Good idea. I resorted to my own listing of channels on YouTube and never going to the actual site. I'd also get sucked into shorts for hours. I the think the same can be said for any form of scrolling. My goal for is to create a better non addictive social platform.
Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
21–30 of 322 posts
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#22I want this for YouTube.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#23My friend needs this so bad, he has a Reels addiction so bad it makes me uninstall Instagram. I wish there was a feature to block being sent Reels.
You are doing God’s work with this app.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#24I just can't authorize an app to have full control on my phone if it's not open-source. What guarantee do I have that you are not selling all my user data?
What guarantees do you have that open source code faithfully reflects what is in the compiled binary?
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#25I want this for YouTube.
Then ScrollGuard is for you?
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#26More power to you, but I don't understand the psychology of this kind of thing. If I have enough willpower to block a feature why not just use that will power to shut off the app after a while? I understand you're saying it's addictive, but if I were addicted to something then I'm going to be inclined to just remove the blocker. Anyway, this isn't a critique of your work, just my personal perspective.
Been using YouTube recommendation blockers for a while. Personally I’ve never gone, “oh man I could go for some binge watching!” as much as something piques my interest and I get drawn down video after video of nothing. So removing any sort of advert for a video means it never even crosses my mind to turn off the blocker.
you can turn off your watch history and YouTube becomes a lot better
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
DigiPaws has the headlining feature of the app advertised here, and is open source. https://github.com/nethical6/digipaws
Not that I suspect maliciousness in the case of digipaws or OP, but does the app's code being open-source actually guarantee any security? Is there anything forcing the app I download to be consistent with the repo on Github?
Not really. I guess to be 100% sure you need to build the app yourself. I don’t think that publish attestation exists on play store. Probably would need to openly build & upload the app via a CI runner, print all hashes inside that runner and then the playstore also needs to display those hashes before you download - but that doesnt exist for play store downloads yet.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#28I don't find short videos addicting because I feel like I'm not getting enough context and information from short videos. I like long form videos.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#29In a similar vain, I made https://Instag.com, which let's you remove the "RAM" from Instagram media URL's to download them.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
DigiPaws has the headlining feature of the app advertised here, and is open source. https://github.com/nethical6/digipaws
Not that I suspect maliciousness in the case of digipaws or OP, but does the app's code being open-source actually guarantee any security? Is there anything forcing the app I download to be consistent with the repo on Github?
The readme clearly directs the reader to the F-Droid package, which are built on their buildservers and signed with their APK keys. This does not answer the security question directly, but it's the same model as say Debian repos. There are eyeballs on it by an independent third party packagers who use code scanners and manual review to detect malfeasance, and often have to tweak builds and code to get rid of unwanted things present in some upstreams.