Hacker News Reader

Comment by an0malous | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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?

I'm pretty sure the point being made is that things like this are very difficult to actually encode into law in such a way that it doesn't cause significant damage downstream. Like, take the age verification/estimation laws that are going around. We see the big companies actively encouraging it because the laws will (ironically) benefit big tech rather than harming them in any substantial manner: companies like Meta have the money and resources to implement them. But everyone who isn't a super big powerful company will be harmed because they will be unable to comply (or will find it incredibly costly to do so).

Ok, but you're just talking about a completely different law. How is that comparable to what's being proposed?

Because the point applies to the subject of this thread too, that's why. People think that all of this is super easy to just ban by fiat (law) but the problem is that the "simple" solutions oftentimes have harmful downstream effects that must be considered. For example, let's hypothetically say that we ban "addictive algorithms". What even counts as an "addictive algorithm"? Does my Mastodon home timeline count as an "addictive algorithm"? How about the Bluesky feed? Does the HN home page count as one? (Someone could (reasonably!) make this argument too, given that HN does dynamically update it's home page depending on rankings of submissions to end-users, even if such an update requires a page refresh.) So what I was trying to say (and the reason I brought up age verification/estimation) is that if we take the simple path we're going to catch a bunch of entities up in the ban that we... Probably shouldn't be banning. But you are also going to suffer a lot of pain trying to (not) cause this problem too.

But we're not talking about banning addictive algorithms, we're talking about banning endless scrolling. You're trying to straw man by bringing in completely different examples.

Edit: rereading the article, they want to ban "psychologically exploitative features intended to maximize engagement that foreseeably lead to compulsive use." It seems like it's pretty straightforward to apply that logic to your hypotheticals.

No my point is that none of these are by themselves even coercive design, there’s no distinction between a smooth or pleasant UX experience and a coercive design without context.

But this isn't about banning those things, it's about banning endless scrolling.

edit: I get that you're trying to provide counterexamples to be able to say "here's something that _could_ be construed as coercive/addictive design, so the law is going to end up banning those" - but that's the whole reason we have courts to interpret these laws. If you can reasonably conclude that a 100ms delay is helpful for user input - then it's probably not addictive design! That's the whole reason courts exist, because there is always going to be ambiguity; laws are not algorithms.

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!

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.)

Obviously, the buttons in the confirmation dialog also need their own confirmations...

>Should we ensure all interactions have at least 100ms of latency

Web developers are already hard at work on this.

Even desktop app developers who refuse to learn other languages.

Don't quote me on this but I once heard that in the EU you always need to confirm purchases, ie. you cannot have the Amazon 1-click system.

But in general, yes, having a confirmation dialog on important buttons is good UX; similarly as to setting minimum/maximum saturation will increase accessibility by visually impaired people, epileptic people etc.

Wait, so in america you can literally just click one button on a product and instantly have it paid for and set for delivery?

That seems rather accident prone.

Talking of heavy-handed confirmation dialogs, there's a good example of this in Apple's Preview.app (PDF viewer). They made an unconfigurable change a few years ago, such that every single time you click any web link in a PDF, you have to confirm with a dialog that you want to open the link. You used to be able to just click links!

The point is that - unrestricted - digital media maximises for time and attention. Given that incentive, addictive behaviours are not only inevitable, but an ideal outcome financially.

It's easy to say that it's absurd, but what would you do?

Every business wants you to be addicted to their products, whether it’s social media, cigarettes, video games, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, supplements, fashion, electronics. Even seemingly innocuous things like reading the news or exercising are often addictions, people are running away from their fears and insecurities. It’s a systemic problem in western society, removing infinite scroll is such a ridiculous idea in the face of a core societal problem like this.

My suggestion would be to look at something like the rat park studies. When mice lived in a nice communal space with other mice, they preferred regular ware over drug laced addictive water. I suspect people are similar, they’re not intrinsically prone to addiction, they’re just trying to treat psychological problems like fear, loneliness, insecurity. We need to attack this root of the problem, but there’s so much money in ensuring that people feel empty so they’ll buy shit to fulfill themselves that there’s no actual motivation from anyone with power to do anything. That’s why you get these dumb ideas for laws, they’re not enough to impact the businesses (who are the real constituents) but politicians can still say they’re doing something and something is better than nothing.

> Every business wants you to be addicted to their products

It simply isn't true a) that businesses are all as unscrupulous as digital media platforms and b) that most products even have potential to be addictive.

It's certainly true that most companies would like you to be a loyal repeat customer, but that falls a long way short of addiction.

"Should all inhaleable substances be controlled? But then people won't be able to breathe. So smoking must be permitted unconditionally!"

If you don't like the website, log off, but don't force everyone else to agree with your particular likes and dislikes

Reply on news.ycombinator.com