I don’t use smart phones a lot, so feel free to disregard my opinion. But to me, swiping to the left means “next”, like turning a page in a book. If you wanted to leave the site, you’d go ‘back’ to where you came from, which means swiping from left to right to me.
On many Android phones swiping from the outside edge of the screen inwards either from the left or right edge, it behaves like you tapped the “back” button. It is extremely useful to get out of for example an article that was opened on Lemmy or simply navigating through menus on your phone.
A swipe either left or right from the middle-ish of the screen is what you would expect to take you from the previous or next article. Not from the edge.
My android doesn’t seem to do that. I just use the back button.
It is called Gestures Navigation and replaces the three button navigation. It is an available option in the settings if your Android version supports it. Some people don’t like it, personally I prefer it except for that one time some asshole website tries to take advantage of it.
I think they’re much more likely ignorant to this than malicious.
