from Hacker News

The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

by danso on 2/13/26, 8:52 PM with 914 comments

• by jjcm on 2/13/26, 9:20 PM

  Here's the actual statement from the European Comission: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...

  It's important to note they aren't creating laws against infinite scrolling, but are ruling against addictive design and pointing to infinite scrolling as an example of it. The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes". They point to certain features they'd like them to change, but there is no specific ruling around what you can/can't do.

  My initial reaction was that this was a terrible precedent, but after thinking on it more I asked myself, "well what specific laws would I write to combat addictive design?". Everything I thought of would have some way or workaround that could be found, and equally would have terrible consequences on situations where this is actually quite valuable. IE if you disallow infinite scrolling, what page sizes are allowed? Can I just have a page of 10,000 elements that lazy load?

  Regardless of your take around whether this is EU overreach, I'm glad they're not implementing strict laws around what you can/can't do - there are valuable situations for these UI patterns, even if in combination they can create addictive experiences. Still, I do think that overregulation here will lead to services being fractured. I was writing about this earlier this morning (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005367), but the regulated friction of major platforms (ie discord w/ ID laws) is on a collision course with the ease of vibe coding up your own. When that happens, these comissions are going to need to think long and hard around having a few large companies to watch over is better than millions of small micro-niche ones.

• by poncho_romero on 2/13/26, 9:09 PM

  I hope this goes through. Trillion dollar companies are waging a war on our attention, using everything at their disposal to make these apps addictive. It isn't a fair fight and the existence of infinite feeds is bad both for people and democracy. Regulating consumer products that cause harm to millions is nothing new.

• by shevy-java on 2/14/26, 8:13 AM

  Personally I don't like infinite scrolling - but the EU also needs to stop wasting time and energy on trying to micro-manage everything. We already had that disaster where pop-ups fly out "do you want to accept those cookies". That is just a usability nightmare. People are forced into extensions, just to stop wasting their time here.

  Also, while I dislike infinite scrolling, why should the EU regulate the design of a website? I don't like this idea as a principle. This clearly comes from overpaid bureaucrats. I am not at all saying the EU should not become stronger, in the face of a very hostile and abusive USA - but the focus by these bureaucrats is wrong. Those micro-regulations will not get rid of US dominance in the software sector.

• by OGEnthusiast on 2/13/26, 9:16 PM

  Given how badly scrolling has cooked the brain of the average American, seems like a smart thing for the EU to ban.

• by Frannky on 2/14/26, 6:08 AM

  It's interesting how there may be an implicit assumption that imposing more rules on tech will lead to positive outcomes. From my perspective, technology is like reality itself: very difficult to control, with countless ways to achieve the desired result while circumventing the rules. And what's the actual result? Just look at the market capitalization of European companies compared to US companies... Or maybe it just feels good to add new rules and engage in virtue-signaling contests. Or maybe it's just a way to make everything illegal—'find me the person, and I'll find you the crime' type of control. Maybe a combination of all those. Who knows? From my experience, the farther you get from the influence of bureaucrats, the happier life becomes...

• by geysersam on 2/14/26, 10:04 AM

  I feel we can't make laws against the subject of moral panic every generation. People have felt the same way about the activities of youths since forever. But ultimately it often turns out fine. Change can bring new problems, but it also brings positives that are hard to understand and even formulate, that's culture. Trying to be the arbiter of that is foolish.

  Is ticktock addictive because of it's design, or is it addictive because it brings thousands of people and experiences and emotions right to you? Probably both, but it's hard to separate one from the other. Apps are not opium, it's not as clear cut.

  Instead of micromanaging technology and culture they should make sure that society is kind, that there is slack in the system, that people don't have reason to want to flee their real lives, that those hurt by new technology get support.

  Of course truly malicious dark patterns and fraud should be punished. But that feels like a different category.

• by peterisza on 2/13/26, 8:59 PM

  They should move to kill the cookie popup

• by GaryBluto on 2/14/26, 12:17 AM

  The EU's mission statement seems to be to make the internet as difficult to legally utilize as possible.

  I'm interested to see what measures people will use to get around the increasingly bizarre restrictions. Perhaps an official browser extension for each platform that reimplements bureaucrat-banned features?

• by puppycodes on 2/13/26, 9:27 PM

  Facinating that they landed on infinite scrolling as the problem to spend time and energy on instead of all the other things happening online that have an impact on society.

  Genuinely curious about the actual data on this.

  Does anyone have a link to a reputable, sizable study?

• by creatonez on 2/14/26, 11:51 AM

  Banning personalized recommendation algorithms altogether would do so much good. Feeds should be the same for everyone who has the same filters and subscriptions configured.

• by xg15 on 2/14/26, 11:32 AM

  The first part sounded good, the "every platform is different, we have to decide everything case-by-case" and the specific focus on TikTok less so IMO.

  Keep in mind that in Europe, TikTok is still run by the original owners with China connections - unlike the new "American TikTok" after the owner change in the US.

  The US legislature only seemed to discover its concern about addictive behavior when foreign actors or pro-palestinian content were involved, but had no problem with YouTube or Facebook doing the same stuff.

  I seriously hope it's different in the EU but wouldn't bet on it.

• by gunapologist99 on 2/14/26, 1:08 PM

  Swiping is addictive, but touching a button for the next page is not.

  One is arbitrarily banned by unelected bureaucrats. The other is fine.

  We blame social companies for failing to raise our children the way we think they should.

• by lemoncookiechip on 2/13/26, 11:46 PM

  This comes from the same EU that's wholeheartedly embracing gambling across their member states, gambling mind you that children can just as easily jump into with their phones and some will, but devastating for grown-ups just as much.

  They're not alone in this by any means, America has also opened their doors for all forms of gambling like Kalshi which now even sponsors news networks of all things.

  The EU has this disconnect with the things they push, which makes sense considering their size and the speed at which it moves. One example that comes to mind is how they're both pushing for more privacy online while also pushing for things such as chat control which is antithetical to privacy.

  Does social media need regulating? Yeah. Is infinite scrolling where they should be focusing? Probably not, there's more important aspects that should be tackled and are seemingly ignored.

• by rurban on 2/14/26, 8:26 AM

  They must rule against chess also then. It's clearly addictive design, harming the minds of innocent kids. Absurd

• by thr0waway001 on 2/14/26, 4:02 AM

  Even c0rnhub doesn't have infinite scrolling. It knows to stop after the first 10-20 thumbs.... according to my friend.

• by mocmoc on 2/13/26, 9:02 PM

  Forcing designs on companies... wtf is going on here

• by linuxdude314 on 2/13/26, 9:03 PM

  This sounds like a type of insanity. Why would anyone care about something like this to the degree they feel like expressing the opinion publicly let alone in a political regulatory body is beyond me.

  Whatever happened to freedom?

• by strangescript on 2/14/26, 1:02 PM

  U.S. and China are trying to build super intelligence while Europe is trying to micro manage people's habits.

• by seydor on 2/14/26, 6:41 AM

  I move that they should kill infinite regulation.

  What is next? Sex? Sex is addictive we should put a limit, ban after 33. How about chess? Running? Partying? Gambling?

  Making heroes out of social media users was not something expected in my lifetime. Imagine facebook users bragging how they managed to jailbreak their locked down feeds. That's a comical future

• by swiftcoder on 2/14/26, 10:41 AM

  I will 100% take this approach over the current EU tack of banning kids from accessing the internet. The problem wasn't ever the kids - it is the tech executives trying to profit from making the kids addicted to an advertising platform.

• by betteryet on 2/14/26, 11:06 AM

  This stuff is important and can only happen at this level through legislation.

  If you don't do it this way to apply for everyone, then any good actor products will be crushed by profitmaxxing competitors. Or any good actor executives and workers will be pushed out by profitmaxxing shareholders.

  Legislators need to be careful to keep requirements tight and manageable, but it's better to limit negative externalities than outright ban something. Banning infinite scroll or any particular pattern is nonsense, but restricting addictive design (e.g. TikTok) and algorithm weaponization (e.g. TikTok) is very sensible.

• by sashank_1509 on 2/14/26, 3:02 AM

  I’m mixed on this. I do at times waste a lot of time doom scrolling, and would like regulation to prevent me from doing so. But also some times you just want to doomscroll to escape your day to day life. Do we want this decision to be made by the govt?

  I guess we don’t let people have hard drugs even if sometimes they just need to escape their painful life. And maybe this could fall under that logic. But we do let people drink themselves, which serves the same purpose. And if I had to choose, I think doomscrolling is more at the level of Drinking, and less at the level of Heroin. So I would actually be fine with an age limit for doomscrolling after which, you have a hands off approach.

• by observationist on 2/13/26, 11:42 PM

  How many days before the only legal social media in the EU is the official government run platform?

• by bluescrn on 2/14/26, 7:47 AM

  There is no infinite scrolling.

  There’s a finite (albeit vast) amount of content to serve up.

• by tsoukase on 2/14/26, 12:59 AM

  The hunt has started: EU burocracy vs TK. In the past EU has rarely directly attacked a single company with so specific points. But anytime they remained consistent and dedicaded to their target and usually won. It just took a long time (from a few years till decades). The only time they lost a policy was at stopping summer-time switch which was cancelled when Covid started.

  They avoid to mention the rest of social media platforms, which happen to be US based. It seems they choose a single quick and easy China-based target more like an experiment to decide for the rest. The key point is when: either the current kids will experience it or those that are not yet born.

• by tokyobreakfast on 2/13/26, 9:11 PM

  I see some synergy between this and the "iOS keyboard sucks" thread. Maybe they can regulate that next.

  I'm curious how they plan to pretend to enforce this. Will you need a loisence to implement infinite scroll?

• by randomNumber7 on 2/13/26, 11:47 PM

  Next: Gaming company sued because a game is fun to play.

• by graemep on 2/13/26, 9:05 PM

  Its addictive design in general, but only for Tik-tok. If it works and is applied to others it will be the best thing the EU has ever done.

• by somewhereoutth on 2/13/26, 9:28 PM

  Infinite scrolling combined with the algorithmic feed is the real nasty.

  Feeds should be heavily regulated, effectively they are a (personalized!) broadcast, and maybe the same strictures should apply. Definitely they should be transparent (e.g. chronological from subscribed topics), and things like veering more extreme in order to drive engagement should be outlawed.

• by KolibriFly on 2/14/26, 5:32 PM

  Infinite scroll itself isn't inherently harmful, it's a pagination mechanism. The harm comes from recommender systems tuned for engagement over wellbeing

• by esprehn on 2/14/26, 3:46 AM

  I wish they would go after the fake spinning wheel discount pattern and the "app exclusive" or "better in the app" pattern. That's all a way to get people to install apps that will then bombard folks with notifications or slurp data off the device.

• by lpcvoid on 2/14/26, 11:52 AM

  Common EU win. Anything which curbs addiction to harmful social media services is a good thing.

• by pedroma on 2/13/26, 10:49 PM

  Looks like the EU can just get a feature flag to use pagination or a "Load More" button? Doesn't seem as big of a deal as enforcing USB-C.

  Though if it applies to the YouTube, seems annoying when trying to find a video to watch. I usually trigger a few infinite scrolling loads to look for videos.

  And I assume they'd have to specify a maximum number of items per page, or else devs could just load a huge number of items up front which would technically not be infinite scrolling but enough content to keep someone occupied for a long time.

• by Retr0id on 2/14/26, 2:25 AM

  The implication that the scrolling mechanic itself is causal in the harm feels like a bit of a leap to me.

• by jama211 on 2/14/26, 7:05 AM

  Not sure this is likely to be a successful angle but I understand the motivation behind it

• by badpun on 2/13/26, 9:16 PM

  Would it affect HackerNews? The list of topics on the main page is a form of infinite scroll.

• by relaxing on 2/14/26, 12:56 AM

  Good. Infinite scrolling is a scourge. Give me back my time ordered feed that if I navigate away stays on the page where I left off.

• by gib444 on 2/13/26, 9:22 PM

  I don't know how the EU has time for this kind of thing right now. Honestly

• by econ on 2/13/26, 11:55 PM

  Early on in the internet age it somewhat bothered me that every page on the www either acts like it is the first thing one reads on a topic or assumes great knowledge of the subject. With nothing in between.

  Wondering about a technical solution I couldn't find anything besides fold out explanations and links to explain jargon. Neither would really bridge the gap.

  One obvious theory was to keep track of what the user knows and hide things they don't need or unhide things they do. This is of course was not acceptable from a privacy perspective.

  Today however you could forge a curriculum for countless topics and [artificially] promote a great diversity of entry level videos. If the user is into something they can be made to watch more entry level videos until they are ready for slightly more advanced things. You can reward creators for filling gaps between novice and expert level regardless of view count.

  Almost like Khan academy but much slower, more playful and less linear.

  Imagine programming videos that assume the reader knows everything about each and every tool involved. The algorithm could seek out the missing parts and feed them directly into your addiction or put bounties on the scope.

• by CrzyLngPwd on 2/14/26, 2:12 PM

  Did they do Meta services yet?

• by tartoran on 2/13/26, 11:39 PM

  This was long overdue. I hope killing other dark patterns that feast on attention or hunt on flaws in human psychology follow. However, my only concern is how this will be taken care of. I hope they learned something from the GDPR fiasco.

• by avaer on 2/13/26, 9:26 PM

  I admire the EU's attempts at things like the cookie law, age verification, and tackling the addictiveness of infinite scrolling, but the implementation is pure theater.

  Trackers have much more effective techniques than "cookies", kids trivially bypass verification, and designers will make a joke of tell me you have infinite scrolling without telling me you have infinite scrolling. When you are facing trillions of dollars of competition to your law, what do you think is going to happen?

  Maybe if there was an independent commission that had the authority to rapidly investigate and punish (i.e. within weeks) big tech for attempting engagement engineering practices it might actually have some effect. But trying to mandate end user interfaces is wasting everyone's time putting lipstick on a pig.

• by MiddleEndian on 2/14/26, 4:20 PM

  They hate infinite scrolling because it's addictive. I hate infinite scrolling because it's annoying lol. The worst is when you scroll to the bottom of a news article and it just loads another and your scrollbar and your URL/browser history get fucked up.

• by Aerbil313 on 2/14/26, 10:52 PM

  This is the best piece of news I've seen in years. Jonathan Haidt's and others work is finally bearing fruit, assuming our society is not collectively too addicticed to get rid of these palm-sized slot machines.

• by aristofun on 2/13/26, 11:57 PM

  I bet 100$ the good intention will outcome as a terrible joke, EU dumb bureaucrats are famous for.

• by kalterdev on 2/14/26, 10:21 AM

  Censorship comes

• by ZoomZoomZoom on 2/13/26, 9:17 PM

  Dunno about using legislative moves, but yes please. The stupidest solution to a problem no one had. Moving layouts, unreachable footers, no or unsatisfactory indication of one's position.

  All just to remove navigation clicks no one minded and reduce server loads, in exchange for users suffering laggy lazy loading (or, what a hate-inducing pattern!) inability to preload, print, search or link.

• by oompydoompy74 on 2/14/26, 3:05 PM

  What happened to… personal responsibility? I hate dark patterns as much as the next person, but this will likely be as effective as the EU’s existing hand wringing (not).

• by Havoc on 2/14/26, 12:12 PM

  Not a terrible idea but to me this feels like it misses the point somewhat. The mechanics of the scrolling isn't what corners people psychologically

• by vasco on 2/14/26, 8:24 AM

  What about TV, how come the channels are always playing?? They should shut off after 30mins and I shouldn't be able to press down button to do zapping all night long.

  What about video games? We need session limits of 30mins, kids get too addicted to it.

  In fact we're going to put a timer in every bedroom so that if you have sex with your wife for too long we'll fine you because it can turn into a real addiction.

• by deadbabe on 2/14/26, 4:53 AM

  What if we implement something like "pay per scroll"?

• by booleandilemma on 2/14/26, 1:13 AM

  Here here. Nothing is infinite except for God, I say.

• by dheera on 2/13/26, 10:58 PM

  > We value your privacy

  > We use cookies and other technologies to store and access personal data on your device

  Evidently you don't value privacy.

• by Lorin on 2/14/26, 12:47 AM

  As long as this doesn't create yet another cookie popup UX nonsense we've ended up with...

• by ARandomerDude on 2/13/26, 9:14 PM

  Watch what governments do, not what they say.

  This isn’t about addiction, it’s about censorship. If you limit the amount of time someone can spend getting information, and make it inconvenient with UI changes, it’s much harder to have embarrassing information spread to the masses.

  Amazingly, the public will generally nod along anyway when they read governmental press releases and say “yes, yes, it’s for my safety.”

• by Funes- on 2/13/26, 11:22 PM

  From another article:

  >"Social media app TikTok has been accused of purposefully designing its app to be “addictive” by the European Commission, citing its infinite scroll, autoplay, push notification, and recommendation features."

  All of these have immediate and easy replacements or workarounds. Nothing will substantially change (for the better; maybe it does for the worse, even).

  Moreover, "purposefully designing something to be addictive" (and cheap to make) is the fundamental basis of late stage capitalism.

• by coldtea on 2/14/26, 1:10 AM

  Oh, no, this will kill all slop innovation!

• by Culonavirus on 2/14/26, 4:18 PM

  A bunch of bureaucrat * * * * suckers. The union is one populist blowout election away from breaking and they still come up with utter bull only them and other champagne socialists care about.

  It's not the union's business what adults spend their time on. Porn, for example, is far more addictive than TikTok, are we going to see porn bans next?

  Dirty little dictators.

  The union had YEARS to invest into renewables, nuclear, modern arms (cheap drones and cruise missiles built inside the union in new, purpose built factories, not bought in pitiful numbers from the US) after Russia invaded Ukraine and what did they do? Fucking nothing. Individual countries dumped the little of their aging stocks they had and that was about it. The EU could be totally independent from russian energy and swarming with hundreds of thousands of drones by now, just by reallocating the existing funds from nonsense into action.

• by slopusila on 2/13/26, 9:15 PM

  another cookie warning disaster incoming

  hopefully AI will wake them up and save us from all this nonsense

• by spiderice on 2/13/26, 9:18 PM

  Jesus the EU is becoming a dystopian nightmare.

• by phendrenad2 on 2/14/26, 1:11 AM

  Technically this is about Tiktok's "addictive design", and their examples include "infinite scroll over time". It's totally unclear what they mean by that, or what Tiktok would have to change it to in order to be in compliance. The whole thing seems like it was written by a boomer bureaucrat who has never used Tiktok, let alone a computer.

• by causalmodels on 2/13/26, 9:22 PM

  Does this only apply to companies the commission doesn't like or will it apply to the hn app I use, my email clients, shopping sites, etc? Because it seems like the actual concern how good the algorithms are and not the UI.

• by PlatoIsADisease on 2/13/26, 9:09 PM

  I have a proud European coworker trying to get their H1B...

  They talk about how great Europe is, how they like their 1-2 hour coffee/smoke breaks... These kind of moves give me that same vibe.

  But why are so many Europeans trying to move to the US? Why isn't the opposite happening?

  My hypothesis is that these kind of popular policies are short sighted. They are super popular, they use intuition and feeling. But maybe there is something missing. The unadulterated freedom has led people to enjoy these platforms. Obviously it affects the economy. So much so, even the US military has moved from Europe to Asia.

  I don't typically like fiction, but it seems "I, Robot" was spot on about Europe. (Maybe mistaking new Africa for Asia)