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Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) – defense against online distractions and addictions

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Re: Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) – defense against online distractions and addictions

#41

Post by qiyuxuan96 »

disiplus wrote: post #36

as somebody with ADHD i use SelfControl and it's my savior. On the Android side i use a VPN that im connected to all the time that has a dual purpose, to block ads and to control what i do (i installed it on a super cheap VPS). And on my smartwatch i use pomodoro timer to keep me productive. I'ts hard and i fail a lot but it helps. https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol

Thanks for sharing that - I also know friends who use the VPN method on mobile. I myself used Forest as my pomodoro timer; one problem I had was often times I would forget to turn it on.

Re: Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) – defense against online distractions and addictions

#42

Post by sub7 »

I would just get annoyed with the prompts and uninstall. This approach doesn't, hasn't and won't work.

What will work is unfortunately a little more complex to build i.e. you need to change functionality on these sites forcibly e.g. disable autoplay on YT automatically, fetch and create a newsfeed on FB to replace the shit stock one etc etc.

You would then need to keep up with these assholes trying to block your extension at every turn.

Sadly, this is the only approach that will actually work short of serious legislation.

Re: Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) – defense against online distractions and addictions

#43

Post by qiyuxuan96 »

monkin wrote: post #15
qiyuxuan96 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for letting us know. Extensions for other browsers are in the works, and will be available soon. That's a good point - making Facebook annoying to be on is a solution. We currently let you block elements like the newsfeed. As we ourselves found out, however, we want Facebook to be easy to use when we need to do legitimate work, and only block us when we aren't. Thus, we came up with a middleground.

Great! I really like the idea, but for users that are addicted from social media or from visiting that "one and only" website this isn't enough. They will uninstall extension, remove /etc/hosts or move to another browser to look on Facebook. I once knew a guy that beat his own dad with a keyboard when he threw away his computer because he was spending all his time scrolling through FB. Internet addiction is very hard…

Definitely agree with you that this is very hard and intricate - we are continuously thinking about how to balance between intermediate interventions/reminders and solving the most serious social media addictions.

Re: Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) – defense against online distractions and addictions

#44

Post by qiyuxuan96 »

kick wrote: post #10
monkin wrote: post #5

What about other browsers? Or other online distractions that aren't related to web browsers? For myself, extensions like this doesn't work at all, and for most addicted will not work as well. Would like to see extensions that doesn't block but make reading Facebook or other services extremely annoying. For example: I go to 9-5 job, and when I open Facebook all posts are from PornHub. Without a way to turn this off, s…

I wouldn't personally use a proprietary extension with access to every tab, but: Extensions written for Chrome can be hand-ported to Firefox in the span of ten minutes, even if you don't have unminified source code. There used to be an extension that automatically did it, but I can't remember what it's called. WebExtensions are pretty neat!

Yes - we definitely plan on turning on Firefox and other browsers soon. As you've mentioned, there are tools out there that makes this neat.

Re: Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) – defense against online distractions and addictions

#45

Post by [deleted] »

10xRich wrote: post #25

I have this idea I like to think about from time to time. "Know when to be Achilles and know when to be Odysseus." When it comes to online distractions and addictions, I've found anything that any tool that doesn't offer precommitment and restrictions of editing/removing the intervention will be ineffective in the long run. If Odysseus could have untied himself from the mast, he would have. Apps like these seem to be…

[deleted]

Re: Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) – defense against online distractions and addictions

#46

Post by qiyuxuan96 »

sub7 wrote: post #42

I would just get annoyed with the prompts and uninstall. This approach doesn't, hasn't and won't work. What will work is unfortunately a little more complex to build i.e. you need to change functionality on these sites forcibly e.g. disable autoplay on YT automatically, fetch and create a newsfeed on FB to replace the shit stock one etc etc. You would then need to keep up with these assholes trying to block your exte…

Agreed that we definitely have a lot more work to do. We currently let people change functionality on these websites - such as blocking the newsfeed. I like your suggestion that we should not only hide it, but also replace it. We'll think about that more.

Re: Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) – defense against online distractions and addictions

#47

Post by qiyuxuan96 »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #6
monkin wrote: post #5

What about other browsers? Or other online distractions that aren't related to web browsers? For myself, extensions like this doesn't work at all, and for most addicted will not work as well. Would like to see extensions that doesn't block but make reading Facebook or other services extremely annoying. For example: I go to 9-5 job, and when I open Facebook all posts are from PornHub. Without a way to turn this off, s…

What I currently do is block on /etc/hosts. But like the OP says I don't actually want to perma block these sites, I do get real value out of them maybe 5 minutes a day. It just needs to not turn into 20 minutes. But you can use /etc/hosts perhaps if you really want a less easily turned off block.

Definitely agree with your sentiment; I probably only need Twitter for 10 minutes on most days. Yes - we are working on making it harder to ignore our extension when a person's being distracted. The key is really to build a good classifier of when a person's being productive or not on a distracting site. We currently let the user decide that when we intervene.

Re: Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) – defense against online distractions and addictions

#49

Post by monkin »

qiyuxuan96 wrote: post #43
monkin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great! I really like the idea, but for users that are addicted from social media or from visiting that "one and only" website this isn't enough. They will uninstall extension, remove /etc/hosts or move to another browser to look on Facebook. I once knew a guy that beat his own dad with a keyboard when he threw away his computer because he was spending all his time scrolling through FB. Internet addiction is very hard…

Definitely agree with you that this is very hard and intricate - we are continuously thinking about how to balance between intermediate interventions/reminders and solving the most serious social media addictions.

Just a loose thought. It would be awesome to have a desktop app with minimal settings that would learn your habits and adapt to them. Something that will not block access but assist you with cutting your time spent on unnecessary tasks. Essentially, something that you already build, but without browser extensions and working on all system apps.

Sensing if you spend time on browsing newsfeed or administrating Facebook pages, and distinguish between these different activities. Did you work for the last two hours in VS Code, and now you are browsing newsfeed? IRC? RSS? Anything other than working? In this case, it will automatically switch you over to the last used app, and inform the user about spending too much time using FB or anything other on nonsense. Automatically filtering every system notification, showing you the most important ones. Not using the computer for more than 30 minutes after 6 pm? It will let you do anything you want but notify about other activities, for example, 4 hours on Netflix, and it's almost 12am? Then it will tell you, that for the last four days you slept at that time. And ask if you want to spend more time on those activities or gradually turndown brightness of your screen, and put your computer to sleep... :)

Re: Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) – defense against online distractions and addictions

#50

Post by qiyuxuan96 »

lopatin wrote: post #12

Just installed and this looks great. Good job on thinking it out more than other extensions. Question unrelated to app, but to your experience: Why did options market making not work out?

Thank you.

A major reason is in crypto, people can already leverage 100x, and thus people who would normally use options for leverage no longer need it.

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