Something that makes me lean anti-Google and anti-Meta is how they make it impossible to disable the addicting features like shorts and reels. This is inarguably an anti-user move because the only people who want to use such an option are those who recognize they have a problem wasting time on those features. In my own small sphere this is the most visible "evil" thing that these companies do.
Totally agree. There should be a digital consumer bill of rights, that includes the right to disable autoplaying videos. Even the NYTimes home page is plastered with them these days, it’s awful. Another one is control over sort order, having the option of “most recent first”, vs. “most likely to keep you here”.
You know what makes me anti Google. They have completely destroyed my ability to have a custom MMS app on my own phone. They buy out jibe and completely lock down RCS on their own platform, they have been the instrument of preventing FOSS mobile texting.
They do this with Threads as well. If you’re not on there long enough, they’ll pretend there are notifications waiting for you, but it’s just “Posts that might be of interest to you”. They’ll even show this fake data on Instagram to get you to open Threads.
Modern Reddit does this as well. All kinds of useless notifications like "Your comment go 10 upvotes, congratulations!". Its not as bad on the old.reddit.com version
I feel embarrassment for the designers and engineers who did the work for YouTube Shorts -> Hide -> “Okay we’ll hide them for a week!” I just cannot imagine having to be party to that kind of hot garbage.
I get that companies are designed to soullessly seek optimization of revenue. But there are humans who work at them and those humans do have free will to be party to it or not.
> companies are designed to soullessly seek optimization of revenue. But there are humans who work
Exactly, every single manipulative, exploitive, and outright evil act attributed to a 'company' was thought of, planned, executed, and overseen by actual people.
Until I have time to get more precise, I settled on just blocking the whole sites at dns level with nextdns, for most of the day. It's not ideal, as using vpn breaks it.. and I would prefer just to target short form video.. and i would prefer to use pihole.. but its working.
Is it a common millennial thing, or is it just me where those have the opposite effect? Shorts etc. annoy me heavily, and the more they get pushed on me, the less I use something. It’s like those people on WhatsApp sending you a voice message because instead of typing.
Weirdly, Instagram never hooked me. I guess I only followed people that didn't post, ha ha.
As per boredom (I'm 60, so, yeah, grew up without smart phones), best thing that can happen to your creativity. All my good ideas come from stretches of boredom (driving long distances for example). I love boredom.
When computers came firmly into my life, it was solitaire games I had to actively delete from my machine. So many wasted hours (I thought).
Note: we 60 year olds wasted plenty of time watching shit television content long before smart phones (and computer solitaire) came to be.
I have only just slightly made a little peace with this time-wasting habit. I've come to see that there is time of decompression that I sort of seem to need in the evening. As I say, it used to be TV where I would find solace in "vegging out". Lately it's YouTube.
Perhaps we can accept this but find better ways to veg out? I personally think YouTube is superior to the crap TV (and, god, commercials) of old. But drumming, playing guitar, reading ... these are better still.
I didn't get snared by Instagram until I began to use it deliberately, _searching_ for things. In my case when I moved to a new part of the country, I found it super useful to look up places and things on Instagram by name, location, or tag.
Instagram (and YouTube) have engineered their search experiences to be as distracting as possible and to provoke the user into abandoning their search and to follow suggested content.
I can't tell you how many times I set out to find something and literally forget what that intention was, after being induced to click on the tantalizing promise of some other image or video thumbnail.
I found the stylistic choice to write in all lowercase so jarring that I could barely focus on the content of the article itself.
Now I realize I am going against HN Guidelines by focusing on style over substance, so to tie this into the content of the article:
The lack of capital letters makes me feel lost in a sea of stream-of-consciousness, much like an infinite stream of Instagram reels. Capitalization makes everything more readable. In contrast, social media doesn't want to be readable, it just wants to be absorbed.
Of course language is always evolving, and we are right to sometimes eschew outdated conventions. However, capitalization exists for a good reason. Capital letters mark the beginning of a sentence more clearly than a simple period. They stick out and give your eyes something to latch onto when scanning the page. In addition, capitalizing proper nouns sets them apart, drawing attention to non-standard words.
Capitalization smooths the reading experience with structure and boundaries...which it sounds like the author could use a bit more of in their life.
I always think it is frustrated kids showing off how "rebel" they are, by not following basic grammar rules.
It automatically loses my attention and respect. I can't take it seriously.
Ah, thank you sir. I’ve been battling with that intense itch to say about all-lowercase long text, but then I realised that maybe that text just isn’t intended to be read by someone else, after all. Or it’s something closer to ‘I’m doing it for myself, so I don’t care whether anyone else would be able to read through it’ kind of attitude. Maybe they don’t respect themselves enough, to make an effort even for oneself, and fix that broken Shift key.
Sit down with a novel and leave your phone on the other side of the room. Read. If you get distracted or lost in thought, that's fine—just don't stand up. Stay where you are. When you're done being distracted, go back to the book.
I’ve thought this for a while too. Just as maybe you start working out if you want to lose some weight and build muscle, maybe reading a book is the exercise to regain your attention and focus.
The key is not having the phone nearby though. Just right now I’m typing this from bed despite having brought a book to bed.
I started doing "phoneless walk". For example in the morning before work, go outside, walk in a park for 20m and do not bring my phone.
Not sure why, but not bringing the phone changed my thinking pattern. Even if I did not look at it anyway while having it.
It really is insane. I deleted Instagram too, but so many other apps have the exact same formula, like YouTube and Reddit. All you can do is repeatedly delete these apps, and journal or read to keep them at bay. I bought a notebook for tricky Spanish verbs, and I've got another one for Jazz music theory. I am terrible at Spanish AND Jazz, but it helps me stay off my phone, and when I am doomscrolling, I make an effort to change course, look up something I'm really curious about and write it down. Hope that helps literally anyone.
I used a “trick” to make YouTube work in my favour. For a few days I purposefully watched and liked/subscribed a bunch of videos about things that I think make me a better me (jazz piano lessons, philosophy conversations, math/physics/CS lectures, etc) until the feed only contains those. If I notice it drifting because sometimes it tries to pull something on you, I make sure I thumb down the new shit and retrain it a little. Has been working well so far!
This is a good technique but I fear YouTube will always try to sway us away from our interests, and towards what they are soft-promoting.
I've always wanted a YouTube which is basically just a searchbar, with results and just the video, so I created a little private webpage with that. It doesn't have anything unless I searched for it. No autoplay, no trending or recommendations, and no comments. The YouTube API is free up to a certain amount of videos (which is very hard to reach for personal usage).
What I find weird about social media is that using it never really "feels good". I can go back to when FB was the addictive app back in 2015 or Insta/Tiktoks now, you'll find something funny here and there but beyond that it leaves you feeling worse than when you started using it. It might also be a side effect of getting old but Twitter and LinkedIn feel particularly triggering with so much rage bait
I really think society is sleepwalking into a ton of problems with mass media consumption (mostly by the phone, and of which Instagram is one component). We are not supposed to be filling every gap in our lives with videos, games, music, and short-form content.
It is okay to be bored and let your mind wonder every now and again. It fosters boredom, which in turn fosters creativity. It also boosts the enjoyment of the (lower amount of) media you do consume and stops you becoming numb to it and seeking out more dopamine constantly.
It is clearly having an effect on people's attention span, stunting people's ability to focus, and affecting their performance, not just in work, but in many areas of their lives.
Maybe the city I live in is an isolated case, but most people walking from place to place are looking at their phone while doing it. I see people walking their dog or pushing their baby prams while staring at their phone (this is supposed to be bonding time). When I go to the gym, there's a whole column of people walking on treadmills (even on a sunny day) because this allows them to prop the phone up on the treadmill or hold the phone and watch videos. The 3-5 minute rest between sets on machines, benches and free weight areas is now a video watching period. Sometimes people are just doing a low-weight easy load with the phone resting on their crotch.
Even if people aren't looking at the screen, a lot of the time they have earbuds in listening to something. Is it a war on silence and letting the mind wander?
Why can people not unplug? Surely by now it's proven that short form video content is stunting people's attention span, making it hard for them to read even a page of a book. How are these people going to competently hold down a job or pursue a hobby? What happens in 20 years when people have been conditioned like this for 2,3,4+ decades. Are we going to have a serious breakdown in mental health, early signs of dementia or Alzheimers?
Damn companies like Instagram for taking part in this, as Google, Meta, Reddit, Spotify and whoever else has. Their desire to occupy ever more of our attention and time is leading this charge.
Throughout most of human history, most people were slaves and workers. They weren't there to think, they were there to push stone from place A to place B. The society at large isn't going to collapse if we return to the state where most of humanity does mindless jobs and have mindless lives, while the ruling class of people with self-control pull the strings.
I guess societal collapse was a bit melodramatic of me. I guess I just wanted to vent a bit. It's just sad that we live with such a hijacking force in our pockets and that seems to be having an adverse effect on the way people handle their jobs and lives.
Readit News
[1] YouTube Anti Shorts - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/441709-youtube-anti-shorts...
[2] Hide Instagram Feed, Stories, Reels, and Explore Page - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/474087-hide-instagram-feed...
[3] Bypass Instagram Login Redirects - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/420604-bypass-instagram-lo...
Note: I use[1] regularly, Since I don't have an instagram account I don't have a need to use[2] instead I use[3].
Deleted Comment
They do this with Threads as well. If you’re not on there long enough, they’ll pretend there are notifications waiting for you, but it’s just “Posts that might be of interest to you”. They’ll even show this fake data on Instagram to get you to open Threads.
I get that companies are designed to soullessly seek optimization of revenue. But there are humans who work at them and those humans do have free will to be party to it or not.
Exactly, every single manipulative, exploitive, and outright evil act attributed to a 'company' was thought of, planned, executed, and overseen by actual people.
Deleted Comment
Is it a common millennial thing, or is it just me where those have the opposite effect? Shorts etc. annoy me heavily, and the more they get pushed on me, the less I use something. It’s like those people on WhatsApp sending you a voice message because instead of typing.
For me it was a quick way down from "these are annoying" to "oh, just another short that aligns with my interests".
As per boredom (I'm 60, so, yeah, grew up without smart phones), best thing that can happen to your creativity. All my good ideas come from stretches of boredom (driving long distances for example). I love boredom.
When computers came firmly into my life, it was solitaire games I had to actively delete from my machine. So many wasted hours (I thought).
Note: we 60 year olds wasted plenty of time watching shit television content long before smart phones (and computer solitaire) came to be.
I have only just slightly made a little peace with this time-wasting habit. I've come to see that there is time of decompression that I sort of seem to need in the evening. As I say, it used to be TV where I would find solace in "vegging out". Lately it's YouTube.
Perhaps we can accept this but find better ways to veg out? I personally think YouTube is superior to the crap TV (and, god, commercials) of old. But drumming, playing guitar, reading ... these are better still.
Instagram (and YouTube) have engineered their search experiences to be as distracting as possible and to provoke the user into abandoning their search and to follow suggested content.
I can't tell you how many times I set out to find something and literally forget what that intention was, after being induced to click on the tantalizing promise of some other image or video thumbnail.
Now I realize I am going against HN Guidelines by focusing on style over substance, so to tie this into the content of the article:
The lack of capital letters makes me feel lost in a sea of stream-of-consciousness, much like an infinite stream of Instagram reels. Capitalization makes everything more readable. In contrast, social media doesn't want to be readable, it just wants to be absorbed.
Of course language is always evolving, and we are right to sometimes eschew outdated conventions. However, capitalization exists for a good reason. Capital letters mark the beginning of a sentence more clearly than a simple period. They stick out and give your eyes something to latch onto when scanning the page. In addition, capitalizing proper nouns sets them apart, drawing attention to non-standard words.
Capitalization smooths the reading experience with structure and boundaries...which it sounds like the author could use a bit more of in their life.
Sit down with a novel and leave your phone on the other side of the room. Read. If you get distracted or lost in thought, that's fine—just don't stand up. Stay where you are. When you're done being distracted, go back to the book.
It really makes a difference.
The key is not having the phone nearby though. Just right now I’m typing this from bed despite having brought a book to bed.
Deleted Comment
I've always wanted a YouTube which is basically just a searchbar, with results and just the video, so I created a little private webpage with that. It doesn't have anything unless I searched for it. No autoplay, no trending or recommendations, and no comments. The YouTube API is free up to a certain amount of videos (which is very hard to reach for personal usage).
It is okay to be bored and let your mind wonder every now and again. It fosters boredom, which in turn fosters creativity. It also boosts the enjoyment of the (lower amount of) media you do consume and stops you becoming numb to it and seeking out more dopamine constantly.
It is clearly having an effect on people's attention span, stunting people's ability to focus, and affecting their performance, not just in work, but in many areas of their lives.
Maybe the city I live in is an isolated case, but most people walking from place to place are looking at their phone while doing it. I see people walking their dog or pushing their baby prams while staring at their phone (this is supposed to be bonding time). When I go to the gym, there's a whole column of people walking on treadmills (even on a sunny day) because this allows them to prop the phone up on the treadmill or hold the phone and watch videos. The 3-5 minute rest between sets on machines, benches and free weight areas is now a video watching period. Sometimes people are just doing a low-weight easy load with the phone resting on their crotch.
Even if people aren't looking at the screen, a lot of the time they have earbuds in listening to something. Is it a war on silence and letting the mind wander?
Why can people not unplug? Surely by now it's proven that short form video content is stunting people's attention span, making it hard for them to read even a page of a book. How are these people going to competently hold down a job or pursue a hobby? What happens in 20 years when people have been conditioned like this for 2,3,4+ decades. Are we going to have a serious breakdown in mental health, early signs of dementia or Alzheimers?
Damn companies like Instagram for taking part in this, as Google, Meta, Reddit, Spotify and whoever else has. Their desire to occupy ever more of our attention and time is leading this charge.
Dead Comment