could_ be construed as coercive/addictive design, so the law is going to end up banning those" - but that's the whole reason we have courts to interpret these laws. If you can reasonably conclude that a 100ms delay is helpful for user input - then it's probably not addictive design! That's the whole reason courts exist, because there is always going to be ambiguity; laws are not algorithms.

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

#432

Post by tpdly »

iamnothere wrote: post #201
tzs wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that this will run into any 1A issues. It will probably pass the test for allowable time/place/manner restrictions. • It is content neutral. • The government can probably show a significant government interest in reducing the harms infinite scroll often leads to. • It is narrowly tailored. It achieves the goal without burdening more speech than is substantially necessary to achieve the goal. Arguably it doesn…

Time/place/manner restrictions typically apply to public property. These are private websites. While the court has once or twice extended protections to people using private property as a public forum, to my knowledge they have never done so with time/place/manner restrictions .

These are private websites accessible over the public internet, to be clear. Also, there are known relationships between the intelligence community and the big platforms, lets not pretend they have free reign.

Should/do we allow foreign propaganda radio stations? If we accept that the government can (and very much does) impose itself on content platforms for "national security", what exactly is the difference between deliberately insidious information warfare, and collateral damage from market incentives?

I agree that its better to find solutions that involve protections instead of restrictions though. I think it means forced decoupling of indices/curation from advertising. This would make advertising funded addiction feeds compete with paid feed applications.

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

#433

Post by slopinthebag »

bigmadshoe wrote: post #428
slopinthebag wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No cost-benefit analysis, I have a philosophical aversion to controlling speech.

Interesting. I guess I don’t see corporations as people, and thus I don’t see this as a violation of free speech.

Hm, even if a corporation wasn’t simply a group of people, it seems like cig ads are banned even if it’s a single person wanting to air one.

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

#434

Post by Y-bar »

crubier wrote: post #417
Y-bar wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t emphasise enough how much you are missing the point of the law! The law requires me to NOT track you unless I get specific, informed, consent. The fundamental and default part of the law is to NOT track. Tracking by default (opt-out) is illegal. A modal is just a way to annoy you until you consent against your will. https://gdpr.eu/article-6-how-to-process-personal-data-legal...

> unless I get specific, informed, consent. Explain how you'd do that without a banner or similarly annoying UX

I don’t know where to begin explaining UX to someone who struggles with the basic concept of consent.

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

#435

Post by Dylan16807 »

xigoi wrote: post #296
Dylan16807 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's slightly different but I don't see why there should be a notable difference in difficulty. You need to somehow represent what you saw so far and act based on that.

With infinite scroll, “what you saw so far” is in the client. With pagination, it exists only in the user’s mind.

Is the client sending that info back to the server every time it requests more posts? You can do the same thing with pagination. Embed a list of post IDs into the next button.

There's potentially a difference if the server's sending repeat posts and you're doing client-side filtering of what to show next. But do any sites work that way?

(And of course these issues only exist when your list of results changes order. It the list merely grows then you can paginate with start=xxx)

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

#436

Post by momojo »

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…

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.

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

#438

Post by newguy1000 »

fitzroy wrote: post #129
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…

> 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…

says you

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

#440

Post by iamnothere »

tpdly wrote: post #426
iamnothere wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d need a Constitution that allows laws regarding speech. And probably a mechanism to prevent legislators from assigning excessive penalties. It’s not about whether the law meets some abstract notion of good or bad, it’s about whether it is even possible to enact under the framework that governs us. Under the Constitution as it stands, it wouldn’t be possible.

Not true. Speech and reach are obviously different. It is entirely conceivable that Americans wake up to the absurd power and manipulation behind algorithmic feeds, and decide to intervene in the hypno-addictive horror-show. Also, I've been thinking about how curation at the scale of the modern internet is much more analogous to speech than it ever was before. Whatever you want to say, just find someone else who's sa…

In times long ago, those who owned a very expensive printing press and distribution networks had a significant advantage in reach. As did those with the money to pay writers and staff.

Regardless, this doesn’t change anything about the first amendment, because changes in technology and their consequences don’t alter the Constitution. If you think free speech needs a separate concept of “reach” then you need to pass an amendment.

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