There's a subreddit dedicated to something like this: https://old.reddit.com/r/digitalminimalism/

We are also building a non-algorithmic private social network if anyone's interested: https://waitlist-tx.pages.dev

(Thanks to everyone who have already joined the waitlist and provided feedback)

The algorithm is far worse than people realize. It is a pan-platform behavioral nudge strategy to contain people to behave a specific way and box them in. It is an effective social credit score.

After watching how it behaves across X, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube - its clear the recommendations and nudges are coordinated. It is more than likely there are secret data sharing agreements to enable it.

Its insidious because it controls your reach and "score" across all platforms and then can "attack" you by attempting to surface content to push your buttons negatively across channels.

My opinion is this isnt anything to do with advertising, its a kind of government level shaping operation to try to create societal stability.

I personally have seen:

- The algorithm deliberately "neg" me multiple times, it knows what I don't like and shows me content to trigger keywords it knows will get my attention or deliberately cause insecurity ("old" "broke" "loser" "creep" "bigot" "fat"). I never interact with any content with these words, but it shows them - My conclusion is this is some sort of behavioral nudge. It happens across platforms.

- After I spoke out about Microsoft's approach to H1B, my content was permanently shadowbanned and limited on LinkedIn

- YouTubers continually censor themselves. Instead of "sex" they say "ess." Instead of "murder" they say "delete." They are consciously changing their speech. This is pure 1984.

Furthermore, I am convinced the algorithm also "shapes" the opinions of those around you in relation to you. Something much bigger than simply "being advertiser friendly" is going on, its a back door social credit score, emotional containment and psychological warfare structure.It will only get worse.

I used to be a hybrid user, mixing RSS feeds with scrolling a set of pages a few page downs. Now I only use RSS feeds. To keep it manageable, they can be configured to be updated once or twice a day and have set restrictions on sites or search terms. https://hnrss.org/frontpage works for me as a restriction for stories on this site, but it can also filter by points or other criteria as well.

There are many mobile readers, for desktop I like QuiteRss & RSS Guard.

> It's also not possible to fully check out from social media.

Why not?

Perfect length post, perfect CSS, perfect font family.

For whatever it's worth after years of being in a space that felt very similar to this my solution was... Having a kid and / or going to Recurse Center and / or moving to a non-LA/NY city.

I don't know if any of it's causal but I have finally crossed over some kind of line. I read books again (like I ever really did), I don't think about social media, I don't have that toxic icky parasocial relationship feeling, I don't even know how to use social media UIs when I see them anymore.

Its fantastic, I'm sure writing / reading this kind of post is a good first step so bravo and welcome (back) to the resistance.

Wait does HN count as social media? Does linkedin? Does Slack ir Teams at work? Does SMS??

In the spirit of tech to enable more offline connection, this is why we built Soonly: https://soonly.com

Hope it helps in remembering to call friend and family!

At some point this leads to "abolish the DMCA".

Otherwise everybody figuring out how to disable the infinite scrolling or control your own subscriptions gets punished by the dark-pattern-pushers through the legal system.

Unscramble ROT-13 in order to stop a full-page autoplaying video? Federal felony.

This is cringe

I’ve been doing this for a while, and I love it. On my regular walks, I don’t even carry the phone; the watch[1] is enough for the list of whitelisted people to call me if needed (all else are DND by default).

Another thing I’ve noticed about people, even when we’re talking in person. Whenever a topic arises that requires confirmation or something similar, they pull out their phone and start “googling.”

I’m OK with saying, “I don’t know.” I’ve stopped defending my opinions and let the conversation flow, and I listen. This is very liberating.

Of course, stopped non-critical notifications[2] a decade ago, and there are no social Apps on my phone.[3] I’m lucky to be able to stop a habit cold turkey. Of course, a little help from a blocker is beneficial at the beginning, but I can quickly get used to not using/visiting apps and websites.

I’ve forgotten who said it but here is how it goes, “Build up a network of people, tools, utilities, system to stay away from Algorithm.”

1. https://brajeshwar.com/2024/watch-tiny-handy-computer/

2. https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activi...

3. https://brajeshwar.com/2024/phone/

I don't understand what forces people to stay at all on social media apart from addiction itself. I quit it 8 years ago and never looked back, simply because after Trump came to power it has become unbearable. Remembering, it was still just fine until 2013 or so. It's Europe-specific but probably Maidan 2.0 and Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was the trigger that permanently broke the social media into two antagonistic echo-chambers, both eventually filled with morons alone because all normal people left. For US, it definitely was Trump's campaign in 2015 and sudden realisation that "some real people they knew and respected can be THAT crazy".

News? You can still subscribe to a newspaper or a magazine like it's 1985, they aren't worse at all than they used to be. Dating? Tinder or local country-specific dating sites work better, and always did. Professional contacts? They never came from social media.

Here's what worked for me:

1) Deleted all social media accounts, deleted apps and logged out of anything that has what you might call a newsfeed (including RSS).

1.1) Switched all important notifications to email.

2) Uninstalled the web browser from my phone.

3) Stopped reading the news and blocked my most frequently visited sites using parental controls. Instead of reading the news I just ask an AI (Grok is good at this) to summarize the latest headlines and I can ask any many follow up questions as I’d like.

The unifying theme is letting go of the idea of “missing something”. You don’t need to keep up with your friends online, you don’t need to keep up with the news, you don’t need to scroll to find inspiration. You can find all those things offline.

But the hard part is knowing how much things I've found online have contributed meaningfully to my life. For that reason alone I'm considering this an experiment. What will it be like to do this for 6 months, or a year? What will I want to go back to? What won't I miss?

4 weeks in and my daily lived experience is noticeably different. I feel different when I'm walking to the coffee shop, or working, or driving the kids to school.

Can anyone point me to bookmarklets / extensions to fight UI dark patterns like preventing infinite scroll, hiding reactions or batching notifications?

I am somewhat in the same boat as this. At least i try to be super intentional about it. I replaced my iphone with the Hibreak bigme pro which is an e-ink phone.

Its not perfect. Ironically I still can doomscroll on it, but it is much bettter.

For youtube if you disable reccomendations, shorts eventually the feed disappears. I also use an extension called youtube block feed, which only allows me to see my subscriptions.

Its an imperfect firewall, but I am happy with it so far.

I personally think one or more of the following should just be made illegal:

- Infinite scrolling

- Use of recommendation algorithms

- When feeding a recommendation algorithm, taking into account how long a user viewed a certain post without otherwise reacting to it (also disregarding users starting to type a reply that they end up discarding, etc.)

Cutting yourself off from tech is part of the strategy, but simply developing a deep interest in something non-digital works great, and compliments the blockers and filters. Woodworking with hand tools; bookbinding; any creative pursuit without a digital aspect. Many, many fields have incredibly deep wells of knowledge and skill to explore.

One example: I built a workbench for myself out of 4"x6" fir beams (quite a cheap solution). I had to glue several together for the work surface, which required ensuring that beams had perfectly flat surfaces to come together under pressure. I broke my planer on the first one. I had to use my hand planes, so first I had to get good at planing, learning to sharpen them properly, tune them for fast work, and then start planing in earnest. I used winding sticks to check the parallel-ness of the surface. Then I set to work planing the perpendicular surface, constantly checking with a t-square. Many evenings, lots of sweat, lots of learning what works and doesn't, and then just suffering a lot of repetitive doing and measuring and doing and checking.

Google helped a lot at finding various messageboards and articles that hinted at how to do it, but nothing replaced the experience of doing it, nor offered the knowledge and skill gained.

I gave a very similar talk back in 2018: "Getting un-hooked from technology: using tech to fight tech".

I wrote it up here:

https://uxdesign.cc/getting-unhooked-from-technology-86ca8be...

I still use a YouTube Unhook extension (a better one than the one I wrote, though with nearly the same name, hilariously), though I'm not as good at some of the other practices I used to use. My attempts to avoid tech's magnetism is confounded by my current role in developer relations, where social media is a necessary part of the job. But maybe my next role will be one where I can detach from it a bit more.