now that there's an even larger influx of users fleeing twitter (I say, as if I am not one of them), I've been poking around the cohost feature request forum to upvote the ones I would find useful, etc.
I've seen a good amount of feature requests that are based around what the user would prefer when in the process of using the site, because they tend to remove some sort of friction (ex. infinite scrolling, trending tags page, displaying number of likes or followers, automation tools, word search posts, etc.). Unfortunately a lot (most?) of the same features would remove the user's agency... and that's why they're so tempting.
I loved infinite scrolling on reddit, which was terrible for me
Back in the Before Times, reddit had an even worse ui design and extremely clunky functionality, so everyone would download the Reddit Enhancement Suite.
Some of the enhancements the extension gave you were things like opening an image without needing to click out of the page, tagging users, and infinite scrolling (the old reddit design was paginated).
I activated infinite scrolling and using reddit felt so much better. Faster, less annoying. My browsing sessions became three times longer. I would lose hours without even noticing.
The same reason I preferred it in the moment is why it put me less in control of my experience. It made it faster for me to access new posts if I didn't have to click the "next page" arrow, my experience became seamless. This would make it harder for me to disengage with the site and go do something else. I wouldn't even have the chance to think about disengaging, I would go on autopilot.
At some point I wasn't even slightly entertained. I was exactly as bored as if I wasn't scrolling, but somehow unable to do anything else. I know a lot of people probably relate to that feeling, if not with reddit, then with facebook, twitter, instagram or whatever.
Eventually I deactivated the infinite scroll function and reddit went back to being a place where I discussed niche interests in small subreddits or looked up specific information. It became useful again the moment I stopped feeling compelled to stay on it for hours.
Cohost is not trying to hijack your neurons, stop asking it to
I'm not saying every feature that removes friction is bad. Quality of life improvements are good! I'm just asking us to think about what actually is a quality of life improvement, and what will make your life worse, but faster.
more of my thoughts on the cohost ux/ui and agency
good post by @Bigg on why cohost is not twitter and that's good
how to discover new people without an algorithm suggesting you content

.gif)