There have been many topics requesting the optional implementation of pagination via a “show more” button. Here’s the most recent example that I’m aware of. The core Discourse team has consistently declined and, in typical fashion, they’ve clearly stated very good reasons for their position.
In recent years, though, this so-called “infinite scroll” behavior has been increasingly linked to addictive behavior, particularly when coupled with other design features like upvoting, push notifications, and/or algorithmic feed. Given this, together, with potential legal ramifications, I recommend that the core team reconsider their stance.
Worth separating the mechanism from the harm here. The research on addictive social media design points to algorithmic curation, variable-reward feeds, and engagement optimisation, not infinite scroll as a standalone feature. Discourse doesn’t have any of that. It’s a flat, chronological, near-completely unmanipulated list with no algorithm, no sponsored content, and no features designed to keep you scrolling. The scroll just replaces a ‘next page’ button.
The legal concerns you’re referencing apply to platforms deliberately engineering compulsive use. A dry topic list that happens to not have page numbers doesn’t meet that bar.
Infinite scroll (or, more generally, bottomlessness) is consistently pointed to as one of the major tools that are intentionally designed for addictiveness.
And there are thousands or tens of thousands of Discourse instances designed with a lot of different purposes. Some of them (like mine) live within an academic setting, where this issue is quite sensitive. The fact that Discourse now incorporates AI very easily adds to this risk as well.
I think you are grossly underestimating the risk and seriousness of this issue.
Discourse making it easy to integrate AI doesn’t change the scroll mechanic, and that risk would apply equally to a paginated list if the content being generated is the problem.
Discourse is bottomless (on old forums, and even then there is an eventual limit) in the way a long book is bottomless. Social media is engineered to be addictive. Conflating them understates how specifically targeted the harmful design patterns are.
if Discourse’s defaults are genuinely incompatible with your institution’s requirements, there are other tools better suited to that context.
Either way, the support question has been answered, so unless there are more suggestions for the OPs workaround, I suggest we drop the debate here.
there are lots of studies on this and how infinite scrolling on social medial platforms is a factor that enables such behavior as “dopamine scrolling”, “doomsday scrolling”, and contributes to negative effects on mental health:
Social media platforms employ sophisticated algorithms and design features that capitalise on basic psychological principles to maintain user engagement. These include suggestions, auto-play, pull-to-refresh, infinite scrolling, and social investment mechanisms. The integration of short-form video content has been particularly effective at triggering psychological patterns that keep users in a continuous scrolling loop.
This is compounded by the fact that social media platforms have blessed us all with infinite scroll powers, the ability to have unlimited access to content with no embedded stops. Thus, it has morphed into more than just negative consumption, and instead represents an overabundance of digesting content.
Infinite Scroll — The Endless Feed That Never Stops
The infinite scroll feature was introduced by UX designer Aza Raskin in 2006, originally as a way to improve user experience by removing the need to click “next page.” Ironically, it became one of the most powerful mechanisms of digital addiction.
By removing natural stopping cues (like page breaks or loading pauses), infinite scroll eliminates the tiny moments that might remind us to stop. Psychologists call these “decision points”—brief pauses where our brains can evaluate whether to continue. Without them, users lose track of time and enter what researchers call a “flow trap”—a state of passive engagement that can last for hours.
A Frontiers in Psychology study (2022) found that continuous content exposure reduces self-control and increases compulsive use, especially during emotionally heightened periods (like the pandemic). People weren’t consciously choosing to scroll longer; the design made it effortless to do so.
Endless scrolling can dysregulate the nervous system and also appears to cause mental health symptoms like depression and anxiety
As digital technologies evolve, addictive algorithms and designs (aADs) have become a significant public health concern, particularly for older adults, a demographic often overlooked in digital addiction (DA) discourse. Compared to younger users, some older adults may face increased susceptibility to aADs due to factors such as cognitive changes, social isolation, physical comorbidities, or limited digital literacy. These designs, which exploit features like infinite scrolling, are associated with higher risk of compulsive use and may correlate with long-term impacts on cognitive health, social functioning, and quality of life for certain subgroups of older adults
and for the record, i love Discourse’s infinite scrolling and hope to never see pagination on it. it just works better for forums in my opinion. i guess the question for me is: are forums, and Discourse in particular, to be put in the same category as social medial platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, X/twitter, Linkedin, whatsapp, etc.? i’m not so sure about that…
i guess my thought is that pagination is a nuisance in a forum format of flat discussions and it simply isn’t going to stop people from going to the next page to continue. at least i don’t remember it stopping me before, unless the page didn’t load lol.
@Lilly posted several references from the mental health perspective on this issue.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that there could be potential legal ramifications whether one believes their platform is addictive or not. In the US, where I live, at least three states (CA, MN, and NY) have already passed laws requiring warning labels when certain features are present and similar laws are under consideration in other states. The New York law, for example, “Requires warning labels on social media platforms which provide an addictive feed, autoplay, infinite scroll, like counts, and/or push notifications”.
Three of those things are widely used on many Discourse forums but just one seems nearly impossible to disable.
I understand that people like infinite scroll - I like it. I don’t understand the reticence to offer the option, though. I’ve seen posts indicating that it’s a technical challenge and I don’t doubt that. That’s all the more reason the core team should tackle it, rather than some third party.
In the context of Discourse, “infinite scroll” is really just an implementation detail that helps mostly with performance. Consider this: given you have a page with a few hundred topics/posts, the app could in theory just chuck all of them onto the page, which would technically just be a very big page rather than “infinite scroll”, but in spirit they’re the same thing.
Edit: But maybe a lower-effort way to offset this would be to offer a site setting that bounds how many topics you have in Latest, Hot, etc.
There is a more important nuance here. The scroll in Discourse replaces pagination. Just like pagination, it is not infinite.
You choose a category, filter or sort order and then you get topics within that scope in the requested sort order.
Infinite scrolling means that there is a constant push of new content into the feed, outside of what you originally chose to view.
Now that bill is a bit sloppy since it defines “infinite scroll” as follows
“INFINITE SCROLL” SHALL MEAN WHEN A FEED OR LANDING PAGE, WHETHER
OR NOT SUCH FEED IS ADDICTIVE AS DEFINED IN SUBDIVISION ONE OF THIS
SECTION, AUTOMATICALLY LOADS AND DISPLAYS ADDITIONAL MEDIA AT THE BOTTOM
OF SUCH FEED OR LANDING PAGE WITHOUT ANY MANUAL INPUT FROM A COVERED
USER.
which could indeed apply to Discourse’s topic list - depending on whether you would qualify scrolling down as “manual input” or not.
Now there is another nuance in that bill. It only applies to “addictive social media platforms” and those are defined as follows (emphasis mine):
“ADDICTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM” SHALL MEAN A WEBSITE, ONLINE
SERVICE, ONLINE APPLICATION, OR MOBILE APPLICATION THAT PRIMARILY SERVES
AS A MEDIUM FOR COVERED USERS TO INTERACT WITH MEDIA GENERATED BY OTHER
USERS AND WHICH OFFERS OR PROVIDES COVERED USERS AN ADDICTIVE FEED, PUSH
NOTIFICATIONS, AUTOPLAY, INFINITE SCROLL, AND/OR LIKE COUNTS AS A SIGNIFICANT PART OF THE SERVICES PROVIDED BY SUCH WEBSITE, ONLINE
SERVICE, ONLINE APPLICATION, OR MOBILE APPLICATION. “ADDICTIVE SOCIAL
MEDIA PLATFORM” SHALL NOT INCLUDE ANY SUCH SERVICE OR APPLICATION WHICH
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL DETERMINES OFFERS THE FEATURES DESCRIBED HEREIN FOR A VALID PURPOSE UNRELATED TO PROLONGING USE OF SUCH PLATFORM.
In other words, just having a scroll feature does not make the website automatically qualify as addictive. It’s about the purpose of the scroll feature.
Reading the opinions of team and former team members here, you should figure out why they don’t think adding this “technically challenging” (also meaning expensive) feature is a good idea for now
They have explained it well.
This is a great point too, which supports their arguments.
Just looking at the New York law mentioned above, if the website etc “offers or provides … infinite scroll … as a significant part of the services provided …” then it is automatically an “addictive social media platform” unless the AG determines that the website etc “offers the features described herein for a valid purpose unrelated to prolonging use of such platform”.
Is infinite scroll a significant part of the services provided? Is it unrelated to prolonging use? In practice I doubt any small forum owners will be writing to the AG in New York asking for a determination, and I doubt she will be interested in taking any action against us anyway.
“Addictive feed” is quite narrowly defined in https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/GBS/1500 and seems geared towards the kind of personalised algorithms that Discourse doesn’t use. But the other things as defined could apply to Discourse forums (push notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, like counts).
Common sense suggests that default Discourse infinite scroll is not easily associated with “Doom Scrolling”.
Social media companies, use very sophisticated algorithms to fill your feed based on your prior on and off platform behaviour including groups and subscriptions joined, ads you’ve clicked on and cookies they can detect.
It is these algorithms which can cause addictive behaviour, not the infinite scroll mechanism itself alone.
I think we really need to draw a sensible distinction between the functionality and the strategies used for choosing the content for streaming …
