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Comment by IAmBroom | Hacker News Reader

Removing choice is generally a bad thing, IMO.

it 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.

> 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.)

i 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

> super tech nerds

"Resourceful"?

Come 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?

Any 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.

We had a choice when there were alternative clients for all major platforms. Make open APIs mandatory for large platforms and a lot of problems will disappear. UIs will be designed for the best user experience again instead of maximizing engagement. It will hurt their revenue but so be it.

What choice? When did I ever choose infinite scroll?

You never had an option to have Google show a list of curated links or Yahoo show a simple search bar. You chose to go to the site you liked better and in aggregate the market chose the simple search. I could still be going to Slashdot or Things You Wouldn't Know Unless We Blogged It, but I and the content creators found that we preferred infinite scroll instead.

You could say the same thing about nutritional facts being printed on foods. The entire point is externalities that favor the company. These things are never going to be on products unless they are regulated. If you're going to make an argument for "choice" at least argue for opt out rather than "fuck it, let them put trans fats in the food and if you don't like it eat broccoli."

Too late, we now exclusively stock NicoSugar broccoli in the stores. I mean, I guess we chose it? It's not the market's fault that the human brain likes sugar and nicotine.

Laws are pretty much always about removing choice.

How is it removing choice if you had no alternatives to begin with?

It's removing choice on the side of the publisher.

Which is... fine? Builders no longer have the choice to build things out of asbestos, either

That seems like cute libertarian nonsense. The key word is choice. People have less free will than you think. Every time a teen goes to insta/facebook/tiktok etc they are an individual up against a huge corporation of thousands of people and ML whose job it is to hijack their dopamine circuit. Usage of these apps decreases attention span which effectively means other activities become boring so the users experience a withdrawal symptom like a drug addict.

And it doesn't just affect them. I think most of us would rather live in a society where 50% of the population isn't brain-rotted.

"First they came for the infinite scroll, but I did not speak out - because my mind was numb from the infinite scrolling."

We also removed choices to drive without a seat belt or sell lead paint. Was that a bad thing?

I should have a choice between leaded and unleaded paint and gasoline

Why should you? You would also affect people who did not participate in that choice.

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