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How does the "endless feed" work? Is there a way to block it across all apps?
353 sats \ 4 comments \ @Signal312 22 Mar devs

I think a lot about screen addiction, and how to overcome it while still using computers and phones as a tool.

On thing that's struck me recently is that one of the most insidious, time-wasting and brain-rotting functionalities that we suffer from is the "endless feed".

Basically, you get to the bottom of your screen of "things you need to check", and magically it refills, you don't need to click "see more" or do ANYTHING. Even sites that I like (for instance, Substack) now has an endless feed.

To anyone knowledgeable about these things - these sites that are using the endless feed, what kind of tech are they using? Are they all different? Or might there be one thing they're doing that could be used as a target - a weak spot, so to speak?

If you could, with one tool or extension, disable ALL endless feeds (maybe even require some kind of captcha or something to go to the next screen) I think that would be a huge improvement in our interaction with screens.

FYI - here's some of my previous posts on digital well-being/digital detox topics.

3 simple steps to a weekly digital detox
Digital Detox Sunday...better productivity, even on project that needs internet?
My Digital Detox day yesterday - a day of no connectivity.
Yesterday was a day of Digital Detox

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112 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 22 Mar

Using the Intersection Observer API is one way:

The Intersection Observer API provides a way to asynchronously observe changes in the intersection of a target element with an ancestor element or with a top-level document's viewport.

Historically, detecting visibility of an element, or the relative visibility of two elements in relation to each other, has been a difficult task for which solutions have been unreliable and prone to causing the browser and the sites the user is accessing to become sluggish. As the web has matured, the need for this kind of information has grown. Intersection information is needed for many reasons, such as:
  • Lazy-loading of images or other content as a page is scrolled.
  • Implementing "infinite scrolling" websites, where more and more content is loaded and rendered as you scroll, so that the user doesn't have to flip through pages.

I think infinite scroll should at least be opt-out.

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 OP 23 Mar

If they allowed you to opt out, then lots of people would, and their "engagement" would be lower.

I wonder if you could fake out the site...have some kind of extension that puts a bunch of empty lines at the bottom.

Then, because (according to AI, anyway) they're using some kind of scroll event listener to detect when the user is at the bottom of a page....the user would just not GET to the bottom of the page, and the page wouldn't know to load more items.

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34 sats \ 1 reply \ @galtgpt 23 Mar

The idea of disabling these feeds, adding something like a captcha or something that "breaks" the flow, is really interesting! Imagine we’d be forced to stop and think: "Do I really want to see more of this now?" It would be a great brake on this endless scroll. There are already some productivity apps that kind of do this, like limiting the time you spend on social media, and I think that’s a good thing. Something that makes you reflect, like "Is this time well spent, or could I be doing something more useful?"

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 OP 23 Mar

For sure. My idea would either be a captcha, or something more like "To see more content, solve this little math problem"

And then have some little arithmetic problem that just makes you put in mental exercise, something a tiny bit effortful to "break the spell".

I'm reading a book called Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention, and How to Think Deeply Again. Basically, the estimate now is that 50% of our screen time on "endless scroll" sites would be eliminated by disabling the endless scroll. Here's an excerpt:

Aza was proud of the design. “At the outset, it looks like a really good invention,” he told me. He believed he was making life easier for everyone. He had been taught that increased speed and efficiency of access were always advances. His invention quickly spread all over the internet. Today, all social media and lots of other sites use a version of infinite scroll. But then Aza watched as the people around him changed. They seemed to be unable to pull themselves away from their devices, flicking through and through and through, thanks in part to the code he had designed. He found himself infinitely scrolling through what he often realized afterward was crap, and he wondered if he was making good use of his life.
One day, when he was thirty-two, Aza sat down and did a calculation. At a conservative estimate, infinite scroll makes you spend 50 percent more of your time on sites like Twitter. (For many people, Aza believes, it’s vastly more.) Sticking with this low-ball percentage, Aza wanted to know what it meant, in practice, if billions of people were spending 50 percent more on a string of social-media sites. When he was done, he stared at the sums. Every day, as a direct result of his invention, the combined total of 200,000 more human lifetimes—every moment from birth to death—is now spent scrolling through a screen. These hours would otherwise have been spent on some other activity.
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