> Dark patterns are explicitly designed to conflate or deceive.

Well, yes - normally you are scrolling to the bottom of the page. And when you reach the bottom, you stop, or you need to explicitly click "Next". But with infinite scroll, there is no bottom. You never reach a final or semi-final point. It's designed to maximize your time spent on the website/app, not for your well-being or helping you achieve your original aim - which was to absorb a limited set of information, not scrolling mindlessly forever.