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!
I don’t know man, I’m not a fan of infinite scroll
i personally have pushed back on every “infinite scrolling” feature request from product designers. first, you think you need it; you don’t. second, you think it’s just so nifty! it isn’t. oh is your content is dynamically generated? what was wrong with Reddit’s pager that launched that site into popularity?
it’s unnecessary complexity that hides information from the user, makes API calls (which are, spoilers, paginated) more complicated, can cause the obvious memory/resource consumption issues, and just generally disempowers the user. which i guess on a social media app is the point. but totally counter to the goals of a fleet management system lol
Thank you. Infinite pagers are such poor usability, just all around annoying. I really don’t understand why people want them unless it’s developers saying “this is cool”
Misleading headline, it’s only one of multiple “addictive features” they’re considering banning to make social media less addictive.
I’m surprised Slashdot still exists.
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-schemein 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.
What pseudo-science is being exploited?
Why claim “pseudoscience” when real world studies, as well as internal documents of the companies themselves, show that these platforms are addictive? Studies also show that kids want to, but can’t, spend less time on these addictive platforms.
Is this only for TikTok or is it going to lead to worse Fediverse software? Because all infinite scrolling does is remove to annoyance of hitting next page, it’s a great QoL feature.
Moral panic slop that will just make the problem worse.
