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- Hacker News
- I've managed to kick all social media except Github. That for me is the most difficult if you want to collaborate on software projects.
No, I don't consider hacker-news to be social media, rather a news aggregator with a message board. Although, I would frequent here less probably if I was on other social media.
by dollylambda - Im moving my email away from Google. The final frontier.by bfkwlfkjf
- there's some good options out there, good luck! I'm a happy Fastmail user.by numbers
- Make sure to use your own domain.by foxygen
- I've never had a problem with social media usage - and I'd be surprised if other developers here haven't enacted their own solutions to prevent doomscrolling.
I have user scripts on both my iPhone and my computer that completely disable the Instagram recommended feed. I have disabled YouTube thumbnails and the YouTube sidebar. /r/popular or other popular subreddits get automatically redirected to my Reddit homepage which has a lot less garbage on it. I have completely disabled my Twitter feed. I even have certain domains removed on HackerNews and made an extension to only update a few times a day. And a ton more.
If you're a developer and you want to stop doomscrolling... you have the power.
by 65 - I also have the power to disable all the contraptions I've built.by poolnoodle
- How can you do that in the apps? Or do you just do it for the websites and not install the apps in the first place?by leonhard
- If you or anyone you know uses Instagram, you can select the logo in the upper-left to change the feed to “following”, which is a chronological list of posts from people you follow. My wife didn’t know about this and I saved her from endlessly scrolling reels.by mayanraisins
- >set my YouTube to stop suggesting to me via algorithm
It keeps suggesting based on usage though.
by tokai - I came here to ask if there is some way of fixing this. I'm guessing not.
Youtube lately seems particularly bad in terms of showing lots of "shorts" all over when I have zero interest in watching them, but also suggested videos seem somehow aggressively chosen. I'm not sure how to describe that, but that's what it feels like to me.
by shoelessone - You may clear the watch history once in a while to reset.by jobigoud
- I'd argue that "No Socials November" should be "No corporate Socials November".
Places like the Fediverse (Mastodon, Peertube, Lemmy, pixelfed, etc) are that non-corporate non-gamified breath of fresh air.
Sure, there's less people on those networks, but that too is a great benefit - less bots and less "temperature". And 10 years ago, in 2015, we already saw videos analyzing social media hatred with CGP Grey's "This video will make you angry" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
But why anger? Because anger and screaming at people is a guaranteed way to make "engagement", which seems to be the predominant way to prove to advertisers of "people per month". But is it good? Absolutely not. Its poison, slowly but surely. But how do we avoid the poison? The root cause here is money from advertising, which is from engagement.
But you cut out the profit motive, you also cut out advertisers, and you also cut out arbitrary and forced anger-gagement. And that, is the Fediverse.
The opposite is your Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Reddit. And they're full of bots, quazi and directly hateful content posted for "engagement", and the same set of hate memes populated froom 1 site to all the rest by bots. No wonder people hate this type of social media. It's wholly toxic and poisonous.
by nekusar - I disagree. While smaller networks are a good thing for the social media landscape, ultimately people should go seek other activities where socializing is a secondary benefit. Rather than spending time on a social network. If we take a month to refocus on non-social-first activity we will be healthier 1000000x as communities.
Lemmy is great btw. I started putting “lemmy” instead of “reddit” in my searches and it often works.
by righthand - I use the following extensions to help with managing my social media intake while on my work computer:
Focused Youtube: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/nfghbmabdoakhobmimn... Removes all recommendations and just keeps a search bar. No shorts rabbit holes or algorithm-based media consumption
StayFocusd: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/laankejkbhbdhmipfmg... I like using the nuclear option. Blocks a bunch of sites I have that are in a list, such that I cannot open them at all.
by bachittle - I ask everyone to never stop creating, never stop sharing. And when your friend shares, appreciate it, for what it is, that it is theirs, that they did it, and that it is them.
Draw, play an instrument, paint, write a poem, sing, cook, shoot hoops, talk about books over coffee. Be personal.
by bashmelek - My November schedules are getting crowded. No shaving, no faps, no socials, ...by grim_io
- At least you can still vember, right? What's that? Oh...by Vinnl
- These things should free up your schedule :)by jtmarl1n
- I would encourage people to consider permanent solutions to use social media more intentionally instead of taking a month off here and there. Two things that the apps really want you to do, but that you should resist as much as possible, are doomscrolling through meaningless content and compulsively checking apps or websites in case you miss out on interesting updates.
For myself, I've decided to direct anything and everything possible to my email (with plenty of filters to keep my main inbox tidy). For apps that don't offer email notifications, I use MacroDroid to forward Android push notifications to email. There are also plenty of ways to forward RSS to email.
I batch process my email 1-3x/day, and anything I don't want to see during this time is not worth seeing at all. It gets ignored, filtered out, or unsubscribed from.
by yepguy - Yeah. I will say, the best place to start is just deactivate one for 30 days and see whether you miss it.
It turns out I didn't actually like any of these apps. If I did, they wouldn't need to play all these dumb games to keep me engaged.
by coffeefirst - 30 days is long enough to form a habit, so it might be a good way to see how you can live without social media. My life is unquestionably better without Meta/Twitter/etc., but I have a hard time convincing anyone that that is the case.by port11
- I have been off social media completely since 2016. Only have a Facebook left for family and the occasional marketplace browse. When I do check it I only log in via browser and spend maybe 5-10 minutes on the site. I posted a few times that people should contact me via email if they want to chat though so far no one has taken up my offer.by MisterTea
- My question for you all is: do you consider HN to be social media?
I got off traditional social media (twitter, fb, insta, etc) years ago and feel all the better for it. But I still visit HN and YouTube multiple times daily. For the most part I find those to be information-dense and part of my continual personal development practice. That said, YT in particular has a tendency to draw me into endless shorts holes.
by bloudermilk - Nope, but only because I use it anonymously, same as reddit. To me, context is the key to every designation, so it's not whether a site is or isn't social media. Some platforms support social media usage, but it's the way the individual user uses it that makes it social media to them. I personally do not have a social media presence, and can't see ever wanting one.
EDIT: At best, HN is a link aggregator in the form of a discussion forum.
- I think HN has aspects of social media, but I wouldn't call it that. I do get some similar feelings and "rewards" from reading and commenting on HN that I used to get with Facebook, Instagram, etc. But I quit FB & Insta years ago because those sites were overall making me feel bad and unhappy. HN isn't perfect, and I do occasionally get those negative feelings, but overall I enjoy reading the articles people post, and reading and discussing people's reactions to them.
Certainly I waste some amount of time on HN when I could or should be doing something else, but I think I've also learned a lot from HN, and get to read reasonable points of view that differ from my own.
I think HN's user moderation system (as well as HN's guidelines, and how the in-house moderators moderate and engage with the community) also push more toward HN being a discussion forum and not social media. While HN's moderation isn't perfect, it's not the engagement-at-all-costs popularity contest that plagues most social media sites and makes things unbearable.
by kelnos - Social media can mean so many things these days, I can't tell anymore.
Each of these things need to be studied separately, IMO. As different social media sites have/less of each of these:
* Algorithmic feed - encouraging rabbit holes, reinforcing clicbait and ragebait
* Comment sections - encouraging pile-ons, and vitriolic debate
* Short form content - TikTok videos, etc, quick, snackable content and destroying people's attention span . Then there's the overall ad-based incentive to put all these together to keep you engaged. TBH the fact hacker news has a different model, makes me feel better about it, rather than caring if its social media or not.
by softwaredoug - > do you consider HN to be social media?
Yes, because I read/interact with comments. It's possible to just peruse headlines in which case it's less social.
> YT in particular has a tendency to draw me into endless shorts holes
Yeah, especially since there are no horrendous ads. YT on my AppleTV has become unwatchable with minutes of ads for minutes of content.
- I don't think it's quite social media as most people think of it. I treat it more like a message forum.
To me, social media is a broadcast type of media where people are posting for their specific followers and people are following individuals, so you end up with people posting specifically to get more followers (maybe not initially, but it's what fuels further posting).
Hacker News is social, but I don't go here to follow individuals. I usually don't even look at names of who's commenting.
by allenu - It's not engagement-optimized social media (good old sepia orange, sorted by upvotes only) but it is social media, albeit in a form closer to private communities. Engagement-optimized social media is definitely the problem for me, hours and hours can fly by. HN + no recs/history yt has been the trusty setup for a while.by knuppar
- It's the only social media I use. I used to use Reddit too, until they blocked usability/accessibility tools.
YouTube has social media features, but they languish in comparison to its use as a video broadcasting platform. I suppose for people who regularly comment and chat on streams, YouTube is a social media platform, but for the vast majority of its user base, it's more like Netflix than Twitter.
by dlcarrier