7 ms·

We 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

• crubier 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo ago
      Democracy 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 3mo ago
        the EU doesn't have a constitution
        • ben_w 3mo ago
          It 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
          • dudefeliciano 3mo ago
            Right, it has a set of treaties, not a unified constitution. And there have been a number of cases in which member state laws clashed with EU laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law
        • iamnothere 3mo ago
          Is CA in the US or the EU? Didn’t think so, and we didn’t ask for your opinion
          • dudefeliciano 3mo ago
            > This is EU Cookies Banner level of state interference making UX worse for everyone A couple of comments up in this thread.
  • asadotzler 3mo ago
    [flagged]
  • Insimwytim 3mo ago
    As many have said before: it's basically malicious compliance. They're supposed to be super annoying ... Instead of complying, they choose this obnoxious practice so they could continue ... monitoring every action a visitor does. You don't need a cookie banner to be allowed to create Cookies. You only need them if you're using them for something like tracking. [1] Regulators didn't enforce cookie banners. Cookie banners are a form of malicious compliance. When you complain about them, you are doing the lobbying work of ad companies for free. The correct solution is to just not spy on people, and the problem is that the EU didn't go far enough and just ban the behavior altogether. [2] Cookie pops are malicious compliance to regulations that legitimately protect consumers. You’ve cherry picked one bad side effect to throw out all the ways the EU is way ahead of anyone else in protecting consumers [3] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29529148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29529148 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38299135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38299135 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46552795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46552795
    • ahnick 3mo ago
      The EU Council are some of the worst offenders when it comes to annoying cookie banners. All regulation and compliance do is make things more burdensome for new entrants, which inevitably allows big companies to build moats that don't have competition. The side effect of passing such legislation was easily foreseeable and yet the EU did it anyway. There are legitimate reasons for companies to track and if you felt that the tracking was malicious, then don't do business with the company. The regulation was never needed.
    • tqi 3mo ago
      For one, compliance is compliance. For another, "You only need them if you're using them for something like tracking." yeah, sites want to track user behavior and the eu said if you want to do that you gotta have a banner. How is that "malicious"? Seems like the eu got exactly what they wanted?
      • Y-bar 3mo ago
        > and the eu said if you want to do that you gotta have a banner. No they did absolutely not say that! They said I need informed consent before I collect your personal identifiable information. Nothing prevents me from instead of using a banner, for example having a small widget in the footer or elsewhere on my site if I were to want to collect it (I have no analytics or cookies on my site at all).
  • Paracompact 3mo ago
    When it came time for website owners to decide whether they (1) would remove unnecessary cookies, (2) receive consent from their users for extra cookies via reasonable banners, or (3) circumvent consent from their users for extra cookies via dark-patterned banners... ... virtually no website owners opted for (1), a minority opted for (2), and most opted for (3). Yet every technolibertarian thinks (3) is the law's doing and not the consequence of other technolibertarians.
• iamnothere 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  • johnea 3mo ago
    As a leftist, I'd be really happy to see most CA legislators banned. Let's start with Gavin, and his pro-utility, anti-consumer CPUC. Now that that problems solved, let's just ban meta, the twit-verse, and twerk-tik completely. The whole asocial media industry is just a giant waste of time and space. One has to winder if the whole thing wasn't bootstrapped as a feed industry for the mental illness industry...
    • iamnothere 3mo ago
      I have similar contempt for these politicians and for the affected companies. But as a leftist, surely you must understand that these centrist wonks want this creeping regulation as a tool against you just as much as anyone. Being the idiots that they are, they blame their lack of control over social media for their continued losses, and not their absolute failure at governance. But they hate you just as much as (maybe more than) those on the right, as is clear any time a left-leaning candidate starts to gain ground politically.
      • johnea 3mo ago
        I agree (and upvoted you btw) That's why I think this nit-picking, "no doom-scrolling" regulation is worthless. A) It doesn't strike at the root of the problem, and therefore won't solve ti. B) Orgs like these, that do immeasurable public harm, should just be eliminated.
• peder 3mo ago
  > Infinite scroll is very obviously unnecessary All the different flavors of yogurt in the grocery store are unnecessary. We only need 2.
  • dghlsakjg 3mo ago
    Nobody has ever been guided down an extremist rabbit hole ending in a misogynist shooting because of yogurt. At least, not to my knowledge. There is a very real harm to allowing an engagement optimizing algorithm (which, if programmed effectively, almost always ends up a negative emotion firehose). I don't know if this is the right solution, but I don't see that an extensive yogurt selection is the same thing as whatever the fuck is going on with Facebook feeding an endless stream of corrosive bullshit to users.
    • tqi 3mo ago
      Yeah there were no shootings before the internet
      • ben_w 3mo ago
        Meta claims itself to be beneficial because of all the ads it sells in support of small businesses. We had ads and small businesses before the internet, too. The question that both Meta and anyone opposed to infinite scroll has to answer is: did this change anything? Well, one thing that definitely changed everywhere in a way well-correlated with local access to smartphones, is reduced fertility, so something definitely happened, but was that something infinite scroll, or something else?
      • dghlsakjg 3mo ago
        Just because we can’t eliminate all harms doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to minimize them. Online radicalization is a documented issue. Engagement optimizing algorithms pushing extreme and polarizing content is also well documented. Even the excess screen time on algorithmic feeds is well documented as harmful in young populations even if the radical content issues are ignored. So while we did have shootings before, we did not have incels, groypers, ISIS sleepers and other weird people encouraging and glorifying them. If we can stop one at the cost of eliminating endless scrolling on Facebook, I think it’s a fair trade.
• ahnick 3mo ago
  What's very obviously unnecessary is the need for a law to police this. You can just not use things you don't like. This need to project one's own morality upon others will be the source of endless conflict.
  • mindwok 3mo ago
    This isn't useful advice for addictive things that have high short term reward and high long term regret though. Especially so when the other party has a strong incentive to keep you trapped in that loop of regret.
    • kelseyfrog 3mo ago
      Exactly. Also, for responders, let's skip past the "if addicts didn't want to use them they wouldn't," and go straight to framing it as a moral failing implying that they deserve it.
      • gghackernewsgg 3mo ago
        I don't consider addiction a moral failing. But I do think it's wrong to place all the blame on social media if you also play an active role in sustaining your addiction.
  • semilin 3mo ago
    Absolutely. While we're at it, why should asbestos be regulated? You can just not go in buildings that have it.
    • brandonmenc 3mo ago
      Call me when "infinite scroll" causes cancer.
      • bradleykingz 3mo ago
        it kinda does?
• an0malous 3mo ago
  Should all buttons require a confirmation dialog to prevent people from making decisions too hastily? Should we ensure all interactions have at least 100ms of latency so users don’t get mesmerized by a smooth experience? Maybe we should set a max color saturation so nothing looks too enticing. We also don’t really need box shadows or gradients, they’re clearly meant to mesmerize users into making bad decisions. What an absurd and pointless precedent to set.
  • kelseyfrog 3mo ago
    Either all buttons should require a confirmation or no buttons should. There is no in-between. There is no good judgement. There is no middle ground. All or nothing. It's black or white!
    • iamnothere 3mo ago
      Yes, buttons should only require confirmation if it’s a Required Confirmation Button as defined by Section 23554, but not if it’s an Exempt Button as defined by Section 23587. Of course, this only applies to Apps With Some Required Buttons as defined in Section 48994; Apps Always Requiring Confirmation as defined in Section 48985(b) must always request confirmation for every button. This applies only to Registered App Developers as defined in Section 15324. Unregistered App Developers should refer to Section 39406 for requirements. (Button itself is defined in Section 1144114(c), and is not to be confused with a Toggle, a Clickable Rectangle, a Clickable Text Container, or a False Button as defined in the same section.)
    • xg15 3mo ago
      Obviously, the buttons in the confirmation dialog also need their own confirmations...
  • halestock 3mo ago
    Is your argument that unless we can make a law that is perfect and covers every conceivable use case of coercive design, then we shouldn't bother to make a law that covers any of them?
• slopinthebag 3mo ago
  Is it? It appears consumers prefer it. Are they all wrong? Should we ignore the preferences of other people because you are the all-knowing lord of the internet? Give me a break
• ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
  Not only it's unnecessary, it also bad GUI. In apps with infinite scrolling your position doesn't get its own state, so if you eg. go view a post & return to Instagram timeline it opens at the beginning. If you use media more thoughtfully as opposed to mindless scrolling, it just doesn't work. With pagination you could say return to IG after a week, go through 5 pages of whoever you're following, check out a post, go back knowing you stopped at 5th, and continue from there. You can also set a limit (I'll check 10 pages tops and then go to sleep), which is helpful even with algorithmic feed. I'm sure they can screw up pagination too if they wanted, but typical implementations don't have this issue
  • harshreality 3mo ago
    They can randomize (with bias for hot/recent content) entries on each page, but paginate them. FOMO will keep people clicking next even once they recognize some entries.
    • dudefeliciano 3mo ago
      then we pass a law to prevent randomization
      • ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
        Yep. continue regulation until abuse stops
    • ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
      I doubt they would do that, it's just weird. But even still knowing how many pages you went through is already good
  • mock-possum 3mo ago
    Stateless infinite scroll is just lazy/incomplete implementation though - there’s no reason you can’t keep your place via permalink. Just pop the state into history using the uuid of each card as it shows in the viewport, then when the user returns using that url, drop them in at that point in the feed with some reasonable before/after preloaded.
• xg15 3mo ago
  > but the second someone articulates a very, very simple rule, the "well ackchyually" crew comes out of the woodwork. On HN definitely, if half of the people here are really invested in that stuff themselves.
• asdfsa32 3mo ago
  The issue is that "Infinite Scroll" is just a manifestation of a deeper problem. You can't cure a problem by legislating away symptoms.
• bcjdjsndon 3mo ago
  > It is very obviously intended to keep people on an app longer than they would otherwise use it. What are you, protoplasm with eyes? Exert some willpower and get a grip. I've never known such a wimpy whining generation as this one
  • Pulcinella 3mo ago
    "Exert some willpower!" People exert willpower through the democratically elected legislature "No not like that!"
    • bcjdjsndon 3mo ago
      "Please politician, I'm a helpless carbon blob who cannot tear themselves away from the bad screen, pwease help me"*
    • dsego 3mo ago
      Yes exactly, a democracy should be above markets. Not sure why such a strong reaction about people agreeing that certain things cause harm and should be legislated.