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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

#51

Post by elictronic »

puppycodes wrote: post #18

There is no way to enforce any of these types of laws without an iron curtain that clearly violates the first amendment. If you have free speech infront of children in public I don't see how having infinite scroll on your website or app is any different. Parents should parent their children instead of the state. Its crazy how avoident California is of solving actually important problems like homelessness, mental heal…

Pretty sure most parents care about their kids more than nearly any other issue you mention. Social media excess has pushed to far and become less well liked than lawyers at this point. Thats only going to end one way.

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

#52

Post by elictronic »

sdh wrote: post #13

Whack-a-mole lawmaking solves nothing. All this law does is ask social media companies to find another way for their platform to be addictive to children. Here's how to solve this ... Social media companies measure engagement. Decide what the safe metric is, pass laws that hold social media companies to that metric for whatever age or demographic. Apply fines proportional to revenue when they are found to exceed the…

Or just stop social media below a certain age and enact that policy for older adults.

The tech giants have flown to close to the sun, real people are pissed.

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

#53

Post by alpinisme »

xigoi wrote: post #45
im3w1l wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that's true I think that once the feed has been observed in a certain way the advantages of stability outweigh the advantages of showing a tweaked version the second time it is loaded.

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

Not if you’re on page 2

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

#54

Post by elictronic »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #10
IAmBroom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing choice is generally a bad thing, IMO.

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.

Any discussion on this topic within hacker news is pretty silly. To much financial incentive to keep the status quo, and to many bots pushing narratives.

It’s like listening to the lawyers at a cigarette manufacturer, car manufacturers fight seat belts or gun manufacturers in kindergartens. The change is coming because real people are pissed.

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

#55

Post by AlexandrB »

ls612 wrote: post #20
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 lot of this is states trying to figure out a way around the first amendment to regulate social media that the courts will wink and accept. That is why you see so many convoluted laws being drawn up by state legislatures about this.

What should be changed is the exemption algorithmically curated feeds still get under section 230. This has always seemed like a huge loophole. Once social media feeds are picking and choosing what to show users based on opaque criteria they are no longer neutral carriers of information but more like newspaper editors. They should be liable for what the users see.

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

#57

Post by nickthegreek »

narrowtux wrote: post #9
ratelimitsteve wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's based on age and I think that the age verification it would require is pretty universally reviled, at least here on HN

I want it to be forbidden for anybody. They have stolen our attention for years

How about you just petition for an option to chose. That way you get yours and I get mine. You don’t need to make that decision for me.

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

#58

Post by annjose »

zbentley wrote: post #47
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #16

Instead of trying to whack a mole on all addictive mechanisms, just ban the business model driving all of them: targeted advertising.

I’m not sure that suffices. If a site has a very “good” (at keeping people glued to the screen) content ranking algorithm, they can still make money, albeit less, serving non-targeted ads. Longer engagement time by viewers = more ad impressions, targeted or not.

"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...

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

#59

Post by nkrisc »

xigoi wrote: post #29
afandian wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infinite scroll evolved alongside algorithms that incentivise addictive content. So it’s “good” UX in that it’s effective for consuming addictive content… When I’m trying to do something constructive, like search or browse, infinite scroll is IMHO disastrously bad. You can’t keep your place in the list, or jump ahead/back.

On the contrary, pagination makes it impossible to keep your place in the list if it changes between page loads.

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.

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

#60

Post by over_bridge »

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…

What I like about Hacker News is each day I open it up, scan the first three pages, open 2-5 links to read, then close it again. Those pages make it easy to monitor my usage and set limits. I used to do the same with Reddit before that changed

I'd fully support removing infinite scroll or even just banning it from under 18 year olds

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