131–140 of 322 posts
In my opinion tech is not the solution to issues of self-discipline.
Not related, see also media and nutrition.
As others have said, the permissions required to make this work are scary and require a lot of trust. The fact YouTube and Instagram don't allow you to disable endless algorithmic short form content is straight up evil.
I'd recommend just uninstalling the apps. I'm still able to get the content I need, and scroll mechanic doesn't work as well on the websites so a lot of the temptation to doom scroll goes away.
In my opinion tech is not the solution to issues of self-discipline.
Unfortunately, we're well past that era. Certain tech is so "good", we need to actively fight it and, sadly, the only solution is more tech. Not related, see also media and nutrition.
The mitigations that work well for me are purely encouraging endogenous dopamine production. Hiking (or anything outdoors). Sleep improvement through regular rituals (no phone in bed). And, indeed, nutrition. Basically, the old adage of eat well, sleep well, get some exercise. That's how you get your groove back.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I got banned by Google because they disallow any alternative site for YouTube, only embeds are allowed. I'm sorry that happened to you, but that seems like a perfectly reasonable policy. In fact, I would have assumed that's the case before reading your comment.
If it didn't evade ads though, while it's their right to have such a policy with their site, it's still quite a display of the utter contempt they have for their users. Unless they really believe with a straight face that 24 is a healthy optimum for 'YouTube watch hours per day.' Because that's the only number that would cause their brain-hacking to stop. "You'll consume using our dark-patterned, unhealthy interface…
I find any kind of addiction has the same challenge towards breaking from the entrapment cycle which is to raise awareness and understanding then developing thoughtful thinking. Can an app really do that for us? Will it ever? Grounding yourself is such an organic thing to do.
This kind of control is what we miss out on when we leave web apps for native apps. Ideally this would just be a simple browser plugin. But the app requires major accessibility permissions so that it can access the API it needs to see into the Android apps, something that doesn't even exist on iOS. Just to do what should amount things like deleting a ".reels" component. That said, props to OP for figuring out how to…
I've tried adding rules to ublock origin but sites like youtube and many others now have "component obfuscation". Meaning there is no unique ID on their components/elements and it makes it much harder to target. And some element titles/names are even on a different component than the content, which is even harder still. So it says "reels" on one component and the actual reels are on another. Blocking now has to be a…
That said, they put up a fight in the browser because user interventions (browser plugins, greasemonkey scripts, ad blockers) are viable in the browser but not in native apps.
Though this is also why they want to force you to use their app, and I'm not sure how to incentivize apps to even exist as websites. It feels like a dying fluke that places like Reddit even maintain a web frontend for their app.
This kind of control is what we miss out on when we leave web apps for native apps. Ideally this would just be a simple browser plugin. But the app requires major accessibility permissions so that it can access the API it needs to see into the Android apps, something that doesn't even exist on iOS. Just to do what should amount things like deleting a ".reels" component. That said, props to OP for figuring out how to…
I've tried adding rules to ublock origin but sites like youtube and many others now have "component obfuscation". Meaning there is no unique ID on their components/elements and it makes it much harder to target. And some element titles/names are even on a different component than the content, which is even harder still. So it says "reels" on one component and the actual reels are on another. Blocking now has to be a…
This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control, but the reality is these apps are engineered explicitly to bypass that. It feels a bit silly to need guardrails for something as trivial as scrolling. Shameless personal plug: I wrote about it here. https://nabraj.com/blog/swipe-scroll-repeat-addiction/
A very effective partial solution - there is absolutely 0 reason to have any meta app cancers on phones/tablets. Just let them go, leave them for laptop/desktop and you are more than 50% there. This way they lose a lot of their instant addictivity. Same goes for tiktok and similar other shit forming and then feeding on addictions. Everything becomes much easier afterwards, especially long term. I removed FB apps quit…
I take a hybrid approach - keep uninstalled by default most of the time, engage a browser extension for web to keep me in place, and failing all that use an app like this as well.
How this is possible for iOS? Can someone share technical details on this iOS implementation? IMO this cannot be done without validating user privacy and giving app some crucial screen reading permissions.
Source: I am a developer of Clearspace, which is an iOS Screen Time App https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clearspace-reduce-screen-time/...