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

451–460 of 464 posts

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

#451

Post by dsego »

8note wrote: post #64
xigoi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The user expectation is that if you refresh the page, you will see fresh content.

mine isnt? if i refresh the page it should be almost the same. maybe a couple new things at the very top, but i should still be able to find the thing i was just looking at. by comparison, facebook auto-reloads while you're halfway down a page, and wont show you any of the same things. its an incredibly poor experience

I get frustrated by this so much, because sometimes I come across a post with a video or something I want to see, but I leave it for a few minutes to take care of something, and then when I come back it auto reloads and I can't find it anymore, the back button won't work, scrolling through the timeline is futile, it's just gone.

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

#452

Post by nkrisc »

xigoi wrote: post #250
nkrisc wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you going to keep your place if the order changes anyway? What is your place if the order has changed? If the order changes, all bets are off regardless of pagination or infinite scroll.

When asked to load more items, simply take the entire list (which may have changed) and remove the items already shown on the screen.

That’s not “keeping your place” in an ordered list if the order has changed between the requests for pages 3 and 4.

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

#453

Post by Chu4eeno »

tencentshill wrote: post #361
totallyhuman wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would cause most, if not all, modern tech companies to go out of business (or massively downsize). I support it.

Facebook really didn't like that apple made device IDs optional, it's strange that they quieted down about that. They must have found an alternative fingerprinting method.

Apps can just read your root disk UUID on iOS (with no permissions), iirc?

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

#454

Post by noripcord »

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…

agree. pressing a button to go to next page is like a chore. The scrolling in itself is kind of addictive, you swipe with your finger and everything moves like you're moving a parchment or something.

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

#455

Post by crubier »

Y-bar wrote: post #434
crubier wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It’s simple, informing implies taking screen space, expressing consent implies user action. So overall it HAS to be similarly annoying to a cookie banner.

Of course if your answer is “people should just stop using cookies” then I have bad news for you.

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

#456

Post by gghackernewsgg »

tt24 wrote: post #412
semilin wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. While we're at it, why should asbestos be regulated? You can just not go in buildings that have it.

I’d have no problem with this as long as the building makes it known that it contains asbestos. Infinite scroll is immediately evident. Just don’t use it if you don’t like it

Completely agree.

What are your thoughts on introducing a law that requires social media sites with infinite scroll to feature an addiction warning, something like: "Using this platform may cause addiction in some users."?

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

#457

Post by gghackernewsgg »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #175
mindwok wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't useful advice for addictive things that have high short term reward and high long term regret though. Especially so when the other party has a strong incentive to keep you trapped in that loop of regret.

Exactly. Also, for responders, let's skip past the "if addicts didn't want to use them they wouldn't," and go straight to framing it as a moral failing implying that they deserve it.

I don't consider addiction a moral failing. But I do think it's wrong to place all the blame on social media if you also play an active role in sustaining your addiction.

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

#458

Post by gghackernewsgg »

bigmadshoe wrote: post #178
ahnick wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We can decide to pass laws to protect people from addictive behaviors. Do you support bringing cigarette advertising back for example?

I wouldn't support cigarette ads. But I also wouldn't support a law that forces tobbaco companies to remove nicotine from their cigarettes.

I would support a law that enforces a "This product may cause addiction in some users" warning on social media sites with infinite scroll.

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

#459

Post by gghackernewsgg »

carljungslabtek wrote: post #423
ahnick wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This societal view that you are a powerless NPC slave to ones desires/addictions is highly toxic. It is not in fact binary for most people and people do have free will to make different choices. To absolve the individual of accountability is to undermine the very fabric of society. The way individuals typically overcome addiction is through reliance on close family & friends. Those family & friends can "take the phon…

I’m a Buddhist, so I really do see what you’re saying about personal responsibility and agency, but the other problem I see is that the companies at the forefront of these ultra-addictive industries (including mass social media) get busted eventually every single time for working overtime to hide what they knew about how damaging their products can be, and in fact to convince the public that their products do the opp…

> Does nicotine have some beneficial health effects? Yeah, it actually does. But do they outweigh the downsides (and societal costs)? Absolutely not.

What are the downsides and societal costs of social media addiction? We have decades of strong evidence on the harms of nicotine and cigarettes, but the evidence regarding social media addiction is nowhere near as clear-cut, at least from what I've read. Likewise, the causal relationship between cigarettes and their harms is well established, whereas the relationship between social media use and addiction-related harms is much harder to disentangle from other contributing factors.

Not to mention, nicotine is highly addictive for almost any user, while most people who use social media do not become addicted.

I understand the broader point you're making. I'm just not convinced there's enough evidence to justify treating social media addiction as comparable to cigarette addiction.

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

#460

Post by Ferret7446 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #229
lmz wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offset / page index is not exactly stable especially for the most common case of newest-first.

“Anchor + Offset” is stable because the anchor param should uniquely identify a specific record from which the offset is applied; a sort-order, direction, and page-size may also be optimally specified.

No it's not stable. You also need the query/filter, and a snapshot of the state of all posts at the exact moment you want to grab the link, since posts can be created/deleted/changed. That's also assuming that your anchor still exists and wasn't deleted or changed.

The only stable way to share what you're seeing is with a screenshot.

Post reply on HN