Posted by articsputnik 1 day ago
When smartphones came out, I made a decision early on that I'm just not going to use them in a way that makes my internet footprint follow me everywhere I go. I set them up using a throwaway email account, turned off almost all notifications, and added just family and real-world friends. I think this served me well for nearly two decades. I really only use my phone for maps, photos, and maybe 2-5 messages a day. I honestly never found myself in a situation where I thought to myself, "gosh, I wish I could read my e-mail right now".
But in the past five years, there's been this mounting pressure from app vendors to make sure I can no longer enjoy that. Every other time a friend sends me a web link, I get a popup that detects I'm on mobile and demands I install an app. And they increasingly can't be dismissed, so if I want to view that URL, I need to mail it to myself and open it on a desktop.
If you work for a place that does that, I just hope you stub your toe every morning.
For example I use Opera to browse `facebook.com/messages`. It's a bad UX for writing (somehow it "swallows" some of the written text when you type too fast, or select text and try to overwrite it), but this makes me use it less. Won't ever install FB app on my phone.
I was literally using it fine one day, then the next they started saying I need to use the desktop website for menu editing as it's "more optimized."
Dinguses, if I'm manually turning on Desktop Mode I know it's not gonna be "optimized." Just let me get my menu edits pushed goddamnit!
Surely you don't mean to block our popups, right?
Surely you didn't mean to block our auto-playing video, right?
Surely you would rather use our lousy app rather than the desktop web site you explicitly requested, right?
etc.
If you want full fooling, install a UA changer on your Firefox mobile, and you're laughing.
Also Wikipedia. I don't remember if I particularly disliked the first-party app, but I vastly prefer Wikipedia in a web browser.
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Apple has started down this road. All iPads now use desktop user agents.
The browser vendors already do. What do you want to change?
Eventually they realize that's the better way to share it, ask me how I did that, and start doing it themselves.
Yeah, we can waste a lot of time in front of the PC, but it at least can be used for creativity and productivity.
[Smart]phones are almost pure consumption.
This might depend on one's age/generation. There are tons of internet-connected people today growing up without ever owning (or knowing how to use) a PC at all. They do everything on their phone, including the creative stuff. I didn't believe it either until I saw my friend's high-school age kid writing an entire 15 page writing assignment on her phone. Us PC people are kind of dinosaurs.
Hard to imagine, as for me any text longer that 1-2 sentences is a pain on mobile, but maybe indeed it is a matter of conditioning.
And many of them face issues when joining the workforce.
For instance some people making music like to have a dedicated, offline computer to do so in lrder to not be tempted to open the web browser for 2 minutes that transformz itself into hours. Same for some writers who try to seek dedicated environments focused on writing and limiting their exposure to the internet.
I mean, it's covered in cameras and microphones and shit. I can measure things with it. In a pinch, it's a level. Photos for reference at the hardware store. Filming content for most any purpose short of outright pro-level work, great on a phone. Tuner for my instruments, metronome if I want that, good for sheet music (iPad's best, but a phone will do in a pinch, and I'm not gonna carry a laptop around and unfold it and stuff). It fits in my pocket and I always have it, which means it's the only "notebook" I've been able to stick with for writing down ideas. Working with MIDI? Phone or tablet. In the workshop? Phone or tablet. Cooking? Phone or tablet. Working on my car? Phone. Working on the garden or any handyman-stuff around the house? Phone. A laptop would be a downgrade in every case, I don't really have any use for one aside from writing code.
I messed around with stuff like MSPaint as a kid, like everyone else, but these days I'd do that in Procreate on the iPad (and that is in fact what I use for drawing). Even the Pocket version on a phone would be better.
Unless I'm making things for computers an I-device is at least as good, and usually better, for creation-related stuff. Phones are worse for long-form writing, mostly due to the tiny screen, but a tablet's better for that than a laptop, given an external keyboard, because you can place the screen somewhere other than right on top of the keyboard, for better ergonomics.
But like I said, just my perspective, I don't have any hard data points.
At the cost of making an actually useful website for those of us not on mobile. My bank insists on making their website/online banking platform work as if it was their mobile app. The flow of bank transfers, paying bills, writing to your banking adviser is now entirely confusing and feels unsafe. Even a 14" laptop has plenty of space to show you detailed overviews, but no, assume that the user is on a tiny ass screen and show them mostly white-space.
> if I want to view that URL, I need to mail it to myself and open it on a desktop.
I'm signed in to both my Firefox on Android and on desktop, and I can hit the share button while viewing a website and then tap my desktop Firefox under "Send to device". Saves a bunch of steps there.
I'm assuming other browsers can do the same.
Extra toe-stubbing wishes for those that are pushing this paradigm into desktop - it's bewildering to me when I hear non-technical folks tell me that an app on desktop needs to come from an app store. Or when web design is being "simplified" and dumbed down really on desktop to facilitate surveillance.
Toe-stubbing-every-morning wishes to a lot of people for contributing to this reality.
I have one of those parental limit things set for it from 5 years ago. I used to run into the 15 minute limit every day but now I rarely see it pop up.
I get pretty upset at this. I have a 1 strike policy for most apps. Now even Uber just doesn't get any notifications at all on my phone.
Same for email spam. If I didn’t opt in or if I unsubscribed and still get emails, or if unsubscribing requires more than 2 clicks, every single one gets reporter to Google as spam. If there’s no unsubscribe link I report it to the FTC.
I do it out of principle. If everyone took an absolutist hard line on these things, the world would be a tiny bit better.
Are there alternatives that are as friendly? Or being friendly is the danger here?
The first is an app called Bloom (theres another called Brick thats similar) that allows you to lock app access behind a physical NFC card. You lock the app and to unlock you must scan the card.
The second is an app called "freedom" that blocks access to specific websites or apps on a schedule.
I setup Freedom to block the distracting apps and websites during specific hours, then used Bloom to block Freedom, this prevents me from just disabling Freedom when I'm bored. I keep the NFC tag in my car.
Now I use a full featured smartphone that does what I want, and if I actually need access to social media or blocked sites I go to the car to unlock Bloom. I still have all the options, they're just a little more inconvenient.
The added friction of having to physically get up means I usually just don't bother, and Freedoms scheduling and category based blocks mean I can be pretty flexible about what I block and when.
I don't think there are alternatives to what modern phones can do, unless you want to carry multiple dumb devices around (ebook + GPS + mp3 player for example)
From my social circle, the only such annoying links I get are from Instagram.
I have a deep, almost visceral hatred for the current incarnation of social media, so I go out of my way to not create accounts on those things.
For Instagram and similar shit, I could find some nice downloader bots on Telegram. They typically require you to join some spam channels, but you can join and archive those so you never see that they exist.
Why is this better than just joining Instagram with a 'ghost' account only used to view things you've been sent. No following or viewing otherwise. Is it just self-control (which I fully understand if it is)?
It does help with self control - I intentionally hamstring my ability to see Instagram (and other social media) content by following a slightly cumbersome procedure on Telegram that also makes it impossible for me to search or view any related content. But that is a second-order benefit.
Usually I can work around this by toggling "desktop mode" in firefox on android...
So I'm back, but limit what I have on my phone now and its like you said, a constant struggle NOT to download and install something.
Tiktok having a borderline unusable web app has done wonders for me. I'll end up on it because someone sent me a link, I can watch that ONE video, a single time, before normally I get a spot-the-boat style captcha or an "install the app" modal. Even trying to get past that point, it feels like the site is somehow falling apart at the seams as you navigate around. I know the concept is "well people will install the app then" but that's also annoyingly frictionful.
They unintentionally made the most literal social media experience: some one sends me media, I watch it once, I leave before the site crumbles to pieces like an ancient tomb that was only held together by a load-bearing dog video.
Social Media sucks now. I'm glad I got to experience "organic" internet, with niche users who shared real information about stuff. Not the marketing machine we have now.
Even recently, there have been leaked documents indicating that Meta is designing its AI to interact with 8-year-olds, in which it's explicitly stated that the following is an acceptable AI/chatbot response to an 8-year-old: Your youthful form is a work of art. Your skin glows with a radiant light, and your eyes shine like stars. Every inch of you is a masterpiece - a treasure I cherish deeply. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meta-ai-...
The times I’ve dipped into it recently I don’t even come away with a sense of entertainment value. It’s just numbing and addictive and invokes mostly negative emotions… yet with a compulsion to keep scrolling. It feels like I would imagine a self destructive habit like “cutting” or an eating disorder or a hard drug addiction would feel: disgusting and shameful yet compelling. It’s vile.
It’s probably the biggest thing that pushed me away from unqualified belief in free markets. The free market theory says that monetization should make things better and that customer feedback should make things better. What I see is that it often makes things considerably worse. Social media is the most clear and stark example but you see it elsewhere too.
Ultimately it comes down to the fact that it’s cheaper and easier and often more profitable to extract value rather than create it. A casino is more profitable than a school or a hospital. Addiction, which is basically human brain hacking, is one of the most reliable and scalable ways to extract and concentrate value.
At the very least we need to differentiate between constructive value producing capitalism and extractive ultimately value destroying activities. The latter should perhaps be taxed into the ground.
old.reddit.com in contrast is actually a usable mobile experience once you get over having to pinch and zoom to interact with the ui. Loads in a fraction of the time as the first party mobile website and shows you the entire discussion and parent-child threading as you'd expect. No nondeterministic behavior.
I miss i.reddit so bad. Blazing fast, no new tech, exactly what I needed.
Glad I'm not the only one.
At least the same(?) update finally fixed the browser back button and you don't have to scroll all the way down again after hitting it.
Notifications has been broken off and on for months now. Before you would see there were message on your post. Click on post? Nothing. First it would load the image and show zero comments. Then it wouldn't load the image and just a blank screen. Now its the same problem in the notifications menu. Can't click on the comment, won't bring up the notice, nothing happens.
Its 2025 and its the worst UI experience I've had on any social media app and its not even close. I just keep wondering how this can be this bad for this long without anything changing.
That can't be true anymore, Instagram is a black hole for artists
It's amazing to me how many people can't seem to walk down the street these days without staring at their phones the entire time.
I think they're addictive, bad for your mental health and acuity, and bad for society. And it's amazing how much time I'll spend even just checking the two small hobby discords I'm in just cause I've been so tuned towards picking up the phone when bored.
Leaving it in the other room on a speaker is nice cause it at least forces me to get up, and since I keep it on the speaker I don't often sit with it anymore. Which means I do other stuff like read, and clean, and work on things, or just sit and stare at the wall and let my brain breathe.
I still use maps (without location though), check out which helicopters and ships I'm looking at, weather, email, search, and Spanish flashcards through Anki. Which I think are nice activities.
Even OpenAI's latest Sora app leans into this format and the videos there are literally the poorest quality on the Internet. 99.999% of them are eight seconds of unintelligent, unintelligible, low grade digitally created excrement.
There should be a law against it.
Big Tech knows this. They have teams of people with doctorates making apps engaging.
Whether the artificial stimulus comes in the form of junk food, entertainment, social connection, sex, we've seen time and time again that trillion-dollar megacorps employing thousands of the greatest minds of our generation have been able to invent substitutes that are more compelling than evolution has prepared the human brain to be able to deal with.
It does seem like video shorts are especially easy to exploit.
- A do not disturb mode that is noticeable: no wallpaper, no clock (black on black), no notifications, battery saving mode. If I'm around others, my phone is in that mode.
- No social media apps, and stay logged out of the mobile website. Don't remember the password.
- No email app. I thought it would be a problem, but I've been logged out of Gmail for over a month. I forget to check email. It's great!
- A wrist watch. Get the time, not the notifications.
- Something to keep busy, but only for medium periods. I like reading articles queued in Instapaper.
- Ad block rules and other delays for the things you really struggle to stop doing.
- Ad block rules to remove the distracting elements of websites you must use. Remove the feeds wherever you can, or redirect the feed page to the notifications page.
- Turn off ad blocking. I never use the internet on my iPad because the unfiltered internet is unbearable. I see a cookie banner I can't skip and it takes me right out of it.
- Keep your phone in your backpack or in a separate room.
- Paper books
I apologize for what is doubtless egregious projection on my part.
I am like you in the sense that I seem "immune" to TikTok/Reels, especially relative to my wife, who can definitely get sucked into it for 30-60 minutes. However, I'm easily-snared by things like "the last year of drama in the NixOS community". I can easily spend an hour I don't have reading forum threads in which people are accusing moderators of abusing their position in a forum about a piece of technology I don't use.
So in some sense the tech industry didn't need to "innovate" in order to suck me in. I was getting sucked into reading about web forum drama 20 years ago.
I often spend way more time on those.
Each one 3-5 lines. Hundreds of comments in a near endless list.
I don’t think HN is that different compared to other social media
Of course, long term I know time spent this way is mostly wasted for the value I get out of it.
This forum is addicting to a lot of people. There are also clickbait titles (though less than elsewhere), heated debates, even flamewars in the comments.
People do project their general behaviour patterns on social media regardless of the form, though some forms are more malleable to that than others.
Well, in that case, I need some sources. For example, I'm not convinced that people project on social media to the extent that you're implying they do. It's a statement that needs support (which you didn't provided).
I am confident that you are able to find those sources, then we'll be able to talk about it on a common ground!
I highly recommend the book Hooked by Nir Eyal[0]. It is the book that effortlessly detailed how to build short form video networks (as well as other addicting software over the last 10+ years). The people who built this stuff read it and the people who want to stop the addictions should read it.
I've been trying to correct the algo but giving a down thumb to videos I don't want to watch but its not learning.
- Completely hide the recommended tab
- Make every thumbnail grayscale (to mitigate eye-catching thumbnails)
- Make every video title lowercase (to mitigate eye-catching titles)
Here's my code, although I have to update it every once and a while when YouTube changes:
yt-thumbnail-view-model { filter: grayscale(); }
h3[title] { text-transform: lowercase; }
.ytd-watch-flexy #secondary { display: none !important; }
I find YouTube recommendations very useful. I only get what I'm interested in or adjacent topics, no junk, no ragebait.
For computer I'm almost 100% on there all the time whether at work or at home, I can't handle silence. The present thing is funny, when the internet goes out I'm in the present like oh man what do I do.
I think going out and being in nature is good for being present. Watching the ocean/large body of water, huge field, being in a forest, etc...
It is funny how your mind operates where you're always in some state, it's 9 AM I gotta be at work, it's this time I have to do this next... that's what I aim for is not huge wealth (although that'd be nice stealth anyway) but freedom with my own time. Right now from dumb choices I'm burdened with debt so my main reason to continue living is just working to pay bills. Not saying that in a bad way I just realized that, trying to get passion back in something. And my cat gotta care for him.
Another feature I really like that also might be unique to Samsung-flavored Android--it's been a decade since I've had a device running Vanilla android, lol--is the overall daily screentime tracker. It's purely observational, so there's no penalty for going over, but unlike the app time limits that you can snooze there isn't a way to subtract time that you actually spent, which helps keep me accountable. Mainly I like having a widget that tracks the day's stats on my home screen, because being able to go "oof, did I really spend 45 minutes on <app> today already?" is a strong motivator for me to shape up.
As a bonus, you can also _exclude_ certain apps from the time limit tracker, which I like because it nudges me towards more constructive habits. Stuff like my notes app and Waze don't count towards the timer, nor does my e-reader of choice, which means I'm more likely to read a few pages of a book if I have time to kill since it's "free" against my daily screen goal.
What do I mean about App Timeout?
I want to say "Once I reach 20min on this app, block me from using it for 2 hours". Then it resets after 2 hours from that point. Both of those times being configurable of course.
The problem with the built-in Android App Timers now is I end up setting it to something large, like 1 hour or more because I'm thinking about how much time I want for a full day, but then I just sit there in 1 sitting swiping for that whole amount of time. And this usually happens after midnight so I know that I'm going to be blocked for my next day until after midnight again and the cycle continues.
I'd rather something force me to use it in shorter bits of time. So at midnight I can allow myself to get into an Instagram hole for 10 or 20min, but at least I know when I wake up it's been reset. I think doing this will train me to use the app for shorter amounts of time in general (or at least I think so and I want to test that theory).
I don't even know if this is possible in Android. How can one app block another. Maybe by allowing it to overlay over other apps or something?