The phone vendors should support not telling the websites you're on mobile. I know they can guess based on resolution and such, but there should be a setting to lie and simulate a desktop. You can't rely on every single website not being run by jerks, but you should be able to buy a phone from a company that cares more about its customers than random jerks.

> I always felt that I'm spending too much time in front of a computer, but it was at least somewhat meaningful because I had opportunities to create: write code, blog, and so on.

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.

I have been trying to reduce my usage. I still cannot find a way to resist pulling out the phone to: - perform a quick search (browser or ai) - listen to podcasts - listen to audiobook - check the data of the last running or gym session.

Are there alternatives that are as friendly? Or being friendly is the danger here?

Not much to add other than I switched to this exact model in 2020 and have had the same pleasant outcome for 5 years now. I’m much more productive and can execute deep work for weeks on end. I remained in the zone on my current project for 4 consecutive weeks. I attribute this to having no distractions. The outcomes produced from remaining in the zone for so long are objectively measurable and high level.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

Usually I can work around this by toggling "desktop mode" in firefox on android...

I like Reddit, I pay for an app on iOS to have a reasonable experience. The mobile web experience otherwise is terrible.

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.

Instagram has had broken web notifications for a month or so. You click the notifications and nothing happens; the post doesn’t open. The first days I thought someone had messed something up but after a month I’m not so sure. And there obviously is no way of telling them (and have a human read the report).

Instagram works just a bit better but roughly the same. And that helps keep me off.

This is exactly my experience as well, and partially why I only use tiktok and facebook from a browser.

I am putting the load bearing dog video on the example shelf right next to the load bearing (disproven) TF2_coconut.jpg

It's a slot machine. Everything social media and e-commerce is a slot machine. Each scroll is a pull of the arm, hoping that the algorithmic gods will smile kindly on you and give you some sweet content or deal.

Read "Supernormal Stimuli" by Barret [1] for an exploration of the psychology of this "mesmerizing" effect - at least in general, if not specifically in short-form video and infinite scroll.

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.

[1]: https://www.harvard.com/book/9780393068481

dopamine reward feedback loop. Video scrolling is an insidious form of it because the feedback time is so short that you end up hooked on it for hours, feeling bad afterwards; seriously potent stuff.

We need an infinite video scroll tax

You're on HN, though. In some sense, reeling in people like you has been a solved problem for decades, since forums were invented.

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 find it incredibly more distracting when someone nearby or in the household is watching tiktok or similar within earshot than if they are watching a longer-form video or television program. Seemingly because I can "tune-out" the long form program but every time the video switches with tiktok, my brain "activates" and gets distracted to check if it needs to pay attention or not.

You just prefer text as your dopamine injection medium rather than video.

for me its because i browse hn and the overwhelming cynicism "tastes" much worse than the entertainment provided

The trick of short form video isn’t the content itself but the channel flipping, hunting hook action. Changing the channel is fun when you actually land on something-good in the sea of garbage. And sometimes that something-good is a an endless handkerchief. One that you can keep pulling out good somethings with. Now you feel extra special like you’ve found something novel as you’ve completed the hunt and are satiated. And you keep that endless handkerchief you found. Soon you will have found many novel endless handkerchiefs. You mount them on your profile page like boar heads on a hunters wall. This pride is tied to happiness and you know how to hunt for more.

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.

[0] https://search.worldcat.org/title/881418283

You don’t enjoy the short-form comments on this forum?

I find the shorts on youtube super addictive, but the algo is too repetitive. I once watched a drumming video to then end, not I get heaps of drumming. It's cool, but I'm just not that into drumming.

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.

If you disable History, it automatically removes Recommendations across your devices.

because it flips the content consumption model on its head. instead of "i want to watch a video about X" -> search for video about X -> watch, the loop becomes open youtube -> see interesting recommendation -> watch. you are no longer using youtube as a tool to consume videos, it is using you, increasing time spent on the site/app and therefore generating more ad revenue.

> It is literally the only recommendation engine that works.

do you really find this to be true? i find it’s incredibly wrong like 90+ percent of the time. i am not close to interested in most of its recs. i’ve tried for years to tell it what i like and its just wrong so often. i’ve even tried entirely new accounts.

i mean, sure every once in a while im like “whoa, that’s a great rec” but thats pretty rare. it’s definitely better than spotify and the like etc… they’re wrong almost always, but a miss rate of more than 9 times out of 10 is so bad.

recommendations from people is so much more accurate.

when i get a music recommendation from someone who works at the record store the positive hit rate is so high, same with movies and music recommendations from friends, etc… if it works for you that’s great but my feed is overflowing with video after video where i’m like “why in tf do you think i’d want to watch this?”

I believe the point he was trying to make is that he doesn't want to be recommended things he wants to watch. He wants his YouTube use to be be focused and intentional, and not let himself get sucked into an endless stream of engaging content.

Spend every day for a year watching the highest quality YouTube content and it won't get you as far as spending every day for a month directly engaging with content yourself, or some other use of the same time. It's fun, engaging, and easy enough to turn into something you can argue "but it's not slop, it's <x>!". At the end of the day though... it's still 95% entertainment.

I spend a lot of time "protecting" my YouTube recommendations (clearing garbage videos from my history, blocking certain channels, opening links from friends separately) but I still try to immensely limit the amount of time I spend on the site, and the recommendations go directly against that.

I concur. The YouTube algorithm actually appears to work, and doesn't feel like it's trying to steer me away from my interests. My only issue is that it will suggest "current event" type content that is years old sometimes.

Ditto! I try reading some silly things, play some old silly games (e.g. Warcraft, not arcades), or just watch some YouTube. But I don’t watch YouTube in my daily life, so I’m not addicted to it.

For me reading books works well when I’m sick in bed. You probably need to force yourself for a while but it’s worth it. That being said i was a voracious reader in the past so it might not tickle your toes in the same way

I wanted to develop an alternative to App Timer on Android. I need something more like "App Timeouts". App Timers are per 24 hours, so as soon I hit X amount of minutes, I'm blocked from using it until midnight and then it resets.

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?

+1 to focus mode; at least on Samsung-flavored Android, you can set a recurring schedule so that focus mode (or any mode) automatically kicks in on certain days/times, which I use to block notifications from and access to certain apps during peak working hours.

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.

same for iphone, i always have it in a focus mode that hides almost all notifications. so much better

I'm the only middle-aged person I know that doesn't use/carry a smart phone (I also don't use email).

>One of my relatives attempted suicide when she was very young, you can guess why.

This misses that even more young ladies are attempting, today, albeit for entirely different reasons. I'll let you guess why.

I had a side gig that involved me driving every day for at least one hour, but usually more. I listened to all kinds of podcasts and audio books. But at some point, I realised I cannot process that much of information. That’s how I stopped, perhaps we humans aren’t designed to process that much daily.

Get a secondary "podcast only" phone

I've debated getting that phone heavily. My reasons not to:

1. it's gotta be bad for the eyes on a screen that small 2. the Pixel camera!

Huh I came across some very similar looking phones on a similar looking website just yesterday.

I guess these phones are rebadged?

Just curious, do you have to do anything to get Reddit fitting on that screen properly? I almost imagine it would need a reader mode kinda thing

Get a Kindle and read good books while commuting. You shouldn't feel bad for not looking out the window.

I researched this phone, and while being cool (I like the idea), it’s not practical for me to hunt it, it’s not trivial to buy in my area. However, I have a similar idea to others: an old tiny iPhone (4S or 5S if you can survive with the obsolete system, FaceTime and iMessage works there last time I checked, a year or two ago), or SE 1st gen (I use it as my second phone to my 12 mini), which is perfectly usable (Safari is stuck at whatever version it has from iOS 15). It’s not very practical everyday phone, but it works for most tasks, including navigation with maps. So if you’re hunting a small distraction free phone, an obsolete iPhone is a pretty decent thing to buy, and is usually cheap. I bet getting a new battery might be more expensive than the phone itself, unless you’re up to the task (it’s not complicated, if you have the basic instruments). I know it’s the opposite of an open phone with an easily swappable battery, but it’s a decent step into the direction. And I found an old iPhone being very usable for very basic tasks. If I had a Pro Max, I’d surely wasted much more time on it. I know because I had one before.

I second this. I had a tendency to get stuck watching YouTube videos before I hid all algorithmic recommendations and the Home page with Unhook. I can finally use YouTube without getting distracted, and there's no way I'm going back.

I just wish I had an addon like this for, well, everything. The browser is such a great platform because you can have this much control over your experience--no such luck with mobile apps.

Wonderful extension, but at times my dopamine-addicted brain keeps disabling it on an impulse instead of doing something creative or productive on my PC. I looked into making it impossible to disable this extension through registry editor, but so far none of the settings in Windows seem to stick.

My high schooler is in theatre and they post critical updates via Instagram. It drives me crazy.

And don't get me started on all the custom apps cluttering my phone that these schools and sports leagues get sold on for sharing flyers and other info (Parent Square, Peach Jar, Playmetrics, Mojo, etc.) I guess it's a feature that most of those apps are not well designed and they don't suck you into addictive engagement loops like the big social media platforms.

I don't have kids, so I can't 100% relate, but have you dug into the notifications settings on your phone? They're extremely flexible. I've set mine up so any non-chat notification gets batched into a group that shows at 5 AM and 5 PM. This lets me check on whatever happened the previous evening while I'm having breakfast, and whatever happened during the day after I get home from work. Once I've flipped through all the notifications and done whatever other time wasting things, it goes back in my pocket and largely does not disturb me for another 12 hours.

Maybe something like that could work. If you find there are notifications that are disturbing you, but they really could have waited until the evening, toss 'em in the batch bucket. Eventually you'll tune out all the low-importance stuff and get your life back. Or find some other cadence that works for you. It takes some effort to tune these systems, but I think it's worth it.

I was super-disappointed, attending my recent state townhall meeting, that the only way to participate was scanning a QR code to fill out a survey. After asking for a paper copy (which was never produced), I decided to participate in my own manner:

I stood up and heckled my clown state representatives, for almost an hour, providing audience-appreciated commentary to what I perceive as our failed political system (US bipartisan).

To their toothless grocery sales tax reduction legislation (which'll never pass), I suggested my fellow constituents just shop across the state line, in one of the many nearby grocery stores — just STOP giving our state this money, then maybe they'll consider legislative changes.

Perhaps this fell upon deaf ears, but I wasn't the only audience member frustrated with our legislators' back-patting/inaction. I will vote/shop with my money, elsewhere. I wrote my state officials a letter afterwards, offering common-sense suggestions — hoping this geriatric remembers my participation (he turns 80 soon... just retire already, Congressman!).

I followed the instructions here to cripple my phone using Apple Configurator: https://stopa.io/post/297

Now the browser doesn't work and I can't install new apps. I also turn on "Do Not Disturb" almost all the time, which allows through notifications from exactly 3 people.

Nah that's what FRS, GMRS, APRS and LoRA / Meshtastic are for.

Come on, raise your kids right.

Is this out of convenience or necessity? Do you have redundant devices so that if your primary glass slab is unusable for some reason, you're still able to make it home at the end of the day? Are you in some new role and lifestyle that wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago, or suffering from a disability for which the cell phone is your only means of achieving independence?

The human race has survived for about 2 million years without a 24/7 tether. Our environment is the safest and most human-shaped it's ever been, you don't need to have constant anxiety about true emergency situations resolved by cell phone connections, those are unimaginably rare.

It's totally feasible to go without a cell phone once in a while, just try it! Check your emails once a day, 5 days a week. Set up an auto-responder saying you're unavailable and can check messages at [time]. Navigate with your memory and the many signs that are posted, or with a paper map for aid. Write down things you need to remember with a pen and a piece of paper. Leave the phone behind and just go for a walk in a park with nothing but your surroundings and your thoughts. The world will keep turning for 30 minutes regardless of whether you're keeping tabs on it through the phone.

I use SocialFocus for iOS/macOS to block recommended videos, etc. It’s incredibly useful.

“You must figure out why you smoke in the first place, before you will be able to quit” isn’t a universal truth.

For perspective, I pay USD $17.33 a month for unlimited 5G data - in the UK, in GBP, so really £13. Low quality home broadband costs more than that, and is slower, but with better latency.

I've tested the unlimited claim, and they really do let you download terabytes. All my local LLMs are downloaded over mobile data.

So yes, in my experience it's inverted over here. Mobile bandwidth is the cheapest if you can get a good deal and you're in an uncongested area with a good signal. Unfortunately that's not a combination I've found to be reliable anywhere I go, especially over the last 6 months. But the price is good!

How expensive? In spain you can get 20~30GB for 10 euros, which is more than enough for most people.