Doomscrolling and the Case for Intentional Platforms

Why "But People Want a Feed" Is the Wrong Objection - and What roadbeat Does Instead

A recurring objection to any platform that questions the infinite-feed model goes roughly like this:

"What if users actually want a feed? What if they want to doomscroll? What if they don't want to make deliberate choices? Isn't that the entire success formula of social media? And if so - isn't building an alternative just building something nobody asked for?"

This is a fair and important question. The answer reveals why roadbeat exists, who it is for, and why the framing of the objection itself is part of the problem.

The Axiom Problem: Manufactured Consent

In Pixar's Wall-E (2008), humanity lives aboard the starship Axiom. Every person reclines in a hovering chair, eyes fixed on a screen inches from their face, sipping liquefied meals through a straw. They have forgotten how to walk. They have forgotten what Earth looks like. When asked if they enjoy this life, they would presumably say yes. They know nothing else.

This is the most precise cinematic metaphor for the modern attention economy.

The core business model of the dominant social platforms - Meta, TikTok, YouTube, X - is attention extraction. The product is not the content, nor the community. The product is the user's time, sold to advertisers in units of impressions. Every design decision flows from this:

• Infinite scroll eliminates natural stopping points
• Autoplay removes the need for deliberate choice
• Variable-ratio reinforcement (the slot-machine pattern) creates compulsive checking behavior
• Algorithmic ranking optimizes for engagement - which correlates with emotional arousal (outrage, envy, fear), not satisfaction
• Dark patterns (notifications, streaks, read receipts) manufacture urgency

When a user says "I want a feed," what they are actually saying is: "I want the experience that the only platforms I have ever used have trained me to expect." This is not informed preference. It is learned behavior within a system deliberately engineered to create that behavior.

Not Everyone Wants the Hovering Chair

According to Eurobarometer surveys, 65% of EU citizens distrust major technology companies with their personal data. Trust in social media as a news source is at historic lows. In Germany, only 14% of adults trust social media for news.

And yet these same people continue to use the platforms. Why? Because there is a critical difference between:

• Active preference: "I have evaluated the options and this is the experience I choose."
• Default behavior in the absence of alternatives: "I use this because the things I need - news, events, job listings, community - are only available here."

The majority of users are not on Meta and TikTok because the doomscrolling experience is what they desire. They are there because network effects concentrate audiences, because publishers go where the audience is, and because no credible alternative offers the same breadth of content without the manipulative mechanics.

The people who want to walk

In Wall-E, it takes one person - the captain - to look out the window, see Earth, and decide to stand up. He struggles. His muscles have atrophied. But he stands.

There are hundreds of millions of people in Europe who, given a genuine alternative, would choose intentional content consumption over doomscrolling. Not because they are morally superior, but because the current model does not serve their actual needs:

• The parent looking for weekend activities does not need an infinite feed. They need a filtered list of local events.
• The journalist researching a story does not need algorithmic recommendations. They need structured, source-verified content.
• The small business owner looking for candidates does not need to "go viral." They need their job listing to reach people whose goals include career change in their region.
• The student learning a language does not need memes. They need learning materials matched to their proficiency level and location.

The Infrastructure Argument

If the only roads in a city are six-lane highways, then everyone - including pedestrians and cyclists - is forced onto the highway. Not because they prefer it, but because there is no sidewalk.

Building a sidewalk does not eliminate the highway. People who want to drive 120 km/h can still do so. But it gives everyone else a safe, appropriate path.

We must build new platforms so that those who do not want to be pushed toward attention extraction are not forced in that direction due to lack of alternatives.

The EU has recognized this with the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and the AI Act. But regulation alone cannot solve an infrastructure problem. You cannot regulate a sidewalk into existence. You have to build it.

roadbeat is that infrastructure - built in Europe, for European values: GDPR-native by architecture, no cross-site tracking, full data sovereignty, every recommendation transparent and inspectable, the entire core open source.

Two Different Markets

The attention economy conflates two fundamentally different markets:

	Viral Consumer Market	Professional Publishing Market
User intent	Entertainment, distraction	Utility: find events, jobs, news, courses
Content type	Unstructured posts, reels	Structured: events with dates, jobs with requirements
Discovery	Algorithmic feed, virality	Search, filtering, goal matching
Publisher need	Reach (volume)	Relevance (qualified audience)

roadbeat targets the second market. The deal for publishers is not "more eyeballs than TikTok." The deal is: reach without dependency, own your infrastructure, structured content that gets found, and direct reader relationships without algorithmic gatekeeping.

The Spectrum of Intentionality

Users exist on a spectrum:

• High intent: "I need a vegan recipe under 30 minutes" → Structured search with precise filters
• Medium intent: "What's happening in my city this weekend?" → Goal-matched content with geographic filters
• Low intent: "I have 10 minutes, show me something interesting" → A curated, goal-informed feed - not infinite, not manipulative
• Zero intent: "I want to zone out and scroll" → This is not roadbeat's target user - and that is okay

roadbeat serves the first three levels. Designing for zero intent inevitably leads to attention extraction. The market for zero-intent scrolling is already well-served. The underserved market is intent-driven users - hundreds of millions of Europeans who want utility from their digital media without the manipulation tax.

The Sidewalk, Not the Highway

roadbeat does not need to replace Meta or TikTok. It does not need to convert doomscrollers. It needs to be the first credible infrastructure for intentional content discovery in Europe - serving those who are currently forced onto the attention-extraction highway because no sidewalk exists.

The people on the Axiom will keep sitting in their hovering chairs. That is their choice, and roadbeat respects it.

But for the captain who looks out the window and wants to stand up - there has to be ground to stand on.

roadbeat builds that ground.

- Jens Hoppe, Founder