Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels

scrollguard.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 322 posts

Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels

#201

Post by degamad »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #164
TheCapeGreek wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get addicted to these feeds, you'll just find other ways to them once they're off your phone. 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.

I actively log out of them on my main device and use a second device to access them that I like to use substantially less. The device sits next to me every day, and is accessible at any time. It has substantially reduced my usage.

Enabling a second profile on my android phone and putting Facebook in there instead of in the browser on my primary profile led to an ~90% reduction on the time I spend on Facebook.

However, I do have to check it from time to time for one of my jobs (to monitor our Page and events, and respond to customers), and the occasions when I switch to the second profile can still hook me for 20 minutes of scrolling...

Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels

#202

Post by SoftTalker »

mieubrisse wrote: post #145
coffeecoders wrote: post #63

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/

I had an epiphany that faulting myself, and my self-control, is exactly what these sites want you to do. "Oh, it's just your bad self-discipline" No, this is full-on war for control of your mind. And the adversary spends millions to hire teams of the world's best psychologists and engineers to deploy technology that never sleeps with the sole purpose of grabbing and keeping your attention. Once I realized this, I sta…

I’ll be the contrarian and say that while I find the constant pushing of Shorts in YouTube to be annoying, I don’t have any trouble not watching them. I select “show me fewer shorts “ which helps some and I skip over the rest.

Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels

#203

Post by jader201 »

mieubrisse wrote: post #145
coffeecoders wrote: post #63

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/

I had an epiphany that faulting myself, and my self-control, is exactly what these sites want you to do. "Oh, it's just your bad self-discipline" No, this is full-on war for control of your mind. And the adversary spends millions to hire teams of the world's best psychologists and engineers to deploy technology that never sleeps with the sole purpose of grabbing and keeping your attention. Once I realized this, I sta…

I won’t argue with the fact that these systems are designed to defeat your ability to control your habits.

But it is possible, without having to install tech to defeat these systems for you.

I think, as with most bad habits, the easiest way to defeat them is to never start them to begin with.

If you haven’t ever smoked, don’t start. If you haven’t ever gotten hooked on Shorts/Reels, don’t start.

I watch YouTube quite often, but only long form content. I even watch some content that takes me multiple nights to finish (e.g. a 5-hour stream of a great board game). I think the only time I’ve watched a Short was accidentally, or if someone shared one with me (fewer than a handful of times).

It also helps if your friends/family don’t do those things too (e.g. so they don’t keep sharing them with you).

But 100% agree that ideally, platforms would give us control over the types of content that show up.

The best I can do on YouTube is to subscribe to channels that don’t do Shorts, and only use Subscriptions as my feed. This has been quite effective.

I don’t even use Instagram (and definitely not TikTok).

My biggest vices are HN and Board Game Geek, but I feel that’s relatively tame (but I could still have healthier habits even with those).

Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels

#206

Post by habosa »

So I only use Instagram for the DMs with friends. I don’t follow anyone at all, so my feed should be empty. For years it was.

Then at some point Instagram decided I must not know what I want, they should show me recommended posts from random accounts.

There’s a setting to turn this off … but instead of being a normal toggle I can only “snooze” the posts for 30 days. 30 days of peace and then the spam comes back.

No matter how many times I make it clear what I want, they don’t care. Just gross.

Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels

#207

Post by Terr_ »

mieubrisse wrote: post #145
coffeecoders wrote: post #63

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/

I had an epiphany that faulting myself, and my self-control, is exactly what these sites want you to do. "Oh, it's just your bad self-discipline" No, this is full-on war for control of your mind. And the adversary spends millions to hire teams of the world's best psychologists and engineers to deploy technology that never sleeps with the sole purpose of grabbing and keeping your attention. Once I realized this, I sta…

> I had an epiphany that faulting myself, and my self-control, is exactly what these sites want you to do.

Yeah, this kind of realization can be surprisingly empowering, because it takes something that seemed like unavoidable natural law and reveals it as an adversarial relationship.

To offer a boring but lower-tech version: Shopping centers which are deliberately designed to make people enter/exit through stores, and the companies that pay to rent that space in particular. So there's nothing awkward about tracking in some water on a rainy day, the company chose that tradeoff.

Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels

#208

Post by benreesman »

coffeecoders wrote: post #63

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/

There's no weakness in identifying an adversarial situation and acting accordingly.

Your adversary is playing to win. Why should you forfeit the contest?

Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels

#209

Post by RomanPushkin »

Is there anything similar to block/unblock them on network level? Some kind of lists, how reliable those lists are and how often do you need to update those? Curious if I can just have a shell script and will autoupdate everything on my router - install and forget solution.
Post reply on HN