Meta and Google trial: are infinite scroll and autoplay creating addicts?

theguardian.com

18 points·Brajeshwar··8 comments

It's not just that the scroll is infinite. It's mainly that the things displayed are optimized to keep you "engaged" (codeword for addicted).

Yes, facebook intentionally does everything to get people to spend as long as possible on their website. It's their business model.

I wonder how much the infinite scroll amplifies the effect. Not showing page numbers is reminiscent of casinos eliminating indications of what time it is (i.e. ways to intuit that you've been sitting at a slot machine for 4hrs).

And of course the random choice of things displayed on the infinite scroll - deliberately emulating a slot machine effect.

The comment box is where addiction happens for me. Once I stay logged out and browse the pull is just not there anymore.

I've been on this site for maybe 6 years and only just recently created an account. If I see the same problem this one will go too.

HN actually has an anti addiction feature, namely noprocrast, in the account settings.

Huh what does this do?

Locks you out from viewing the site for a specified duration after looking at HN for up to a specified amount of minutes.

from the FAQ:

In my profile, what is noprocrast?

It's a way to help you prevent yourself from spending too much time on HN. If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours.

Trying by accident this feature is the biggest fear of any serious HN reader.

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