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

Don't most people have AI agent that consumes the infinite scroll and then presents a custom summarization? I don't see how this ban is a good idea.

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 that an “addictive feature” or just convenient design?

also interested in the larger economy, if you create a plugin that restores or adds infinite scroll to a website could you be liable for providing illegal UX?

EDIT: to clarify I'm not really griping on infinite scroll in particular, more the difficulty in regulating postitive UI/UX. Dark patterns are relatively easy to identify. If the unsubscribe button is hidden behind 3 screens and is in 3 point font that's pretty clearly a dark pattern. This seeks to regulate the opposite basically "your platform is, too easy, too good at serving your content"

This is much harder to categorize and has fuzzier boundaries. For example imagine if it applied to remembering your login for more than 24 hours. Certainly people would use your service less if they had to continuously authenticate. Are long-lived sessions good UX or encouraging "addictive" behavior?

I think the most frustrating thing for me is when a website has infinite scroll, but also a footer with links that you want to access. I end up going to the dev tools to look at the code.

As somebody with not-enough self control, I would love this for myself. Self-locks help, but the temptation is always there.

It should just be universally required to give an option to disable addictive features. Should prevent age verification, and giving users optionality is always a good thing (for them).

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

The problem with infinity scroll is the lack of "pagination", which essentialy make most of content to get hidden away. For instance. Let assume you have 3000 comments on a YouTube video, your browser will crash way before it "infinite scroll" to the end (I know that that are tools to bypass this, but I'm talking about the default experience).

I (personally) think this is the wrong kind of solution.

I think a better solution would to mandate that platforms offer a ranked feed and a chronological feed and make the setting sticky for users.

I think giving users the agency over how much they consume is good but mandating a “UX” pattern feels too specific.

note that this is going after "psychologically exploitative features intended to maximize engagement" of all kinds, not just infinite feeds. it also poses an ultimatum banning people under 16 from websites that provide such addictive features to anyone.

personally I am against internet identification, and I think teenagers should be allowed on social media, so I have to ask: why only children? if these features are so bad, ban them outright.

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 health resources, housing crisis, yet infinite scrolling somehow is a priority.

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

Good riddance

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 metric. Fines can't be reasonable to the cost of doing business.

That stops any social media company from incentivizing employees to increase engagement for that demographic.

Old people who think that the "scrolling" part of Doom Scrolling is literal. Ugh, I'm sorry for California.

I hate infinite scroll. Also how do you really prohibit a software feature? Seriously..

Is infinite scroll really the problem or is it really the whole malicious toolbox and intention of "maximizing engagement"?

Regulate the business model, not the interface.

I honestly think that this may have some benefit as the infinite scroll has made our attention spans incredibly short. Although, I'm sure people will find there way around it.

Related:

EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858292)

> The investigation focuses on features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and the platforms' highly personalised recommender systems.

The law should force social media to be subscription-only.

this is a ridiculous proposal

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What does this mean for a large Word document? Will people using OpenOffice.org get arrested for loading a novel?