After successfully recuperating tiktok, politicians are going to once again exploit pseudo-science to outlaw the “infinite scroll.” Get ready for the comeback of the pager. Thanks libs!

  • tal@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    2 hours ago

    Brussels has told the company to change several key features, including disabling infinite scrolling, setting strict screen time breaks and changing its recommender systems.

    I’m not really a rabid fan of infinite scrolling myself, but setting aside the question of whether the state should regulate this sort of thing (I’d say no, but I’m in the US and Europeans can do whatever they want as long as it’s not affecting me), in all seriousness, it seems like it should be client-side. Like, we have prefers-color-scheme in CSS at the browser/OS level to ask all websites to use dark mode or light mode. If you want to disable infinite scrolling on websites, presumably you want to do so globally and can send that bit (and if you want it on a per-site basis, the browser could have support for a toggle).

    And if you want screen time break reminders, there’s existing browser-level and OS-level functionality for that. Debian has a number of packages to do just that. I mean, I’d think that the EU can just say “OS vendors in an EU locale should have this feature on by default”, rather than going site-by-site.