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

191–200 of 464 posts

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

#191

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

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.

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 params (page-size, page-index or item-offset, and an optional results anchor for stability).

I’ll concede that a well-designed infinite-scrolling (or “click to load more inline” button) feature could use history.pushState to dynamically update the browser’s address with new query params but I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen anyone do that - which is a shame.

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

#192

Post by nradov »

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 don't smoke but you have to admit that the McLaren F1 car in Marlboro livery was pretty cool.

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

#193

Post by tzs »

iamnothere wrote: post #117
Greenpants wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, it's the incessant stimuli you get through these apps. There's just no point where the screen stays quiet, stimulus free. Moving elements capture our attention naturally, especially when the entire screen keeps moving. The endless scroll element just makes sure that the stimulus keeps getting renewed the moment you're done with it. Instead, a scroll should give you a break before heading into the ne…

Hello, what right do you have to regulate the presentation of speech ? If you regulate this format because it’s now considered harmful, what stops El Presidente from moving to ban “zines” because the format is “harmful to young minds” and used by “antifa”? What stops CA from moving to ban forums because threaded formats are suddenly considered “too addicting”? Maybe we should ban VR or first person shooter video game…

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't burden any speech since every word you can have on an infinite scroll page you can have on a paginated site.

• There are alternate channels. The speakers still can get their message across. In this case they can get it across to the exact same audience in the exact same place. They just have to stick in page breaks.

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

#194

Post by dghlsakjg »

peder wrote: post #144
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.

Nobody has ever been guided down an extremist rabbit hole ending in a misogynist shooting because of yogurt. At least, not to my knowledge.

There is a very real harm to allowing an engagement optimizing algorithm (which, if programmed effectively, almost always ends up a negative emotion firehose).

I don't know if this is the right solution, but I don't see that an extensive yogurt selection is the same thing as whatever the fuck is going on with Facebook feeding an endless stream of corrosive bullshit to users.

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

#195

Post by acchow »

chillfox wrote: post #76
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…

Infinite scroll is bad UX design and always has been. It makes it impossible to click on any links in the footer of the page or even really reading what's in the footer. I remember when it was initially introduced, everyone I spoke to about it hated it.

> It makes it impossible to click on any links in the footer of the page

That's a UI bug. Real infinite scroll does not have a footer.

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

#196

Post by iamnothere »

EPWN3D wrote: post #187
iamnothere wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh is this law’s scope limited to only the world’s largest corporations, and not smaller competitors, new entrants, individual developers, or nonprofits? I didn’t realize that. Oh is the presentation of text and images not “speech” because it’s “addictive”? I didn’t realize that. Your strategy with billboards is more clever than I’ve usually seen from you lot; I’ll give you credit for that. A billboard is actually a…

The 1A jurisprudence, to my understanding, basically results in the courts virtually never finding that the government has a legitimate, competing interest in limiting political speech. But courts are willing to find that certain speech that is apolitical can be limited (the previous "fire in a crowded theatre" example). Basically the courts have recognized 1A established freedom of speech to protect political dissen…

Again, the fire in a crowded theater example was actually political, and the decision was overturned. It no longer stands as precedent.

Limitations on porn still exist in a few areas, but they are gradually being rolled back—obscenity laws were once widespread and highly restrictive. Most still standing carveouts are pretzel twists that probably need to be corrected with a clarifying amendment; they are on very shaky ground.

The court has recognized speech protections outside of politics many times, including protections for authors and creators who were not explicitly aiming for political statements. For example, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association established that video games are protected expressive speech, even if they are violent trash that aren’t attempting any political point whatsoever.

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

#197

Post by oenton »

mdp2021 wrote: post #15
dijksterhuis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it doesn't remove any choice for users . users don't get a choice on the offending sites currently. they only get infinite scroll. so the eventual infinite scroll replacement will be just that, the replacement. on removing possible UI design choices for social media companies -- i have a very small violin on hand.

> they only get infinite scroll (Actually, sometimes the "paged" interface in "infinite scrolling" systems is available, only hidden. There for the benefit of people like us, those who would find it and exploit it.)

Come on now you can't leave us hanging. What is this sorcery you speak of? Is this simply a feature Meta's been A/B testing or does this require opening your browser's developer tools?

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

#198

Post by breuleux »

peder wrote: post #144
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.

I mean, unironically, yeah. If you want flavor, just mix jam in your plain yogurt.

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

#199

Post by oenton »

IAmBroom wrote: post #5
steve1977 wrote: post #2

Headline makes it sound like that's a bad thing.

Removing choice is generally a bad thing, IMO.

"First they came for the infinite scroll, but I did not speak out - because my mind was numb from the infinite scrolling."

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

#200

Post by iamnothere »

protocolture wrote: post #183
Paracompact wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do some Americans build their whole political and philosophical personality off of 1A maximalism? I'm an American, and it's a great principle. Freedom of speech deserves to be enshrined in the Constitution as a Good Thing, up there with the pursuit of happiness, freedom of the press, and all else. But this idea that nothing that ever even tangentially inconvenience's someone's (or some megacorporation's) expressi…

Not an american but I would rather enshrine freedom of communication, and just explode the corporations I dont like because they suck. Theres no "freedom to be a corporation". In fact just end the limitation of corporate liability and let the courts sort it out. A lot simpler than targeting a random expression of communication in protcols courts dont understand.

This would be 100% constitutional. Corporations are a legal construct, the law gave them and the law can take them away.
Post reply on HN