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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

#51

Post by keenmaster »

From my experience, it's better in the long run to apply brute force restrictions on programs. It's too easy to modify and delete Stayfocusd though.

Idea: I think we need a cross-platform website/app restriction utility. At the beginning, you get to choose intervals where you can change your settings for free. Let's say the interval is 3 months, and your settings dictate that you can only spend 40 minutes on social media sites (with only 10 minutes during work hours, zero after 10 PM), and 50 minutes on news websites a day. You can violate a limit, but you'd have to donate money to a political party of your choice: the catch is that you'd have to donate the same amount to the opposing political party! The punishment amount increases the more you violate the terms of your 3-month agreement.

After the 3 months/year/whatever are up, you can change the restriction and punishment settings. Holiday exceptions can be pre-programmed, or selected from a default profile ("student" "professional with 3 weeks vacation" etc...). You can always make the settings more restrictive before the interval is over, but not more forgiving.

There would also be an agreed-upon penalty for deleting the program, so that you don't delete and redownload to avoid the restrictions.

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

#52

Post by qiyuxuan96 »

monkin wrote: post #49
qiyuxuan96 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks a lot for all these ideas; can definitely be a great approach. Desktop and mobile are our two biggest directions. It is definitely on our minds to bring functionalities of our extension onto apps on the computer, and be more intelligent on how we intervene people and bring them back to productive work, like the ones you suggested.

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

#53

Post by sub7 »

qiyuxuan96 wrote: post #46
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.

Yup, I've built 2 products that crossed 50M users. One was a browser extension in the years before the iPhone.

I always assume my user is blackout drunk and generally not very thoughtful i.e. they know what they want but they want that shit on a plate with 0 effort.

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

#55

Post by CameronBanga »

This looks well packaged, and I can see the argument that it may be easier to use than the competition.

But how do you plan to make money? I’m looking for a model that isn’t “we sell data on our customers”, which I see is prohibited based on the TOS. But what would be the road to profit and what safeguards are in place to prevent you from just selling to a less ethical company down the road?

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

#56

Post by ximeng »

The problem isn’t time spent on these sites, it’s finding better quality ways to spend the time. That’s the real challenge. Solution needs to be pull to something better not push away from something worse. Not that the push is necessarily bad but it’s not the full answer.

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

#57

Post by mnowicki »

ximeng wrote: post #56

The problem isn’t time spent on these sites, it’s finding better quality ways to spend the time. That’s the real challenge. Solution needs to be pull to something better not push away from something worse. Not that the push is necessarily bad but it’s not the full answer.

I agree with your point about finding better ways to spend time, but I also think that any LESS time spent on facebook and the like is a VERY positive thing. And despite being skeptical when reading the first few sentences of the original post, I think his app actually sounds like it does something valuable.

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

#58

Post by gbasin »

CameronBanga wrote: post #55

This looks well packaged, and I can see the argument that it may be easier to use than the competition. But how do you plan to make money? I’m looking for a model that isn’t “we sell data on our customers”, which I see is prohibited based on the TOS. But what would be the road to profit and what safeguards are in place to prevent you from just selling to a less ethical company down the road?

Was my first thought, as well. However, making something previously un-monetizable with a much better UX can unlock new opportunities. Craigslist sublet board → Airbnb

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

#59

Post by mnowicki »

Hey guys, I have an idea/suggestion for you guys; you might already be doing this or it might just not be a worthwhile idea, but it sounds useful to me:

Your addon/extension should track the amount of time spent on each of these time-waster websites, and allow the use to render graphs showing how their usage over time has changes. Perhaps even allow them to set goals(e.g less than 30 mins a day max, and under 2.5 hrs per week max) and visually show how close they are to their goals via graphs and other visuals.

Not only would it show users how much your extension is helping them, it would also provide them motivation to use it more, not to mention giving you some nice looking visuals to use for marketing

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

#60

Post by agrinman »

qiyuxuan96 wrote: post #38
ignoramous wrote: post #23

This is great stuff, Harry. Congratulations on the launch. Since you're asking for it, a request that I have is if there was a mobile-OS wide implementation of it, that'd be great. I've tried launchers like https://getsiempo.com (defunct?) and https://lessphone.app but walked away unimpressed due to a variety of reasons: The main one being having to change habits to adopt to the new UX, whilst solutions like blloc [0…

Thank you so much for sharing these tips and suggestions on mobile. Mobile is definitely on our todo list, more so Android than iPhone. Like you mentioned, Android's digital well-being initiative helps better products emerge. Unfortunately, Apple still does not allow developer access to screen time functionatlities, and the only way to mimic that is through MDM, which not only is a bad workaround but also has been ba…

What about a DNS based approach on iOS? You don't need MDM, just a VPN extension. You could send push notifications when your DNS server detects a site to block and mimic the same UX you have with a browser extension.
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