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 do not argue the infinite scrolling is good or bad. I am against the regulation itself. Who are the people that want to tell me which tech solution I am allowed to use or implement? Mostly I am not a fan of big tech but people should take responsibility for their actions and stay free. The goverments are here to serve and I do not pay for this service. Who are those that need to be protected from themselves by governmental authorities? Children, ok. People with damaged brain, ok. But otherwise? Give me a break.
Infinite scroll amplifies the “I’m never going to find that again” problem. That’s the thing I hate most about it.
A feature, not a bug. If you never find it you spend more time trying to find it and therefore see more of what they want you to see.
Misleading headline, it’s only one of multiple “addictive features” they’re considering banning to make social media less addictive.
Dammit EU. Do I like you or hate you. Pick a lane.
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
Sometimes it can be handy to be able to load all the data into one page by middle clicking and moving the mouse to the bottom of the screen, waiting for a bit, then saving the html.
Used that and some regex to export my list of musicians I like from Spotify and import them into tidalrr.
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”
@technocrit 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.
“Just because it’s a massively funded design objective with extensively tested results doesn’t make it a thing!!”
I don’t know man, I’m not a fan of infinite scroll
LET’S GOOOO
I don’t like infinite scroll.
Voyager (lemmy) has paged scroll and it let’s me.know when I’ve wasted enough time.
Unlike say, Instagram…
Where is the paged scroll setting?Found it! General->Infinite scrolling
I’m surprised Slashdot still exists.
I miss the cmdrtaco days of /. lol.
I don’t remember what I was downloading the other day, but I ended up on SourceForge. I forgot that existed too. Don’t visit without an ad blocker though.
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.
We are well past the point where the client decides how hypertext looks. You are talking about feed readers.
I mean that the setting should be client-side. With
prefers-color-scheme, it’s a hint to the website’s CSS design as to what theme to use.
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.
Because all infinite scrolling does is remove to annoyance of hitting next page
That is definitely not all it does.
That certainly is all it does. Infinite scrolling simply loads more data when you reach the bottom of the page. It’s used in place of pagination/buttons to load that content.
You’re probably thinking of some algorithm that provides never ending stream of content.
The infinite scroll goes hand in hand with that type of algorithm. Even if there isn’t more content, some versions of the infinite scroll keep loading assorted shit you’ve already seen before.
It’s also part and parcel of a mindset switch from looking at some content on a fixed number of pages and then moving on with your day, to pushing the screen up forever even if you’ve already seen most of it.
It also usually makes it so that you cannot bookmark the state, and the state often reloads fresh when you hit back and you’ve lost what you’re looking at.
In other words: it fucking sucks and I hate it.
My instance uses infinite scroll,it does not go hand-in-hand with a never ending stream. If I got to a small comm it ends quickly, if I’m on all I would browse every post since the instance went up.
If you lack the ability to know how much or how long you’ve spent browsing beyond the time you intended, that’s a you issue not something to impose on everyone else. I don’t need some government deciding such simplistic shit on my behalf.
I think they mean algorithmic feeds that no human could ever reach the end of; like TikTok, but all the big social media platforms have similar features nowadays.
Anything else would be stupid but who knows what politicians think
Right? Imagine if you were to come into the comments and there are 50 comments but you can only read them 10 at a time.
Wow, I am so much less addicted now and it didn’t even require an adult to take an interest in my life or spend some time focused on me! - teenagers probably
Moral panic slop that will just make the problem worse.
