It is a pattern, and even places like Twitter and Reddit are affected. Many of them, you can't even click 60 times, you're limited to X items and then that's it

It is a pattern, and even places like Twitter and Reddit are affected. Many of them, you can't even click 60 times, you're limited to X items and then that's it after that, even if it is your own writing! I think it is laziness and incompetence in systems design more than anything nefarious, although a lack of regard for the user can be considered a dark pattern in itself. HN and dilbert.com are shining example of how to do it RIGHT. They provide calendar archives, filtering by tag, predictable URLs. I keep this in mind when designing my systems. Because I think it is important for the user to own their data, my forum systems makes user profile downloadable by default, in the smallest possible format readable by both software and humans: text (with some tokens).