Proposed US law would ban infinite scroll, autoplaying video

Enlarge / The United States Capitol Building, the seat of Congress, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (credit: Omar Chatriwala | Getty Images)

Nobody likes auto-playing video or sites that keep scrolling away infinitely when you're just trying to reach the bottom of the page. But you probably don't hate either "feature" as much as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who introduced a bill today to ban these and other "exploitative" practices.

While the ban on infinite scroll is the most amusing part, the proposed SMART Act (PDF), a backronym for the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act, seeks to ban online companies from using a wide array of tactics that "exploit human psychology or brain physiology" to reduce user choice.

The SMART Act is really trying to target dark patterns: interfaces deliberately designed to trick, confuse, or pull a user deeper into something than they otherwise would be. Those designs, Hawley argues, fuel social media addiction.

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