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The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes
- imglorp 4mo agoIs infinite scroll really the problem or is it really the whole malicious toolbox and intention of "maximizing engagement"?
- Cider9986 4mo agoI agree, I don't think an "infinite refresh" like if YouTube had a limited homepage and changed on each refresh, would be much better. But infinite scroll is likely the most addictive.
- steve1977 4mo agoHeadline makes it sound like that's a bad thing.
- ratelimitsteve 4mo agoit's based on age and I think that the age verification it would require is pretty universally reviled, at least here on HN
- narrowtux 4mo agoI want it to be forbidden for anybody. They have stolen our attention for years
- nickthegreek 4mo agoHow 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.
- IAmBroom 4mo agoRemoving choice is generally a bad thing, IMO.
- dijksterhuis 4mo agoit 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.
- mdp2021 4mo ago> they only get infinite scroll (Actually, sometimes the "paged" interface in "infinite scrolling" systems is available, only hidden. There for the benefit of people like us, those who would find it and exploit it.)
- dijksterhuis 4mo agoi originally wrote users from the wider public or something but then decided to edit the comment down. fair point i suppose for the ~1% of users of these sites that are super tech nerds
- mdp2021 4mo ago> super tech nerds "Resourceful"?
- oenton 4mo agoCome on now you can't leave us hanging. What is this sorcery you speak of? Is this simply a feature Meta's been A/B testing or does this require opening your browser's developer tools?
- elictronic 4mo agoAny 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.
- micromacrofoot 4mo agomisses the mark, it's not about the functionality it's about the algorithm populating it
- ticulatedspline 4mo agoCurious 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?
- RajT88 4mo agoInfinite scroll is not necessarily a problem in and of itself. If the content is static, no biggie. At some point diminishing returns and you will want to use search for it. It is the algorithm they attach to infinite scroll which is problematic. It is not a UI design problem.
- ls612 4mo agoA 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.
- AlexandrB 4mo agoWhat 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.
- senorcrab 4mo agoIt 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).
- mdp2021 4mo ago> Should prevent age verification It won't, become some parties are proposing a narrative of "shielding the innocent from harmful content" (such as themselves). keir starmer seems to suppose nudity would be indecent, against an implicitly stated decent itself and british politics.
- senorcrab 4mo agoYeah I meant it would avoid the necessity of age verification to solve this problem. Age verification and how enthusiastic gov'ts are about it is concerning.
- iamnothere 4mo agoHow will you measure purely psychological addiction using a neutral process that can’t be easily captured by political interests? That said, I like the idea of an option. Options are good!
- senorcrab 4mo agoClearly there is a fuzzy line of demarcation. I was thinking for a simple opt-out of any rec-sys
- iamnothere 4mo agoWhile I’m uncomfortable with any legislation regarding the presentation of speech, in fact it’s definitely unconstitutional, this isn’t bad if you ignore the 1A issues. Hard to ignore that though
- 4mo ago
- archonis 4mo agoRegulate the business model, not the interface.
- sdh 4mo agoWhack-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.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- elictronic 4mo agoOr 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.
- ulrikrasmussen 4mo agoInstead of trying to whack a mole on all addictive mechanisms, just ban the business model driving all of them: targeted advertising.
- zbentley 4mo agoI’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.
- annjose 4mo ago"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-details/2026/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2025-Results/default.aspx https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-deta...
- hatthew 4mo agoPresumably significantly less. But GP's point is that reducing advertising revenue doesn't remove the incentive to maximize engagement.
- asadotzler 4mo agoIn fact, it would almost certainly encourage them to keep you engaged even longer in an attempt to make up some of the money lost with the end of targeted advertising.
- iamnothere 4mo agoWouldn’t it lead to the opposite? You spending time on the platform earns them money because they’re gathering data for targeted ads, and showing you those ads. Non-targeted ads barely pay anything. Addictive content feeds are expensive with the live HD video playing everywhere and the constant tweaks needed from teams working to further refine targeting based on behavior.
- butlike 4mo agoThe law should force social media to be subscription-only.
- puppycodes 4mo agoThere 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.
- jmye 4mo ago[dead]
- elictronic 4mo agoPretty 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.
- puppycodes 4mo agoParents certainly care about all the things I mentioned, it even impacts their kids. This approach to safeguard kids online is completely impractical and utterly unenforceable and seems like a total waste of time.
- cmoski 4mo ago> If you have free speech in front of children in public I don't see how having infinite scroll on your website or app is any different. Have you seen many people mindlessly watching people talk in public for hours on end? When a plane lands, people aren't zombified listening to another passenger talk, they're zombified doom scrolling on tic-tok etc.
- inigyou 4mo agoI didn't realize that putting labels on cigarette packs made the country literally East Germany (the original iron curtain).
- kiaansaraiya 4mo agoI 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.
- sys_64738 4mo agoWhat does this mean for a large Word document? Will people using OpenOffice.org get arrested for loading a novel?
- OptionOfT 4mo agoThat's not infinite. There is an end to the novel.
- dmvjs 4mo agothis is a ridiculous proposal
- dmvjs 4mo agothere is no correlation between the implementation of infinite scroll and the actual forces that are the problem
- pillmillipedes 4mo agonote 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.
- elictronic 4mo ago[dead]
- inigyou 4mo agosame as alcohol, we've decided adults are fair prey
- asadotzler 4mo agoAdults are supposed to have acquired enough life experience to make more reasonable decisions than children. Having said that, we also expect adults to make all kinds of bad decisions so they too are prohibited from many things, like shooting smack or freebasing meth. I think there's a good case to be made not for banning kids from social media, but for banning everyone. In that case, it'd be easier to do it from the supply side than the demand side.
- GenericDev 4mo ago[dead]
- hexage1814 4mo agoThe 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).
- Jzush 4mo agoOld people who think that the "scrolling" part of Doom Scrolling is literal. Ugh, I'm sorry for California.
- Calvin02 4mo agoI (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.
- ChrisArchitect 4mo agoRelated: EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_1579 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858292 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.
- pinkmuffinere 4mo agoAs somebody with not-enough self control, I would love this for myself. Self-locks help, but the temptation is always there.
- anderber 4mo agoI 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.
- heohk 4mo agoGood riddance
- lucasrufkahr 4mo agoI hate infinite scroll. Also how do you really prohibit a software feature? Seriously..
- AmazingEveryDay 4mo agoDon'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.
- letmeinhere 4mo agoIf you don't have an agent swarm that's already trained to re-scroll all the unscrolled feeds and translate them to binaural beats during your micronaps you're ngmi
- bigstrat2003 4mo agoNo, they do not.
- Robdel12 4mo agoI’m going to be honest, this kind of regulation would make me disable the site(s) for the state (if there are fines, etc). I don’t have the time to play these games for my tiny projects
- chupchap 4mo agoIt was a good UX in FriendFeed as it was still a chronological feed. However once it was mixed with algorithmic feed it shifted from better UX to keep em' hooked.
- Varelion 4mo agoThank God. We need more legislation against the cognitive poisoning of two generations.
- iamnothere 4mo ago[flagged]
- inigyou 4mo agoBoth of those are already dead.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- dansquizsoft 4mo agor/whoosh...
- Varelion 4mo agoI'm well acquainted with "Everything Bad Is Good For You" -- this is not the same.
- protocolture 4mo agoThe article isn't making moralistic grandstanding illegal so I don't know how you got to cognitive poisoning.
- Varelion 4mo agoThe source of the disease isn't moralistic grandstanding -- it's the lack of empathy and biblical greed behind the machine.
- manoweb 4mo agoThis is exactly why I force my kids to always create accounts as 30-years old (by specifying a birth data in the 90s), to avoid as much State interference as possible. Did you know that if your child has a "kid" account you cannot follow him on google maps? We had to make one for "adults" in order to be able to do so.
- inigyou 4mo agoHow about OwnTracks?
- NoGravitas 4mo agoZood Location is pretty good. Open source, location data is end-to-end encrypted (encrypted to the keys of the people you are sharing with before it leaves your device).
- scoofy 4mo agoWe can all agree that the internet was great and now it is less great, but the second someone articulates a very, very simple rule, the "well ackchyually" crew comes out of the woodwork. Infinite scroll is very obviously unnecessary. It is very obviously intended to keep people on an app longer than they would otherwise use it. You can lazy load into a finite scroll. Just make people click something every once in a while.
- crubier 4mo ago> Just make people click something every once in a while But why? This is EU Cookies Banner level of state interference making UX worse for everyone just because some lawmaker doesn't like something.
- scoofy 4mo ago"Some lawmaker" is democracy. The point is that people are pissed off about the addictive UX, same as cigarettes, and candy. If you want to make a serious argument, just argue that you should be able to opt out, which is an entirely reasonable position.
- iamnothere 4mo agoDemocracy is bound by the limits of the Constitution, outside of an amendment or a revolution. (Note that the latter is usually considered a Bad Thing; occasionally it works out for the better, but just as often for the worse.)
- dudefeliciano 4mo agothe EU doesn't have a constitution
- ben_w 4mo agoIt does, it's just not the US constitution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaties_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaties_of_the_European_Union
- ahmed_1000 4mo agoState-approved UI components lmao
- socalgal2 4mo agoGood
- iamnothere 4mo ago[flagged]
- iamnothere 4mo ago[flagged]
- iknowstuff 4mo agoIn principle, do you support uniform packaging with warnings for cigarettes? Do you support ban on selling flavored cigarettes/vapes to children?
- iamnothere 4mo ago[flagged]
- asadotzler 4mo agoLet's bring back child labor and asbestos and leaded gasoline and banks discriminating against women and all manner of businesses discriminating against Blacks, because banning those was terrible and should never have been done. Banning anything is always bad. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
- iamnothere 4mo agoFantastic, I’m a big fan of all of these. (Heavily invested in a promising child labor startup.)
- beanjuiceII 4mo agowhy are we making laws about how scrolling works this is crazy
- inigyou 4mo agobecause it's a problem but it's not the actual problem, but it's a part of the problem, and it's also something really easy to identify.
- momentmaker 4mo agoI think Tristan from The Social Dilemma documentary - his co-founder's dad - was the one who invented the infinite scroll and he deeply regretted it.
- nullbio 4mo agoThis will accomplish nothing.
- cobbzilla 4mo agoWatch if there's a carve-out for business apps, or it only applies to consumer apps. Then watch as your enterprise apps adopt infinite-scroll sidebars of "useful" stuff...
- pdonis 4mo agoI'm no fan of the government trying to regulate such things, but I won't shed any tears if infinite scroll is forced to go away. It's one of the things I hate the most about the so-called "modern" web.
- aeternum 4mo agoOne again CA trying very hard to become the EU and turn regulation into their main export.
- keane 4mo agoOther industries wisely self-police before this happens, eg how the film industry adopted the MPA Ratings System
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- m3kw9 4mo agoInfinite scroll is a real drug
- silexia 4mo agoAdults like me need these protections too.
- etdznots 4mo agoThis seems like an arms race that will be very hard for the state to win, meta is prepared to spend billions throwing engineers phds and compute at making the most addicting platform possible within the bounds set by the law, while this kind of law would make it hard for small entrants into the market, I’m not against trying to do things that are reasonable to prevent addictive behavior, but I hope these rules are gated on size somehow so that indie developers and random websites don’t get caught in the dragnet of needing to comply, like what happened with the UK moderation bill.
- xg15 4mo agoWhat would be the alternative though?
- iamnothere 4mo ago[flagged]
- xg15 4mo agoSo there is no problem at all. Got it.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- pirates 4mo agoThe presentation of speech is regulated in many ways already. The idea that any type of regulation on speech whatsoever is unconstitutional is false. Also, how is a hypothetical regulation on infinite scroll unconstitutional, but “go after targeted ads” isn’t?
- iamnothere 4mo agoTargeted ads involve a complex system of transactions behind the scenes. It may be possible to regulate these under the Commerce Clause. Worth a shot. In any case this is much more likely to succeed than regulation of speech. Contrary to what you’ve just said, presentation of speech is not heavily regulated, especially for privately owned venues.
- petterroea 4mo agoI've heard a lot of negative talk about Californian politicians, but compared to how the discussion is going on in Norway about the same issue, this is great. It's very refreshing to see politicians actually understand the problem at hand instead of just throwing age checks at it. For reference, in Norway, you basically have 3 camps: * Age verification is a detriment to democracy if implemented at a large scale as a requirement to speak in public. Well documented (activists and subject matter experts generally agree on this) * We will solve the problem of kids online and we will solve it now. The solution must be age verification. Experts loud protest, and even committee findings that warn against are completely ignored (usually people who want a quick and easy solution, politicians who want the bragging rights of having saved the kids) * We want to solve the problem, but the only obvious solution is age verification so I guess it can't be helped (not really educated on the topic. Just like most of us when it comes to a random political question. Not really a matter of intelligence) Absolute circus. I think most people here used the internet as a kid to learn about things and talk to adults in the field there were interested in. For today's kids this happens mostly on the few big sites like twitter and discord. I'm more than happy to sacrifice endless scroll and recommendation algorithms (at least the type that is thrown at you without consent) to not have to verify my age to speak online.
- Symbiote 4mo agoThese Estonian MEPs are at least suggesting general regulations rather than age limits. https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-should-stand-up-to-big-tech-instead-of-imposing-social-media-bans-estonia-says/ https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-should-stand-up-to-bi...
- inigyou 4mo agoThe California solution to age verification was a really good alternative. Instead of actually verifying anything, it just asks you when you buy the device. Presumably adults buy devices for their kids, and by the time you're old enough to buy your own, you're old enough to be in the grey area where it doesn't really matter if you lie.
- animuchan 4mo agoIt is amusing we pass laws to fix bad UX. But if it works, can't argue with it. I would like a law against unwanted popovers now please.
- xg15 4mo agoEveryone clutching their pearls over this bill should take note that this is already the massively watered-down version. The precedent from other countries was a blanket ban of everyone below 16. That was reduced to "well, don't use those specific UI elements and we're fine".
- emsign 4mo agoEndangered? This is great news! It's one of the things that make social media a drug.
- bertili 4mo agoLegislators, please require 10 seconds of load screen with a picture of a tree, for every online video. It worked for cigarette packs.
- gnoll_of_gozag 4mo agotumblr still has pages and it has never impeded me on the contrary, infinite scrolls are impossible to get back to after some time away and eventually start lagging
- aussieguy1234 4mo agoGood riddance
- gnoll_of_gozag 4mo agobest solution would be to serve paginated by default but you can change page size in the settings or even enable infinite. whoever really wants infinite can use it, it's just not forced on everyone. sated wolves, intact sheep
- invalidusernam3 4mo agoWhy only focus on youngsters? Many of the older generations that I see online seem to have been impacted massively by social media in a negative way. Yes in theory adults should have freedom to choose, but when your app is the digital version of crack cocaine I think there should be some rules.
- lrpe 4mo agoOh my god yes, kill it, please.
- justin66 4mo agoOh no. First the Europeans took away Lightning connectors and now this.
- philipwhiuk 4mo agoWhat's European about a Californian law?
- justin66 4mo agoSometimes the jokes just don't land.
- erelong 4mo ago> people will just ask AI how to create an infinite scroll that complies with CA law and the technology marches onward
- ChoGGi 4mo agoOh, I might be able to use bookmarks again? I know I spend more time on Reddit than I should, so... Oh well.
- thenatureboy 4mo agoIt's stupid laws like this that continue to drive innovation out of California.
- pmuw 4mo agoIts the combination of infinite scroll and algorithmic curation of audiovisual media, that is addictive. Its equivalent to a TV channel tailored just for your interests, and TV was considered very addictive in the past. I wrote an infinite-scroll implementation for my blog. Infinite scrolling through a static bank of content (even with some randomized elements) is not engaging. You eventually make it to the bottom and think "that's it?" There are other types of Internet communities where people can connect with each other, that do not involve infinite scrolling, algorithmic curation, and using your collected interests for targeted advertising. I would love to see regulation, just to see the value of Meta's user-profiling-data-assets shrink.
- dinfinity 4mo agoBrainstorming here, hear me out: after 2 pages or 3 minutes of infinite scrolling the only content that shows up is various forms of goatse. We could make a browser extension for this.
- pwdisswordfishq 4mo agoIf you ever make it to the bottom, it was never infinite in the first place.
- tancop 4mo agoits the same wrong answer again and again. how long will it take for lawmakers to realize that the best way to fight big tech is give people choice. infinite scroll, recommender systems, targeted ads, all the other "toxic" features should be optional with massive fines for anyone who tries to force people into using them (that includes making them inconvenient to turn off or charging for it). the most enforceable way to do this is making open apis mandatory. any user should be able to get api keys that let them do all the basic operations like view posts for a user, consume the firehose, read their own likes and follows, you get the idea. your api is incomplete? you get fined. needs a paid subscription or signing a contract? all views go through the recommender system? straight to jail. we need to play hard with platforms but let users do what they want, at least if its not disruptive to other users.
- ndriscoll 4mo agoWorries about particulars like infinite scroll miss the point: fundamentally, the advertising business model is a market distorting one that companies use to provide goods and services below cost. It is paid advertising that should be banned. Doing so would eliminate the incentive to create addictive products in the first place since increased usage would no longer drive increased revenue.
- inigyou 4mo agoIf advertising was banned I suspect the entire capitalism would collapse.
- ndriscoll 4mo agoAlternatively, products would be cheaper as we'd legislate away defection in that particular instance of the prisoners dilemma.
- inigyou 4mo agoThere would be less products. Severely less. All drinks would be made by Coke, all potato chips would be made by Pepsi (who owns Lays). They would be much cheaper (or more profitable), and there would be no opportunity for competition ever again. Everyone who works for a company other than the above would be laid off because their company couldn't sell enough product to remain in business.
- grapeorangesoda 4mo agoGuitar Hero is an infinite scroll of notes coming at you. Will that game be allowed in the dystopia?
- opan 4mo agoThe notes end when the song does, then you can start another song or stop playing. Do you ever run out of posts when scrolling?
- Sindisil 4mo agoThat would be amazing. Ubiquitous infinite scroll is one of the things I hate most about "modern" UI design.
- wetpaws 4mo ago[dead]
- moritzwarhier 4mo agoI know this is about addictive social media feeds as a whole, but I'd like to think a law is being passed to "endanger", no, better outright ban infinite scrolling. Call it the "pagination law" and combine it with banning personalized feeds as a whole, apart from fully transparent choices made by the user (e.g. follows). One can dream...
- wormius 4mo agoInfinite scroll/death of the page as model is one of the reasons we're at where we are. Plus iPhone, plus share button, and of course ads and data harvesting and siloed walls.