I've gotta share something -- so, I think I have a bit of an addiction with YouTube and I'd been thinking about how to shake it off. I didn't get round to it for whatever reason (blocks in modem settings maybe), but one day a month or so ago, if I went to YouTube, I saw this screen: https://i.imgur.com/OIL0jSE.png
Not extremely sure why this happens (I reckon it has to do with my use of adguard), but anyway I noticed I would just... move on, there were not icons to entice me that I could immediately click. And then sure enough, I found myself less hungry for it in the coming weeks.
This all happened by accident but boy o' boy, it works. I'm wasting less time on YouTube.
I similarly stopped going to reddit (the comments don't load on mobile, things become unclickable... I imagine this is a change recently made live to force users to login to increase engagement... ironic that it works out backwards to what their intent was).
Reflecting more on this on a weary weekend morning, about how many are unable to shake off these addictions, I am increasingly convinced of the poisonous effects of these distractions and cannot help but think that dire action is needed to curb these addictions with gov't mandated regulations.
I think price increase of tobacco products (with tax costs embedded in the price) were a great deterrent (better than the warning signs on the tobacco), so I suspect deterrents need be incredibly strong. Finding that balance and perspective, of weighing personal freedoms and recognizing the realities of addictions is going to be very hard, but I hope for the good of us we go somewhere with this and recognize the dangers for what they are.
I put a rule in my adblocker to block the reddit homepage but not individual threads (because that's often where google takes me).
Massively helpful, but also concerning how months later I still automatically try to go to the homepage every once in a while and run into my adblocker.
I highly recommend extension for mobile browsers "SocialFocus: Hide Distractions" to replace YouTube and Instagram apps. It lets you block features and UX improvements that keep you on the platform, like thumbnails, feed and reels/shorts.
I like to think to combat addictiveness of modern apps, you need to actively make it less convenient. It's hard to completely quit it, but if it's clunky to use you'll naturally use it less.
For YouTube, I pay for premium because I already block ads, and it feels proper to support creators that way. Then I use my content blocker to remove the sidebar and the end screen overlay, both of which are stuffed with distracting elements. I've bookmarked my subscriptions page, and if creators I like haven't uploaded anything I'm interested in watching, I just close the tab.
This took some effort, but it works wonders. And really, there's only a handful of YouTube channels I actually want to follow anyway. A lot of the rest of it seems to be low effort humor. Nothing wrong with that, it's just mostly not my cup of tea.
Patreon is probably better, IMHO. From what I understand, Youtube Red pays out your subscription money proportionally based on how long you watch their videos. To me, that just seems to encourage them to waste your time, rather than focus information density. With Patreon you decide who gets how much.
That's kinda what happened to me and Reddit. After all the drama with the API (which I never used, btw) I decided to delete my Reddit account of 10 years. Something I never thought I would do, as I spent a significant amount of my internet time on it.
I still go to Reddit from time to time just to browse, and still use it a lot to get viewpoints on specific topics (via Google site: ), but I never partake in discussion any longer. And I don't miss it at all. I still have the urge to punch someone to the face if they share factually wrong information, but I'm glad I have no account to write a comment any longer.
It's truly weird how fast important things can become unimportant.
No, it’s when you are signed out and have no watch history (I can’t remember if it also does it when signed in but with no watch/search history). Try an incognito window with no ad blocker. Trust me on this one. Read about it here: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/139222780?hl=en&ms...
Didn't realize it's a premium-specific thing. I have had watch history turned off for a long time now, and assumed that's all that one needed to do for dashboard to be empty.
I use an app called Jomo to block YouTube, as well as about 10 other distracting applications. It runs on every device I have and makes it very challenging to use the app when I feel the urge to. For a long time I convinced myself that I needed to keep some access to YouTube because there is obviously some meaningful content on the platform. After having it completely blocked for a few months I have come to realize that there is nothing on the platform that is absolutely essential for me to be able to view, and that the downside of getting distracted was not at all worth it.
If you turn off watch history, then that’s what the homepage has started to look like they don’t recommend anything that’s helped me shake it a bit; Works on Roku iOS and desktop.
A technique that helped me (after started meditation/setting my intentions/etc) is turning off the autocomplete for “top sites” and “browsing history.” It doesn’t block anything but adds just enough friction that I can remember my intentions and make a non-automatic decision.
OP's extension simply uses the `chrome.contentSettings.images` API, which you've always been able to set manually in the standard browser settings. It never disappeared (chrome://settings/content/images).
javascript:(function(){
var imgs = document.getElementsByTagName("img");
for (var i = 0; i < imgs.length; i++) {
imgs[i].style.visibility = "hidden";
}
var pictures = document.getElementsByTagName("picture");
for (var i = 0; i < pictures.length; i++) {
pictures[i].style.display = "none";
}
var elements = document.getElementsByTagName("*");
for (var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) {
elements[i].style.backgroundImage = "none";
}
}());
Talking about distraction, this is off topic, but I found Carmack's method very useful.
He used to go to a random motel, book for a few days, away from office, and work on a hard topic (usually graphics) non stop.
I took a poor man's option instead. Go to a chain coffee shop where you can buy a cup of coffee and sit in a corner undisturbed (human noises do not concern me). Bring a dumb phone just in case, turn off WiFi, and you are good to go.
I tried this a few weeks ago and went over one and a half chapters of "Crafting Interpreters" in 3 hours. I had to admit it was tough to go beyond that, but you might be able to do more with a healthier body. It was also from 10AM to 1PM so hunger had an impact as well.
Are there any browsers that are text only with nice formatting? Would be great to style the page just based of h1, h2 etc and make it beautiful to read from a typography formatting perspective.
Unfortunately, this extension decides to use Chrome-specific APIs rather than the standardized (and comprehensive) WebExtensions API. The good news is that people have written portable extensions with identical (or greater) functionality.
As others stated in the thread, ImageBlock and uBlock both have settings to toggle images. There's also ImageBlock X which provides a single button to toggle image blocking, like the extension in this thread.
you can use ublock origin, it has a setting for that. It's pretty much a necessity for me to disable JavaScript and images until i manually enable them. The modern internet is a mess
It's an easily accessible toggle. It would be a pain to be on a website where you need to see an image and have to go find the setting toggle it, view you content , then find and toggle it again.
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Not extremely sure why this happens (I reckon it has to do with my use of adguard), but anyway I noticed I would just... move on, there were not icons to entice me that I could immediately click. And then sure enough, I found myself less hungry for it in the coming weeks.
This all happened by accident but boy o' boy, it works. I'm wasting less time on YouTube.
I similarly stopped going to reddit (the comments don't load on mobile, things become unclickable... I imagine this is a change recently made live to force users to login to increase engagement... ironic that it works out backwards to what their intent was).
Reflecting more on this on a weary weekend morning, about how many are unable to shake off these addictions, I am increasingly convinced of the poisonous effects of these distractions and cannot help but think that dire action is needed to curb these addictions with gov't mandated regulations.
I think price increase of tobacco products (with tax costs embedded in the price) were a great deterrent (better than the warning signs on the tobacco), so I suspect deterrents need be incredibly strong. Finding that balance and perspective, of weighing personal freedoms and recognizing the realities of addictions is going to be very hard, but I hope for the good of us we go somewhere with this and recognize the dangers for what they are.