91–100 of 322 posts
Instagram tip: if you click the wordlogo “Instagram” at the top (in the mobile app), you can select “Following” and get a feed of only posts from accounts you follow, with no suggested posts and no reels. I end up going through that feed in a few minutes and it insulates me from the endless scrolling.
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/
It's also not some "oopsie". It's almost certainly not news but these sites want these 'one more' behaviors. Years ago, I designed a minimalist YouTube player that removed video suggestions and autoplays but used their player, didn't evade ads, etc. I got banned by Google because they disallow any alternative site for YouTube, only embeds are allowed. Pretty sure I am still banned on all Google APIs too.
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.
Better suggestion: block these sites entirely. Reddit and YouTube are wastes of time if you are just 'checking in'. Use YouTube-DL to download videos from specific creators and watch independently. I haven't figured out how to view the actually useful subreddits without having access to the frontpage feeds. Feeds are one of the worst things to be invented in the Internet age. I can't imagine how far behind we are bec…
I keep Instagram to keep in touch with friends abroad. I keep Facebook because certain communities and events only happen there. For some of us, it is plain better to only block short form video.
I keep in touch with my friends abroad by emailing them when I think about them, and I get long form responses on what they are up to, not whatever is the public image filtered stuff that they may or may not be posting somewhere.
Instagram tip: if you click the wordlogo “Instagram” at the top (in the mobile app), you can select “Following” and get a feed of only posts from accounts you follow, with no suggested posts and no reels. I end up going through that feed in a few minutes and it insulates me from the endless scrolling.
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/
Why is it more surprising that scrolling is addictive versus, say, putting a stick of combusting plant matter in your mouth and inhaling the smoke?
That's why we invented a pill that helps with the former, but we might never have one that helps with the latter (although that would be nice)
I 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?
More 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.
I kicked the addiciton a few years back. However there are still things on facebook worth looking at, and there is no easy way to find those without also getting all the addicting things I don't want. I want to see my friend's life. However some of them don't have a life and instead are constantly sharing the "you won't believe what [other political side] just did" garbage.