Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sfgate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 464 posts

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

#441

Post by iamnothere »

tpdly wrote: post #432
iamnothere wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Should/do we allow foreign propaganda radio stations?

How do you define this? Is it foreign owned? Noncitizens are not guaranteed the same rights, especially citizens of hostile foreign powers.

> If we accept that the government can (and very much does) impose itself on content platforms for "national security"

Why should we accept this?

> what exactly is the difference between deliberately insidious information warfare, and collateral damage from market incentives?

None, both are concepts not found in the Constitution (if you’re talking about domestic speech by citizens) and both are protected by 1A.

I don’t care in the slightest about your fearmongering national security nonsense.

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

#442

Post by coldbrewed »

iamnothere wrote: post #239
coldbrewed wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it fascinating that the people making the most extensive use of infinite feeds and A/B testing for maximum user engagement are also the massive platforms with dominating network effects and captive audiences? It's like _specifically regulating large social media conglomerates with outsized impact, capacity for harm, and demonstrated propensity to maximize user addiction might provide an ideal balance of societa…

Sophistry. The question is not whether or not regulation is authoritarian, it’s whether or not it’s constitutional. As in, whether or not the government is even allowed to make such a law. A law doesn’t just get a constitutional bypass because it’s addressing known harms or “anti-social” behavior or whatever. This is not the UK. Illuminated signs exist in the real, physical world. They can beam bright light into your…

Can I buy a 40mm grenade launcher without a FFL? No, I can't. Can I legally manufacture and install an auto sear on my AR? Also no. Would it be sick if I could? Hell yes. Do I own a delightful selection of firearms, including AR pattern rifles? Yes, and the cardinality of that set is only going up.

Does society benefit from mass ownership and unlimited access to fully automatic rifles and grenade launchers? If it does, what country allows it?

Are the above constraints explicitly decided as constitutional though years of legal decisions at all levels of the courts? Yes? Then we can observe that we can reasonably constrain constitutional rights through law and legal opinions. The line may be hard to draw and may shift, see the AR ban, but it is accepted that constitutional guaranteed rights have bounds that can be articulated and clarified through the legal and political system.

We put upper bounds on the rights and freedoms of individuals and corporations because we all must live within proximity to each other. These bounds may be authoritarian at times, and of course that's bad. But we collectively can limit freedoms because the alternative is actively and disproportionally harmful to society.

When it comes to the rights and the freedoms of the largest and wealthiest corporations, we already live in an era where these entities are shaping major aspects of our lives. Infinite scroll is one small mechanism by which they're hacking our biology; this is more than just pixels on a screen but a component in a system that was A/B tested to maximize behavior modification.

Help me understand - do you believe that it is possible to regulate these entities in any form? Or do we need to say that the folks that yeeted tea into a harbor were fine with infinite corporate power and regulatory capture?

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

#443

Post by blini-kot »

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…

god I hate infinite scrolling so much

you can't jump to the specific place on the website, you can't remember where something has been to have a map in mind, you can't go to "about" section or some sort of site settings

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

#444

Post by johnea »

iamnothere wrote: post #162
johnea wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a leftist, I'd be really happy to see most CA legislators banned. Let's start with Gavin, and his pro-utility, anti-consumer CPUC. Now that that problems solved, let's just ban meta, the twit-verse, and twerk-tik completely. The whole asocial media industry is just a giant waste of time and space. One has to winder if the whole thing wasn't bootstrapped as a feed industry for the mental illness industry...

I have similar contempt for these politicians and for the affected companies. But as a leftist, surely you must understand that these centrist wonks want this creeping regulation as a tool against you just as much as anyone. Being the idiots that they are, they blame their lack of control over social media for their continued losses, and not their absolute failure at governance. But they hate you just as much as (may…

I agree (and upvoted you btw)

That's why I think this nit-picking, "no doom-scrolling" regulation is worthless.

A) It doesn't strike at the root of the problem, and therefore won't solve ti.

B) Orgs like these, that do immeasurable public harm, should just be eliminated.

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

#445

Post by Robotbeat »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #191
Robotbeat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X posts have a permanent url.

I think they meant how you can’t get a permalink to your feed/timeline view-state[1], so other people can see exactly what you see (not just what’s in the viewport but also the surrounding/offscreen content and broader context). [1]: something like a link specifying the contents of my feed at a specific date+time and scroll-position. …whereas with old-school SSR paging it’s right there in the querystring paging param…

I agree with all that. Many times I see someone Vagueposting about stuff, and I wish I could see their feed.

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

#446

Post by hoherd »

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…

One of my favorite UX stories is about my first Mac, a 12" g4 mbp. One of the best things about it was that I could open the lid and it would immediately be awake and ready to use. I would use it, do what I needed to do, then close it and put it away. It was great because it consumed so little of my time.

So to your question about the line between good UX and addictive features, at least in some cases, there is an ocean between them, though to your point, it's hard to find that line in the ocean. "Fallacy of the beard" and whatnot.

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

#447

Post by pwdisswordfishq »

pmuw wrote: post #365

Its the combination of infinite scroll and algorithmic curation of audiovisual media, that is addictive. Its equivalent to a TV channel tailored just for your interests, and TV was considered very addictive in the past. I wrote an infinite-scroll implementation for my blog. Infinite scrolling through a static bank of content (even with some randomized elements) is not engaging. You eventually make it to the bottom an…

If you ever make it to the bottom, it was never infinite in the first place.

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

#448

Post by Akronymus »

plopilop wrote: post #306
an0malous wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should all buttons require a confirmation dialog to prevent people from making decisions too hastily? Should we ensure all interactions have at least 100ms of latency so users don’t get mesmerized by a smooth experience? Maybe we should set a max color saturation so nothing looks too enticing. We also don’t really need box shadows or gradients, they’re clearly meant to mesmerize users into making bad decisions. What…

Don't quote me on this but I once heard that in the EU you always need to confirm purchases, ie. you cannot have the Amazon 1-click system. But in general, yes, having a confirmation dialog on important buttons is good UX; similarly as to setting minimum/maximum saturation will increase accessibility by visually impaired people, epileptic people etc.

Wait, so in america you can literally just click one button on a product and instantly have it paid for and set for delivery?

That seems rather accident prone.

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

#449

Post by bspammer »

slopinthebag wrote: post #425
bigmadshoe wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the cost-benefit analysis that led you to that conclusion? I ask as someone who enjoys smoking but struggles to see any good argument for the return of tobacco advertising.

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

Would you allow advertising class A drugs? TV adverts on kids channels for heroin?

Your position is absurd, I’m sorry.

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

#450

Post by dsego »

Pulcinella wrote: post #330
bcjdjsndon wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very obviously intended to keep people on an app longer than they would otherwise use it. What are you, protoplasm with eyes? Exert some willpower and get a grip. I've never known such a wimpy whining generation as this one

"Exert some willpower!" People exert willpower through the democratically elected legislature "No not like that!"

Yes exactly, a democracy should be above markets. Not sure why such a strong reaction about people agreeing that certain things cause harm and should be legislated.
Post reply on HN