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Posted by madinmo 7 days ago

Show HN: Scream to Unlock – Blocks social media until you scream “I'm a loser”

Hi all,

I kept wasting time on social media, even though I’d promised myself I’d stay focused. Regular site blockers didn’t help.

I needed something that felt annoying enough to break the habit. That’s how the idea came up: make the blocker ask me to say something embarrassing out loud before it lets me back in. If I actually have to yell “I’m a loser” into my mic. Even better - the louder I screamed, the more time I’d get.

So I put together Scream to Unlock. It’s silly, but so far it’s done its job. My social feeds stay locked unless I really want them.

Extension link - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/scream-to-unlock-ye...

Its open source and transparent - https://github.com/Pankajtanwarbanna/scream-to-unlock. No data collection or tracking, Audio processing happens locally in your browser. No recordings saved or transmitted.

242 points | 129 commentspage 3
snickerdoodle12 7 days ago|
Can't you just uninstall the extension?
yellow_lead 7 days ago||
In order to uninstall it, you must scream "I'm a huge loser." (Just kidding)
throwawayq3423 7 days ago||
You have to sit through a 10 hour YouTube video of Beck's Loser.
ndarray 7 days ago||
That's the problem with habit blocking extensions. A theoretical workaround would be to create two extensions - only make them work when both are installed and when one notices that the other got disabled, it does something like deleting your login credentials, or some form of reversible but very annoying punishment.
netsharc 7 days ago||
There's such a URL-blocking extension, that cam be programmed to block the chrome://extensions URL...
deadbabe 7 days ago||
It should be “I’m addicted” instead of “I’m a loser”. Forcing someone to call themselves a loser over and over eventually weighs heavy on the soul, how would you feel if a user did it so many times one day they just decided to kill themselves? The blood is on your hands.
spajus 6 days ago||
That's brilliant! Please make a Firefox extension too!
akoboldfrying 7 days ago||
That volume bar could be labeled "Humiliation:"
ssalka 7 days ago||
As much as I hate to say it, forcing users to look at ads probably does a decent job of limiting social media time, at least it would for me.

On TikTok you can just swipe through ads when they come up, so lots of people now have built-in muscle memory to auto-swipe every 4th or 5th video, or if they see "Sponsored" in the lower left. If I was instead forced to watch every one of those through to completion, I'd spend a lot less time on there.

wordpad 7 days ago||
So you think screaming 'im a loser' 10 times an hour is going to be good for mental health?
serial_dev 7 days ago|
You could also just stop visiting those sites that you previously decided were bad for you... Then you don't need to scream "I'm a loser".
aaroninsf 7 days ago||
Does it work with LinkedIn
marginalia_nu 7 days ago||
At last verification can technology is real. YC better swoop this one up. It's going places.
mutlusakar 7 days ago||
Haha, definetely needed.
Tech_005 6 days ago|
Great work
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