Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
scrollguard.app675 points by adrianhacar 5 days ago
675 points by adrianhacar 5 days ago
I wanted to find a way to use Instagram without ending up scrolling for two hours every time I open the app to see a friend's story.
Most screen time apps I found focus on blocking the app itself instead of the addictive feed, so I created this app to allow me to keep using the "healthy" and "social" features and block the infinite scrolling (Reels)
After implementing the block on Instagram Reels, I got addicted to YouTube Shorts and Reddit feed. So, I extended the app to cover these as well.
To avoid replacing the scrolling for regular feeds, I also added a feature that shows a pop-up when I'm overscrolling in any app. It forces me to stop and think for a minute before I continue scrolling.
I built it on Android Studio, using Kotlin and Jetpack Compose for the UI. I use the Accessibility Service to detect scrolls and navigate out of them. Unfortunately, this only works for Android. There is no way (as far as I know) to do this on iOS.
I'd love to hear your thoughts
So I only use Instagram for the DMs with friends. I don’t follow anyone at all, so my feed should be empty. For years it was. Then at some point Instagram decided I must not know what I want, they should show me recommended posts from random accounts. There’s a setting to turn this off … but instead of being a normal toggle I can only “snooze” the posts for 30 days. 30 days of peace and then the spam comes back. No matter how many times I make it clear what I want, they don’t care. Just gross. Dude if you only want to use insta for dms, try bleeper. I swear, most of my school friends only use / are active on insta and I never used insta because I Hated reels / insta in general (my personal opinion, never found it appealing) So my friend suggested me to use bleeper, I had heard of it ofc but I mean I always thought eh it would be too much of an hassle, then when my friend did it and said its easy so I actually downloaded bleeper created an insta with a password on private incognito and then just pasted the password to my phone's bleeper in insta and then gave it to friend and boom I am now in insta dms without using insta. And its all free. and they even run on matrix protocol and are pushing to be even more self hosted (ie. currently the account gets in their server, (i think) afterwards, it would be on your local device) Seriously man, I think I am sort of a shill of bleeper even though they don't even know who I am or I have an incentive to, but I genuinely like their product. I genuinely hope that they don't ever enshitten it man. Bleeper team if you are reading this, that's my only request, don't add power creep, keep on focusing on local as you are doing right now and just don't ever enshitten your product. Sincere question: What is the reason for the popular appeal of using Instagram for messaging? Because it is what your friends and potential friends are using. It isn't really a noteworthy messaging app other than bring attached to a popular app. > potential friends Hmm. So it's the perceived "best place" as a default. Is there some "discoverability" feature as well? He means in real life. You’re at a bar. You meet someone. They ask for your insta username to follow/message you. Making friends and meeting people is hard enough for most people. The added friction of not being reachable on the platforms people use every day for messaging isn’t ideal. It’s not ideal to say “Sorry, I’m philosophically against social media so I can’t give you a username, you’ll have to text me” - and then you risk alienating them. (You’d be surprised the percentage of people who rarely if ever use SMS these days, all the young people I know use Snap or Insta to talk to each other) group SMS/MMS really blows. It's not a surprise people look for alternatives, but man there are SO many alternatives all with their own niche. Every time my kids start a new sport or class or group we all get a new "group text" app to download and babysit. Very much an XKCD moment - But why not just email? For me, email has become a cesspool of garbage. It’s like receiving letters in a dumpster parked in front of your house that the whole neighborhood dumps their trash into. I loved email. It was perfect. Now, for me, it’s basically unusable. I can unsubscribe from ten garbage subscriptions a day, and it doesn’t even make a dent. This question feels out of touch and I'm in my mid-forties. Yesterday, I saw a couple moving musical equipment into my building and asked who was the musician. The person said I could find them on Insta. I had hoped they'd be on Soundcloud, as I'm a musician and post my music there. Insta is what a lot of young people use. Before the pan, someone I matched with on a dating app rejected me when I told them I don't have social media accounts. She accused me of being a psycho (saved me from a bad first date). This is how a lot of younger people (she was like 10y younger than me) see the world. Email is for corpses, at least that's what I think they'd say if you suggested it. Someone up the chain talked about classmates. I'd expect they are a younger demographic and the email stink would apply. I welcome being out of touch. The current trends seem ridiculous to me. There's no practical difference between sending a message via Instagram vs via email. It's all just marketing. You probably can't even get an Instagram account without first getting an email account. > rejected me when I told them I don't have social media accounts. She accused me of being a psycho (saved me from a bad first date). This is how a lot of younger people (she was like 10y younger than me) see the world. Wow. This is like a Black Mirror episode. > What is the reason for the popular appeal of using Instagram for messaging? Same reason people use any social network: because your friends, family and/or people you otherwise/somehow care about are there. Sure, but why Instagram specifically? Is this just first-mover/early-mover advantage or is IG better at something? > Sure, but why Instagram specifically? Because Instagram is specifically the place that those people already are. It really isn't hard to understand why others join it. They weren't even first, just the place where people ended up being, until they won't be there anymore and instead it'll be another place. Also matters what niche/community you're a part of, some of them already left Instagram for other places (like furries seems to have gone to Mastodon/Bluesky as far as I can tell [but not a furry, so please don't sue me if I'm wrong]) while others are still there, like most musicians/artists still seem to prefer Instagram, even non-mainstream ones. I think that's because that for me personally, I am genz and my generation / my school friends are just hooked up onto it. Literally 99% of my schoolmates were there. It was the only way that I can keep in touch with my schoolmates / friends for years and though I have their number, we don't have any group chat aside from instagram and I use beeper to actually make it sane to use Some of the reason might be that you don't need to share your phone number for it. Same reason people use any social network: because your friends, family and/or people you otherwise/somehow care about are there. If they're on Instagram, aren't they necessarily also on SMS, plus a billion other people? All ad-free? > If they're on Instagram, aren't they necessarily also on SMS Many people have friends in different countries, and while intra-country SMS is usually free, cross-country ones usually aren't. I think out of my current friend circle, literally all of them have at least one friend outside of the country where they live, but as an immigrant I'm probably biased too. SMS is stuck in the past, even with RCS. Apple has used SMS as the wall of their walled garden for years. As an android user, it was extremely annoying to text to Apple devices (and still is to some degree) If they’re on instagram they’re already in the Facebook ecosystem which means WhatsApp should not be objectionable and it covers the messaging aspect quite well. Bleeper or Beeper (https://www.beeper.com)? Beeper is an app like you describe, can't find Bleeper. And it's by Automattic which I think have an OK reputation for not destroying their products. Keep in mind that using Beeper for Instagram breaks their ToS and often gets your account suspended or banned. This happens with both cloud and local bridges. https://www.reddit.com/r/beeper/search/?q=instagram+suspende... oh I meant beeper, I don't know why I said it to be bleeper. My bad, I don't really know why my brain actually just thought of bleeper instead of beeper, no reason lol.. Yeah what I mean is beeper. It’s like X reverting to “For you” from “Following” no matter how intently you ask them to show less often. It’s like X telling you - “don’t ever install our app, it’ll be worse”. By the way, Meta then must add a paid plan “Messaging Only” mode for Instagram :) It’s not nice to subject your friends’ private communications to ad tech surveillance. I deleted my Instagram account, now my friends and I message on other (end to end encrypted) platforms that don’t subject us to censorship and spying. Sometimes you have to choose between not talking to someone and talking to them on such a platform. For friends, sure, just says that you want to switch to something e2e. But for people you don't really know that well it's kind of unreasonable to expect them to switch for you. LinkedIn is a good example, I don't like using the platform but I also have no interest in adding loads of random old colleages I might talk to occasionally to any e2e platform I use. That is so real man. I was a massive push in pushing everyone to use signal but I could only convince 2-3 of my friends and literally now there is only 1 single friend of mine who is on signal.. Whereas on insta dm, literally all of my friends are there, mostly 24x7 active. I just used bleeper to sometimes interact with them. I think it made my mental health definitely more saner/net gain I care about my privacy enough but I can't have it make me lonely. I hate meta with my guts but the sacrifice that I found was using bleeper or something that doesn't have anything extra of insta related except just chats Sometimes Sacrifices must be made If your friends can’t install a free app and type in their phone number and an auth code (literally takes 30 seconds) to talk to you privately, they aren’t your friends. (I have no other messengers and have recruited about a hundred people to use Signal, including much of the Vegas cash game poker scene.) Quality over quantity is important always, but is of utmost importance when it comes to personal associations. Delete your Meta accounts, find out who your real friends are. This is a bizarre position that seems to be advocating for family and friend estrangement based on which chat app they use. Quite the opposite. You won’t be able to have friends period if all of society opts in to mass warrantless surveillance. The Signal desktop app is awful. I refuse to use it for this reason alone, because any time I need to write a lot, I switch to a computer because I can write 100 times faster on an actual keyboard. > it's kind of unreasonable to expect them to switch for you And yet they expect you to switch for them? I guess there is a difference between expect and assume. It would be weird for me to assume that the vast majority of people care deeply about digital privacy when clearly that's not true. Its pretty reasonable for them to assume I have Instagram or whatever when the vast majority of people do. From their perspective, they assume I already have an Instagram account and if I say I don't then they aren't really going to understand why I wouldn't want to make one. For someone who isn't well informed on issues of digital privacy, I think this is a reasonable way to behave. From their perspective, someone demanding they download and use some random app they haven't heard of for reasons about encryption they don't understand is not reasonable. Of course it is very worthwhile trying to educate people on issues of digital privacy. If you are able to educate them, then they will see that you perpective is reasonable. However, you aren't going to change everyone's minds Is there any account that just shows boring stuff every day? Because now it says when I snooze that I won't see recommended posts unless I've scrolled past my friends' posts. So it seems I need to follow something that I'm totally uninterested in (I'm thinking gray boxes of unvarying sizes would be good), and that posts quite often. OOh I found a use for AI slop! Getting me off instagram! While I do get the frustration, you cannot really complain if you don't use Instagram for its main feature... You can use an application like Franz or Beeper to have ONLY the chats and nothing else. Can vouch for beeper. My mind was blown when it JUST WORKED.
I use beeper to chat with my friends on insta and its definitely a really good method to communicate with the insta friends instead of using the app. Though when they send reel I can't really see it natively and it opens web browser but that's what I want and I don't watch the reels the guys send anyway. I tried this for a while because I specifically wanted it for YouTube. However, I relized that I want to not see shorts at all! So while it did prevent shorts from playing it was a bad experience. Like getting your hand swatted when your reach for the donut instead of the donuts just not being there at all. This kind of control is what we miss out on when we leave web apps for native apps. Ideally this would just be a simple browser plugin. But the app requires major accessibility permissions so that it can access the API it needs to see into the Android apps, something that doesn't even exist on iOS. Just to do what should amount things like deleting a ".reels" component. That said, props to OP for figuring out how to build such a feature for mobile. Most of the Show HN's in this space are desktop-only thus kinda useless. I've tried adding rules to ublock origin but sites like youtube and many others now have "component obfuscation". Meaning there is no unique ID on their components/elements and it makes it much harder to target. And some element titles/names are even on a different component than the content, which is even harder still. So it says "reels" on one component and the actual reels are on another. Blocking now has to be a logical combination of CSS selection, text identification and a target-action component. I agree U-Block origin is sometimes hit or miss. What has restored some faith for me was recently discovering that when I use the element picker and select something I want blocked it gives me a list at the bottom right of things it recognized, and if I click through them I can often find exactly what I want to block though often its not the default element anymore. It's not perfect but it has massively improved my satisfaction with Ublock and general enjoyment of being online. Good point. I remember Facebook doing obfuscation just to hide the word "sponsored" long ago just so you couldn't easily hide its ads. That said, they put up a fight in the browser because user interventions (browser plugins, greasemonkey scripts, ad blockers) are viable in the browser but not in native apps. Though this is also why they want to force you to use their app, and I'm not sure how to incentivize apps to even exist as websites. It feels like a dying fluke that places like Reddit even maintain a web frontend for their app. I think unTrap for Chrome based browsers works. It also is a scary level of plugin, but have it limited to Youtube. What are you not able to block on YouTube? I've had all ads, shorts, those games, etc blocked successfully for years. Usually selecting is something like .class.subclass:nth-child(4). Which will sometimes block what you want, but not always since they switch their layout so much. You need conditions. Its really finnicky to get right and I usually want to block views on cards, recommended tabs, trending and I have to redo it every 2 or 3 weeks. +1 Native apps can in many ways be better than web apps but they definitely lack the client side control that a web app (or any website) comes with.
The user is sadly just a consumer and the product at the same time without an opinion. What I also don’t like are companies that more and more push the user into using the native (I.e. installed) app over the website. I use almost all apps in browser (YouTube, LinkedIn) and the LinkedIn website has a “this content is only visible in the LinkedIn app” banner that is so prominent, it’s disgusting. You’re unable to see details of people changing their job / completing a degree and you’re unable to see the list of “visitors of your profile” (even though this is a silly feature). On iOS I use YouTube in the browser for a single reason: ads are not shown and/or skippable by reloading the site. Sometimes I use the YouTube app on an iPad and the advertisement experience is so bad. I highly recommend using YouTube in browser (Safari). Since I’m also somewhat addicted to short, but only use YouTube, I’ve built a chrome+safari extension that allows me to watch X shorts (for longer than 1sec) before closing the page and redirecting me to a different page (whatever you want). This is quite helpful.
You can check it out [here](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-shorts-trac...). I also use it on iOS via the Safari extension but I haven’t published it yet. I would love it. I'm currently using DFInstagram, which removes home feed. Only downside I see is that is also removes Instagram stories which I do like to check, but I can do that from PC if I want. As for YouTube I can already remove 99% of the distraction by just putting things to private and completely remove recommendations on home page, but reddit / Twitter / Facebook would be great. For the social medias I'd love to just have "old mode" where I'm only ever shown stuff posted by people I explicitly follow. Everything went to total garbage when "engagement" became the goodhearts metric, and news feed either throw you astroturf, ads, and rage-bait posts by people I haven't even followed I also use DFInstagram. You can keep stories; I have mine configured to kill the feed & cancerous search page grid but allow me to see stories. Works great. Oh that would be great! I can't find where in the setting I can toggle this though F.B. Purity[1] works great for Facebook.
It can selectively remove ads, suggested crap, reels, etc. I setup a self-hosted FreshRSS + extensions for this very purpose. With a little effort, I can even pull in social media feeds and YouTube subscriptions. Now I have a very plain (but highly functional) UI with a chronological list of the sources I wish to follow. No recommendations, no algorithms, no infinite anything. For discovery, I can now go elsewhere and look for new content with intention, even if facilitated by algorithms. But I've successfully divorced that from the act of consumption. I can tell you, it feels better. I have experienced what I consider to be a material improvement in consumption habits, and overall mental health. I'm very curious how you manage to pull in social feeds-- there are many billions of dollars working against your accessing social media posts that haven't been dipped in digital crack. As far as I can tell, the API's that are available are really limited, as a result. I do the same, I include a few news outlets, HN, some good blogs I follow, even podcasts. All sorted chronologically: you can filter by source or tag, no clutter, no ads, just links and often even the full text. All is hosted on an ancient RaspberryPi 3 and exposed over public Internet (with password protection). This looks exactly what I am trying to achieve with RSS but never quite got to the point where it's usable enough to stick to it long term. Sounds like a great thing to build! Seems like a lot of commenters are interested in more granular implementation details :) Thank you for doing this - I think there are two lines in the sand that a true "user agent" would allow us to set: 1. Don't show recommended content at all--I want to view only the content I've specifically asked for (or searched for) in this session 2. Recommend only content that I've chosen (e.g., by following), where there is a finite amount of it You'd like such things to be part of the basic wiring of your device, though writing an app to regulate how other apps work is often not easy to implement today, so efforts like this are super valuable. What if a device could look after your attention and ensure you have the motivation to do other things? Another way these kinds of switches could get built by requiring them as child safety features, like "Watch the YouTube video for school, but don't get an assault of Shorts after" or "See the single TikTok your friend sent, but don't spend five hours scrolling after" It's pretty clear "willpower" does not suffice. I agree. Think of willpower as a finite resource. It's simply not feasible to rely on it solely. You need to build the world you want to live in. (Set yourself up for success) Instagram tip: if you click the wordlogo “Instagram” at the top (in the mobile app), you can select “Following” and get a feed of only posts from accounts you follow, with no suggested posts and no reels. I end up going through that feed in a few minutes and it insulates me from the endless scrolling. Also works on the mobile page. The other thing possible is to block certain post types with uBlock origin, on desktop or mobile: Facebook mobile tip: if you click on the burger menu and select "Feeds" you will be taken to a page with a list of different feeds at the top. If you then select the "Friends" tab you will see only posts from your friends. Doesn't get rid of ads, unfortunately, but it does get rid of all the crap from recommended pages, etc... Can you set this as default? You can't, and I've watched as they've added/removed UI to indicate that you can even press it. I'm glad the feature is there, but it's clear Meta doesn't want you finding it. This approach is not possible on iOS. Instead, I built a safari extension to block shorts from the feed https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/shorts-stopper/id6745517488?l=... Rather hard to sell it here to people who are (mostly) capable to install Tampermonkey and add one line rule. How this is possible for iOS? Can someone share technical details on this iOS implementation? IMO this cannot be done without validating user privacy and giving app some crucial screen reading permissions. You can't take the same approach on iOS but to Apple's credit, they do a great job with user privacy with their Screen Time permission. Apps with that permission get the ability to restrict other apps on the phone without ever knowing what they are. They can even report data back to the user without ever knowing that data. Source: I am a developer of Clearspace, which is an iOS Screen Time App https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clearspace-reduce-screen-time/... For Android I did it using the Accessibility Service API, iOS doesn't provide any similar API, the platform itself is much more restricted. So I think is technicaly not possible Yeah, this is not possible in iOS because there is no equivalent of Accessibility services for apps to control other apps behavior. Not sure what OP is running waitlist for, my guess is a combination of screen time + focus modes + content blockers in Safari. It’s currently Android only. There is a waitlist on their website for the iOS version. I just can't authorize an app to have full control on my phone if it's not open-source. What guarantee do I have that you are not selling all my user data? DigiPaws has the headlining feature of the app advertised here, and is open source. Not that I suspect maliciousness in the case of digipaws or OP, but does the app's code being open-source actually guarantee any security? Is there anything forcing the app I download to be consistent with the repo on Github? The readme clearly directs the reader to the F-Droid package, which are built on their buildservers and signed with their APK keys. This does not answer the security question directly, but it's the same model as say Debian repos. There are eyeballs on it by an independent third party packagers who use code scanners and manual review to detect malfeasance, and often have to tweak builds and code to get rid of unwanted things present in some upstreams. Even better: if the build is reproducable, it guarantees that the source code of the repo is the same as the version that is distributed by FDroid. It doesn't guarantee any security, but it is necessary for you to be able to to be able to have confidence in the security in a reasonable time frame. And if you need a guarantee that the source matches the binary, then you can build it yourself. Not really. I guess to be 100% sure you need to build the app yourself. I don’t think that publish attestation exists on play store. Probably would need to openly build & upload the app via a CI runner, print all hashes inside that runner and then the playstore also needs to display those hashes before you download - but that doesnt exist for play store downloads yet. I understand your point. The short answer is that, indeed, it comes down to trust, and I really understand and respect your perspective. The long answer is that it's very unlikely this trust would be broken. Let me explain: Firstly, the accessibility service doesn’t provide anything close to "full control." It’s just an API provided by Android that gives accessibility events, like changes in the screen layout and the UI nodes present on the screen to infer the type of content shown (Reels in my case). You can check online for details on accessibility events. It's nothing like a constant screen recording where the app gets all your data. Also, Google is very strict with these permissions. When you publish an app on the Play Store, you need to clearly disclose why you're using those permissions. If you do something wrong or try to abuse this, they will take your app down. Anyone who values their reputation wouldn’t attempt something like this just to sell some user data. Lastly, ScrollGuard doesn’t need to connect to any server to work!, all the detection happens on the device. So, if you want to be extra cautious, you can always go to your phone settings and block internet access to ScrollGuard. It will still work, and without internet access is imposible to export any data. If you want even more control and just need a solution for Instagram, you can modify the app yourself. I wrote an article a couple of years ago on how to do this here: https://breakthescroll.com/block-reels-instagram/ What guarantees do you have that open source code faithfully reflects what is in the compiled binary? The idea is that you download the source, review, and then build it yourself. > full control on my phone if it's not open-source. bro is using social media that listens and records ton's of data in background. https://www.hipaajournal.com/jury-trial-meta-flo-health-cons... I understand the position, but I think that's a silly concern here. This is an app that stops you from using social media features that absolutely farm every bit of data out of you they possibly can. Feels a bit like being afraid to install a smart lock on your front door, so instead you leave it unlocked all the time. This is a bad take, as much as I don't use social media at this point, people need access to good tools to curb use, and in this case, "good" means "open." Can you elaborate why? It sounds like we agree to me. People need access to good tools to curb use, and all else equal, open is definitely better than closed. I just am saying that I'd rather have an effective closed tool than no tool at all It does sound like we agree, but my main issue is the further shifting of the (for lack of a better word) overton window around when closed software is acceptable. For all its flaws (and despite my general ire towards them), the FSF has done one thing really well over the years, and that's keep the conversation alive around open-source software (which, in turn, has landed us at what I consider to be a really good compromise of a ton of high-quality source-available software). The FSF isn't pulling as hard as it used to for a variety of reasons, but I think it's important to keep the pressure on and in cases like this, it's really easy to take the stance that at least source-availability shouldn't be compromised on, since the app presumably needs very broad permissions and capabilities from the OS. Social media apps don't have the same level of permission to detect scrolling even when they aren't being used. This app does have that higher level of control (accessibility service) and so should be subject to more scrutiny. I am afraid to install smart locks. Too much goes wrong with software. I would install a regular lock instead. I got locked into my (100+ y/o) house due to a smart lock soon after purchase. It got promptly removed. I'd much rather leave the door unlocked. A lot of discussion is about the security of these devices (resistance to false open states). But most of the time the safety (false closed states) has even higher stakes associated to it. Having to wait because some api server is slow is annoying but can quickly become life threatening in a different context. Fail-Safe vs Fail-Secure is (imo) often overlooked and probably just as important as the actual implemented security. Wait, are there smartlocks that depend on the availability of some api service to even open the door? I'd rather call that stupidlocks instead. I mean, just because you're an IoT device it doesn't mean you are smart, ffs. I have been locked out of more than 1 airbnb due to lack of cell service not being able to get codes for locks, it is very annoying and dumb. The problem I have had with this type of app is that, on Instagram at least any video that a friend posts is considered a reel. And I want to watch videos that my friends post. What I don't want is swiping mindlessly through random videos. So really I would like a swipe blocker not a short video blocker. (And bonus points if I could make it work on Firefox) This is a good point, I will try to find a solution. Currently, it's able to whitelist Reels from the DM feed, and it will block the rest as soon as you start scrolling, I'll see how to do this for normal posted reels. > I wanted to find a way to use Instagram without ending up scrolling for two hours every time I open the app to see a friend's story. Why not just Chrome/Firefox/Safari to open the link instead of the Instagram app? One problem I have with all these self control style apps is that they only let you set total per day hourly limits. My intuition is that if you give yourself a two hour, one hour, even 30 minute limit per day you're still liable to drift into zombie mode and are more likely to want to unblock after that long brain rot session. My ideal blocking app wouldn't restrict your total per day, instead the key feature would be that you can only scroll for 5-10 minutes at a time with a cooling off period. That is, if you scroll for 5 minutes you then have to wait X minutes before you can scroll again. I think this should have a strong c-c-c-c-ombo breaker effect without giving you enough time to get hooked so badly that you immediately want to bypass it. I deleted the YouTube and Instagram apps and I still end up scrolling / watching shorts - it doesn't matter, browser still lets you scroll I deleted the apps too, but unfortunately I still like to use Instagram to follow photographers I'm interested in. These uBlock Origin filter rules have made it usable without being a black hole for my attention: Even if you're not logged in? Instagram barely even wants to let me look at the main photo/video of interest without an account. What helped me, was deleting account as well. The site has different purpose than when I've registered anyway. I use Unhook in Firefox on Android to eradicate Shorts from my YouTube experience, it works very well. I ran into the same problem—my reading list kept growing but I never actually got through it. Feeds are engineered to feel effortless; opening my backlog felt like work. Instead of blocking sites outright, I tried redirecting attention at the key moment. I built a small extension that sets a daily reading goal, then reroutes me from doomscrolling sites until I hit it. After that, I can browse freely. It’s been a better balance: turning the feed’s habit loop into a nudge for something I actually want to do. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/detour/ogddhmpffcgk... As others have said, the permissions required to make this work are scary and require a lot of trust. The fact YouTube and Instagram don't allow you to disable endless algorithmic short form content is straight up evil. I'd recommend just uninstalling the apps. I'm still able to get the content I need, and scroll mechanic doesn't work as well on the websites so a lot of the temptation to doom scroll goes away. The way that all these tech companies decided that the users couldn't simply turn those features off is maddening. And the "See this Less Often" option doesn't seem to do anything at all on apps like Facebook. They have a tremendous disincentive to do this. Endless scrolling, combined with a massive amount of algorithmically fine-tuned content to satisfy preferences that you didn't even knew you had, is effectively a digital version of cocaine. Giving you the right to reclaim your attention is a pathway towards healthy use, which for most is no more than a couple minutes per day for any social media platform. Your dealer would be the last person you'd expect to teach you about addiction avoidance. There should be legislation that requires company's allow "opting out" of individualized algorithmic feeds. I'm fine if you want to show me videos similar to channels I've explicitly subscribed to. But tracking my every interaction and using that to serve content I never asked for is everything that's wrong with modern social media. Maybe we need an initiative like "stop killing games". If you turn off YouTube view history, it breaks Shorts. It also breaks a lot of other shit (e.g. back button after you've clicked a video from a search). I understand the privacy concerns. I did my best to address it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44943215. I completely agree with your second point. Which is why I use modified version of YouTube on the web and on Android. I don't watch videos on iPad unless I have to. (I happen to have an Android tablet so that works well.) Although I know this is not a solution for everyone. I love this! You don't see these types of apps for Android. I get the request for Foqos: https://github.com/awaseem/foqos Would you ever open source this? Thanks, glad you like it! I’m not planning to open source it, at least in the short term Shorts and Reels are designed to be incredibly addictive. I really wish there were an option to turn them off, especially on Instagram and Snapchat. What I want is to see my friends' photos — but instead, Shorts and Reels quickly funnel me into an endless discovery feed. It feels toxic, distracting, and completely misaligned with the core purpose of these apps. This functionality isn’t necessary, and I’d much rather have the choice to block it. In a similar vain, I made https://Instag.com, which let's you remove the "RAM" from Instagram media URL's to download them. Great work! I was working on something similiar, using ReVanced(1) Framework, which allows you to distribute fuzzy tweaks to regular APKs with their ReVanced Manager(2) which can persist multiple version updates. They have their own DSL (3), kinda. My target was Instagram Reels, I did not come that far with JADX in finding the appropriate methods/attributes to overwrite because I kept getting stuck scrolling reels on my Android Emulator. Novel obfuscation technique by Meta :/ (1) https://github.com/revanced (2) https://github.com/revanced/revanced-manager (3) https://github.com/ReVanced/revanced-patcher/blob/main/docs/... Finally!! Please find a way to make it work on iOS! Or I’ll switch to use android to use your app This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control, but the reality is these apps are engineered explicitly to bypass that. It feels a bit silly to need guardrails for something as trivial as scrolling. Shameless personal plug:
I wrote about it here. https://nabraj.com/blog/swipe-scroll-repeat-addiction/ I had an epiphany that faulting myself, and my self-control, is exactly what these sites want you to do. "Oh, it's just your bad self-discipline" No, this is full-on war for control of your mind. And the adversary spends millions to hire teams of the world's best psychologists and engineers to deploy technology that never sleeps with the sole purpose of grabbing and keeping your attention. Once I realized this, I started treating doomscrolling and Youtube rabbit holes not as personal insufficiencies, but as systemic failures in my psychological defense system. I started installing my own tech to keep me safe, and I am much, much happier. Predictably, companies like Google try to disable the defenses (e.g. with Manifest v3, which was a garbage excuse to disable many defensive extensions). And so the war goes. In a very loosely analogous way, this reminds me of how I think about car-centric cities. They've built themselves up to make it very difficult to practically participate in society without one, often going so far in that direction that it's so unpleasant and inefficient you're fairly likely to make a mistake at some point and be fined for something. The city then bleeds money maintaining the infrastructure and needs constant construction, so signs are intentionally obscured or speed limits set extremely low despite the roads being wide, and cops are hidden around the corner ready to ticket you. This creates a cycle of heightening anxiety and stress while driving, and discouraging you from going anywhere, making it feel safer to just be isolated in your far-flung house, and thank god you have endless streaming content at your fingertips to make that even more palatable. Addictive media content, particularly short-form casino-style recommended content sucks time away from you in a way that's deeply meaningless. You have no time for friends or real social stimulation and you sit in bed continuing to scroll because it's easy, and you repeat the cycle until all you're doing is that and being sad and lonely, which makes you want to see people more or have a hobby, but that takes a modicum of effort and you have your phone right there. There's a correlation between psychologically-manipulative apps and car-centrism: the endless desire for profit -- hyper-domination by capitalism. If the primary motivating factor behind society's actions were "for the greater good", such things would never have become even remotely acceptable. Instead we allow everything, everywhere, to be driven by the desire for greater wealth (usually on the part of a handful of executives, specifically). The more you question "is this motivated by profit" about anything in society or everyday life that is harmful to you, you'll start to notice that the answer is almost always "yes". I won’t argue with the fact that these systems are designed to defeat your ability to control your habits. But it is possible, without having to install tech to defeat these systems for you. I think, as with most bad habits, the easiest way to defeat them is to never start them to begin with. If you haven’t ever smoked, don’t start. If you haven’t ever gotten hooked on Shorts/Reels, don’t start. I watch YouTube quite often, but only long form content. I even watch some content that takes me multiple nights to finish (e.g. a 5-hour stream of a great board game). I think the only time I’ve watched a Short was accidentally, or if someone shared one with me (fewer than a handful of times). It also helps if your friends/family don’t do those things too (e.g. so they don’t keep sharing them with you). But 100% agree that ideally, platforms would give us control over the types of content that show up. The best I can do on YouTube is to subscribe to channels that don’t do Shorts, and only use Subscriptions as my feed. This has been quite effective. I don’t even use Instagram (and definitely not TikTok). My biggest vices are HN and Board Game Geek, but I feel that’s relatively tame (but I could still have healthier habits even with those). Self controlling your screen use and media consumption is entirely within your remit. Companies have no power to force you to use their products/services, and despite the millions they spend trying to hook you, you always have the option to simply stop using their product/service, delete their app and/or stop visiting their website. You don't have systemic failures in your psychological defense system. We are adaptable creatures. Using technology to protect us from more technology works right up until the prior technology fails, the latter technology adapts, or you lower your guard and fall back into old routines. Like many things in life, such as eating healthily, exercising regularly, managing finances and relationships well, you need to assess the situation you're in, note the advantages and disadvantages it gives you, assess a plan for action to use it for the good parts only, and stick to it. I think personal accountability is good and all but I don't think we should ignore the endless efforts made by corporations to optimize every single interaction you have with them to maximize the value you provide them. I don't think we should have a society that demands constant personal accountability in order to not get suckered by marketing, SEO, algorithmic feed optimization, etc. > not as personal insufficiencies, but as systemic failures in my psychological defense system I was with you until here but this seems like a restatement of the same thing. No it isn’t a failure of you, it’s simply an attack of overwhelming force > I had an epiphany that faulting myself, and my self-control, is exactly what these sites want you to do. Yeah, this kind of realization can be surprisingly empowering, because it takes something that seemed like unavoidable natural law and reveals it as an adversarial relationship. To offer a boring but lower-tech version: Shopping centers which are deliberately designed to make people enter/exit through stores, and the companies that pay to rent that space in particular. So there's nothing awkward about tracking in some water on a rainy day, the company chose that tradeoff. Yes, exactly! We generally treat spaces with the benefit of the doubt, which I think is smart for mental health. A conference center which doesn't have the bathrooms close to where you'd expect probably is just badly designed rather than actively trying to mess with you. But this breaks down for certain spaces: shopping malls, airports, etc. I’ll be the contrarian and say that while I find the constant pushing of Shorts in YouTube to be annoying, I don’t have any trouble not watching them. I select “show me fewer shorts “ which helps some and I skip over the rest. One thing I think a lot of people need to realize and ponder on more... is that these companies have nearly infinite resources, they have entire teams studying the psychology of how to get you to use their apps more (because they primarily chase engagement to sell your attention to advertisers). Not only do they have well-paid experts working on getting you using their platform more often and for longer, but they also have a scary amount of metadata on hundreds of millions of people... they can pluck a person that behaves just like you out of the ether, compare their engagement trends, and apply the same algorithm to you. The resource imbalance becomes really difficult to comprehend. It's like you're trying to avoid a pickpocket that has successfully pickpocketed millions of people, and the pickpocket has years of your behavior at their fingertips and can cross-reference it with every pickpocketing attempt they've ever attempted... oh, and they designed everything about the city you're walking in to make it easier to pickpocket you. 100% agreed. I got my undergraduate degree in Media Studies, and one of things I learned was how intentional even the smallest details are in major productions. They spend millions of dollars, and employ full-time specialists for things like wardrobe and makeup, and those are skilled professionals whose job is to convey a narrative through their specific medium (in this case, wardrobe and makeup). The same applies when you get to the elite levels of any kind of endeavor--they have long since consumed all of the proverbial low-lying fruit, and so they pay skilled professionals a ton of money to carve out marginal advantages. No presumption of intentional action is too paranoid or unreasonable when you get to this point. Assume every word, comma, image, sound, etc. has been carefully chosen for maximal impact, conscious or otherwise. Case in point: Facebook was once discovered to be keeping track of everything you wrote into the post input... even if you never posted it — they will consume every single piece of data they can > This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control, It's like food, easier to have self control not to buy candies in the supermarket than to have self control at home when you know you have candies in the pantry. I haven't felt the need to watch a reel since I uninstalled IG, before that I ended up scrolling here and there, not much but enough to regret the lost time at the end of the week Youtube is more problematic. I have it installed for music but you have to actively remember to not get sucked in to shorts. Feeling like legally they should be forced to split out shorts from the main app. I constantly find myself telling youtube that I'm not interested in shorts. However on the App there's no way to do this. The whole situation is so user-hostile that I'm actively seeking to move somewhere else. There is Youtube music (a separate app) just for that! I mostly listen to DJ set recordings and it's basically random luck if the youtube music app has them It's also not some "oopsie". It's almost certainly not news but these sites want these 'one more' behaviors. Years ago, I designed a minimalist YouTube player that removed video suggestions and autoplays but used their player, didn't evade ads, etc. I got banned by Google because they disallow any alternative site for YouTube, only embeds are allowed. Pretty sure I am still banned on all Google APIs too. In case you want that same functionality now, I use the following three extensions to tame Youtube dark patterns: - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/df-utube-distractio... - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clickbait-remover-f... - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/blocktube/bbeaicapb... The irony of taming YouTube with Chrome. I'm happy to see that BlockTube is available for Firefox at least. Thank you for sharing (all the recommendations). Sent from my Firefox for Android. You should never expect to have rights to anyone's server API endpoints, esp outside of their TOS, which is basically what trying to build your own front-end independent of youtube.com is. However, with most browsers, you have all the rights to build extensions that hide divs and change styling and add new elements with data that's already loaded (as long as you're not calling API endpoints that aren't called by the site's source though, you run into the same problems again) which would accomplish everything you were trying to do. Of course, now there are pages that detect if their elements or code are being manipulated by the browser (i.e.: Ad blocker detectors). Thankfully, it's rare because people using ad blockers is apparently rare on the whole. > Thankfully, it's rare because people using ad blockers is apparently rare on the whole. I wish this were the case. There's quite a number of websites that use Admiral's services to detect adblockers. Admiral got 19m dollars in funding last year, so I imagine the adblock threat is meaty enough. The insidious nature of ad-supported “free” media where end user is the product delivered to advertisers means that even if you reverse engineer some service and develop a third-party client that totally respects ads and all and simply reduces the addictiveness, tweaks the algo, etc., you are still reducing their revenue because people will see fewer ads if they spend less time on the service and probably have more fulfilling lives. This business model is poison. Service operator’s interests will never be aligned with the interests of the users unless they are paying customers. (By contrast, if the users were paying customers, Google would have no problem with your client—it would in fact be saving money on compute & traffic.) > I got banned by Google because they disallow any alternative site for YouTube, only embeds are allowed. I'm sorry that happened to you, but that seems like a perfectly reasonable policy. In fact, I would have assumed that's the case before reading your comment. If it didn't evade ads though, while it's their right to have such a policy with their site, it's still quite a display of the utter contempt they have for their users. Unless they really believe with a straight face that 24 is a healthy optimum for 'YouTube watch hours per day.' Because that's the only number that would cause their brain-hacking to stop. "You'll consume using our dark-patterned, unhealthy interface which we deeply tuned to maximize addiction and obsession, or you'll GTFO!" -Google. YouTubes users are content creators and advertisers. The people watching the videos are the product. Were you using their embedded player or some other method to play the raw streams? The embed links back to YT which is a major part of why they provide it for off-platform playback. But if they somehow singled you out for overuse of the embed that seems rather arbitrary Yep! I was using their embedded player. I thought I was doing everything right but didn't read the ToS because in my mind, ToS is just blocking silly things like "please don't use our product to build nuclear weapons", not "please don't use our product to play videos on another site". Struck me as very anti-user and BigCorpo. It was the project that solidified never building on someone else's 'lawn' again. > because in my mind, ToS is just blocking silly things like "please don't use our product to build nuclear weapons", not "please don't use our product to play videos on another site". Why did you think that?? would also be unnecessary if these apps respected the user rather than trying to addict them Hard to exercise willpower when the whole system is tuned up against it. I've tried hard to keep that garbage out of my sight for years. But dammit YouTube is my one vice. And then they throw those damn shorts on it, I can feel my attention span decreasing. Seems every product just descends into this anti-human shitscape. More time spent implies more ads shown implies proportional conversion. Also now that we have two big companies vying for attention, the competition is fierce to show "relevant ads" first because both receive intent almost simultaneously. I got a youtube short of an office chair company in the feed. I wasn't looking for it explicitly. It was organic feed. Almost immediately I got an ad for that same chair in gmail. Because all of our phones are always listening for intents and keywords. This is recursive ad slop. A very effective partial solution - there is absolutely 0 reason to have any meta app cancers on phones/tablets. Just let them go, leave them for laptop/desktop and you are more than 50% there. This way they lose a lot of their instant addictivity. Same goes for tiktok and similar other shit forming and then feeding on addictions. Everything becomes much easier afterwards, especially long term. I removed FB apps quite some years ago when they were draining batteries of phones even when not used, a typical bad engineering that facebook seems to never get rid off (their web had always some issues, stuff doesn't work, feed doesn't load, comments fail or get posted 2x, albums don't upload all photos etc. with just ublock origin on firefox on fiber optic). I just don't need even their messenger, any worthy contacts can be migrated to other apps. The exception to all above - whatsapp, simply too much used in Europe and literally everywhere else outside of US. But that's much better engineered product from start. I've started dedicating Chrome profiles for the rare occasion I have to subject myself to Facebook (marketplace mostly). There you go Meta, you can enjoy the 4 times a year I use your site (and no others). No doubt they'll track me via many other means that ought to be illegal, but it feels like a good start. If you get addicted to these feeds, you'll just find other ways to them once they're off your phone. I take a hybrid approach - keep uninstalled by default most of the time, engage a browser extension for web to keep me in place, and failing all that use an app like this as well. I actively log out of them on my main device and use a second device to access them that I like to use substantially less. The device sits next to me every day, and is accessible at any time. It has substantially reduced my usage. Enabling a second profile on my android phone and putting Facebook in there instead of in the browser on my primary profile led to an ~90% reduction on the time I spend on Facebook. However, I do have to check it from time to time for one of my jobs (to monitor our Page and events, and respond to customers), and the occasions when I switch to the second profile can still hook me for 20 minutes of scrolling... No I didn't find other ways, desktop is the only gateway for me even after maybe 6 years. I am generally not a very addictive personality generally (at least compared to many peers), don't have mental ticks, insecurities or mental issues that I feel I need to feed by instant dopamine kicks. But it still saved me a lot of time in long run (and some phone battery too). I don't go to FB much, don't use instagram, tiktoks, tweeter and so on, and happy with that. Quality of actual real life and all that. It'd be a lot easier if the companies behind these products gave users (paid or otherwise) literally any mechanism to opt-out. It drives me mad that YouTube provides a "not interested" button, but refuses to respect my explicit wishes, even as a YouTube Premium subscriber. It wouldn't even be quite so bad if they just didn't bother to ask, at least then I could imagine that such a mechanism would be too complicated or something, but they bother to ask--and then they comply for the remainder of my session. Just make it permanent, you absolute ghouls. > This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control I'm thankful that I'm weird enough to be actively annoyed by the mere existence of Shorts. No chance of getting addicted. Don't use Instagram either so. There's no weakness in identifying an adversarial situation and acting accordingly. Your adversary is playing to win. Why should you forfeit the contest? Why is it more surprising that scrolling is addictive versus, say, putting a stick of combusting plant matter in your mouth and inhaling the smoke? Because you can describe the chemical interactions of nicotine with the human body to a high degree of accuracy, while the psychology of human attention in the 21st century is a subject that is very far from that cut and dry. That's why we invented a pill that helps with the former, but we might never have one that helps with the latter (although that would be nice) Nicotine is not very addictive. Cigarettes is about the physical addiction. Well this half true at best. There is the additional addiction of the physical action just like addicts can get addicted to the act of using a needle, but this is in addition to the severely addicting nature of the substance itself. Any drug that affects dopamine has the potential to be highly addictive. Nicotine is one such drug. I guess your comment is case in point. People still don't understand psychological addiction. Yes, nicotine is addictive, but it's a small component of cigarette addiction. If it was just about that then patches would be 100% effective (in reality their success rate is dismal) and people who never smoked would use patches to get a "hit". So I guess you could think of it the other way around. If you can believe scrolling is addictive then you should also be able to believe that putting a stick of burning plant matter in your mouth is addictive. Once you open your mind to the reality of psychological addiction you'll see it everywhere. Probably because scrolling feels harmless, while smoking never really did. The surprise is in the mismatch. On the contrary, smoking was not only seen as harmless but actually good for you and encouraged! > This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control Or if the platform owners had a minimum of scruples or empathy for their fellow human beings, instead of being disgusting money-hungry goblins concerned solely with their own personal wealth. I hate yt shorts with a passion, so that's one way of having "perfect self-control" right there. For Instagram I've been using DFinstagram on my Android which removes most features, except chatting and viewing profiles. Also using Firefox with the IGPlus extension which blocks reels.
But these make Instagram not feel as smooth or misses some features related to chatting, wish something that has this but still blocks algorithmic suggestions and ads existed. For YouTube Revanced is very nice, but I also just removed my account, which helped me decrease the amount I spend on YouTube. I respect any effort put towards this, seems like a decent project. Incidentally I used to love the SelfControl mac app, but it started having leaks in its ability to function a while back and now seems unmaintained. The irony being that even though it's open source, anyone who'd be inclined to fix/maintain it would need to not know how it works or sacrifice their ability to use it. Afaik there wasn't anything as effective for mobile. This is brilliant. I have dreamed of a way to force companies to build in parental control to block short-form media. For the kids (it's never for the kids). I would love to build a small physical device at my home wifi router level that detects these network patterns (certain IP addresses and data patterns). Then blocks those network streams. I think the correct fix is to intermittently block them so that the user gets a small drip and don't realize its broken so they don't try to find a workaround like turning off wifi. This is badly needed, but in my case on iOS. There are alternative frontends to most social networks, that can be used or adapted, however. https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends .. is one list.. but there are others (for example listing alternative Instagram frontends) In another thread here, the author of "TimeCap" mentions their iOS app. I just downloaded it and am currently trying it. It blocks a lot of the junk. I've only used it for 4 or 5 minutes now, but it does a lot of what I'm looking for, so it's worth a look. There is a fee ($30/yr or $3/week) so I'm currently trying the $3/week to see if it's what I want. You could also save yourself a lot of effort (and avoid being the constant subject of manipulation and exploitation) and not use centralized, capitalistic platforms like Instagram. Try Pixelfed ( https://pixelfed.org/ ) or something. When it feels like you constantly have to fight against the platform to try and scrap together a usable experience maybe its time to consider why you even use that platform. pixelfed is great and its such a breathe of fresh air compared to instagram. It's a fair ask, my honest considerations: - Tiktok: "I don't want or need this" -> Delete forever. - Pixelfed: "I don't want or need this" -> Don't install. - Instagram: "Still get a ton of value from seeing updates come in from family, don't want the option of getting deep into reels" -> Strict daily timer. - YouTube: "Still get a ton of value from the network of content published to the platform consistently, don't want the option of getting deep into shorts" -> ??? self control. The dilemma I have with YouTube feels like exactly what the OP's app is intended to solve. For those times when you need/want to see an Instagram post, imginn.com is 10,000 times better than Instagram (assuming the account isn't private). Not OP but... The universal answer to this somewhat cliche and paternalistic comment is always "but that's where my people are".. And I want to be where my people are. So I choose to make informed trade-offs. I already deleted the apps, and I mostly use Instagram and youtube in the browser. Any support for blocking reels in browser? Don't know about reels, but there's "Unhook" for Firefox which will hide Shorts and recommendations on YouTube. OMG thank you, unhook solves my biggest issue with youtube: whenever I would click pause to look closely at a slide, there's a bunch of huge recommendations that block the screen (I mean what kind of depraved mind comes up with something as user-unfriendly as that "oh you wanted to pause the video it's probably because you wanted to be distracted into watching something else in the middle of it, not because you actually had your own reason for pausing it, let me throw up these unrelated links at your face") Can confirm this one works great. Tons of nitty little options to customize what experience you get and the dev is clearly active. Nice work! Using the Accessibility Service for scroll detection is a clever approach.
I imagine keeping it lightweight while monitoring multiple apps could be tricky — did you run into performance or battery usage issues while testing? Thanks! I haven't seen any issue with battery or performance. But if you find any problem, feel free to drop me an email and I'll take a look Here's what I added to uBlock: "focus on blocking the app itself instead of the addictive feed"
" the "healthy" and "social" features"
maannn, this totally resonates with me, I totally agree and I always thought about this too
social media/instagram has positive parts (connect with friends) and extremely negative parts (reels)
I will try that I just don't understand the appeal of reels for the average user posting them (eg, not a "creator"). All comments come through as DMs which feels weird/creepy. The social/engagement is out the window; your friends can't comment on your content and reply to each other. It's just an effing weird one-way broadcast medium that's painful to deal with (might randomly play sound, might show photos for too long/too short, video with no easily usable scrubber, etc). The only "advantage" I see is that it's limited to 24h so you don't feel like you're making as permanent a record of your content. I'm sure some "younger" folks (who are probably 35 now) thought this was a good antidote to the generation before them being embarrassed by their old FB content, but man. I just hate reels. Thankfully I don't doomscroll or otherwise sucked into the content generated by randos; I mostly only see stuff my friends post, but man, I would pay good money to never have to see a "suggested" anything again. I'm curious. I don't use social media and am very extroverted. All of the communication, including sharing media, I do through WhatsApp (because it's most popular and widespread) or Signal (preferred). Does Instagram have any advantage in communication or media sharing over standard widely adopted messaging (and group messaging) apps? I actually built an app to do that for iOS. It’s called TimeCap, and it creates a web view of Instagram without reels and the explore page.
Then I use Beeper for the DMs. My daily social media use is less than 20 min per day now. Reels and Shorts derive their power from the fact that we pay higher attention to motion than to colors or shape. Blinking colors attract attention for the same reason. This observation makes it easy to neuter them: reduce framerate from 120 fps to 1 fps unless a touch is detected. This way scrolling will keep working as usual and videos can be watched if you keep pressing the screen, but the unwanted guests that abuse our attention will be left in the dust with 1 fps. Great for battery life too. On iOS and on desktop, I use my ad blocker to block shorts[1]. On iOS, this means not using the YouTube app, so I just uninstalled it and use the mobile website, which seems fine. Nice! I use ReVanced to mod apps to do this. https://revanced.app/patches?pkg=com.google.android.youtube Though I've been trying to avoid using apps without source code nowadays precisely because of things like this. Mods can break. I would love to be able to do this at the router level (to block on all my kid's devices). and/or block just youtube traffic (via app, websites, etc) This might be useful for you: https://pi-hole.net/. You can set your own DNS server at home and block specific domains it's kind of either-or though, I don't think you can block only suggested crap without blocking your friends' posts (and without blocking the ability for yourself to use IG for journalling or whatever) I the one reason I use iOS is the built in chat is pretty good and has most all my friends and family and so between that and many of the other built in apps I can avoid needing so many third party apps. So my scrolling fixation is mostly limited to the browser. One nice thing about meta is they ALL of their mobile webapps are terrible so they don’t get me, but YouTube shorts does very often. I wish there was a good way to block all shorts on YouTube through the browser. You can disable YouTube Shorts (kinda) by disabling history: https://sethmlarson.dev/youtube-without-youtube-shorts Shameless plug: I wrote a user script a while ago that removes everything from the Instagram explore tab when using Instagram in the browser. Confirmed to work on iOS Safari. Requires an app to handle user scripts (e.g. "Userscripts" by Justin Wasack). https://gist.github.com/jkbe/f362514f99765ac7a9dc343acfe6918... Is there anything similar to block/unblock them on network level? Some kind of lists, how reliable those lists are and how often do you need to update those? Curious if I can just have a shell script and will autoupdate everything on my router - install and forget solution. Apple have no interest in fixing the “one more minute” loophole in Screen Time so I don’t see them wanting to support this. I use Unhook for YouTube. It’s crazy how much better YouTube feels to use when you just remove 90% of it. There is actually a developer setting in Instagram to stop swipe up for next reel. You can still watch reels sent by your friends but you won't be able to swipe up. You can also remove reels icon from bottom bar.
If you are using MyIntsa or Revanced Instagram you can enable it (Android only).
Hope it was user option too. I have an entirely different problem with youtube, I open all the videos I want to watch from the main page and subscribed page in bew tabs and then sit through them for 3h straight. Shorts are non issue, when I open them the UI and playback pisses me off so quicky that I don't even watch all shorts from my subscribed channels. I love this and I’d especially love for the Instagram search field to be a textarea not a wall of things designed to distract me. My thoughts are that you need to turn notifications off and delete these apps instead of whatever this "we promise we're not abusing accessibility to mine your information" bullshit is We have a way of finding out what our actual, real friends are doing: it's called talking to them Excellent! Is this a browser extension or extension of the ScreenTime APIs? I find those apps that rely on screentime API to have too many hoops to jump through on user onboarding (not to mention a buggy app search interface in the ios sdk), so would be willing to test other strategies I find any kind of addiction has the same challenge towards breaking from the entrapment cycle which is to raise awareness and understanding then developing thoughtful thinking. Can an app really do that for us? Will it ever? Grounding yourself is such an organic thing to do. I partially agree. I think, first, it's necessary to make a commitment to breaking the addiction, and then raise the level of awareness in order to follow through with that commitment. I believe an app can help detect addictive triggers and help a person move from an "impulsive and automatic mental state" to a "state of awareness." Yeah they can help! I guess it would be good for apps to add to their message the call out to not over rely on them and seek help. Some cases are serious and this could be a bandaid fix that serious people rely on to tell themselves they are fine. Good idea. I resorted to my own listing of channels on YouTube and never going to the actual site. I'd also get sucked into shorts for hours. I the think the same can be said for any form of scrolling. My goal for is to create a better non addictive social platform. one of my dreams (I know it's technically kind of very hard to pull) is to be able to block them DNS level, the same way I block ads on my router level Using Accessibility Service is a very smart approach. Could you adjust your app (or make a different version) that automatically covers up ads or automatically skips them (e.g. in Instagram stories). Would be great for TikTok too. I’m surprised this is even possible? I didn’t realize one app could control the behaviour of another? This seems to be done through the accessibility services, which makes sense: they're built for apps like screen readers that must by nature be able to read the content of other apps. Each app has to be manually authorized by going to the accessibility menu, and there's a big scary pop up that says "enabling this app will allow it to see and interact with everything you do." I am an iOS user and I really need this. I love the Youtube App, but I can't stand having it auto open to shorts... They are truly mining my brain through this action. I love the concept, I went as far as patching the android app for instagram back in the day to stop me from scrolling (crashing was good enough). Haven't kept up to date unfortunately. It really has become a problem that I can no longer ignore. Thank you for the application. Does this work on the web version? I uninstalled the YouTube app but I keep watching shorts in Chrome anyway... I had the same problem, but then discovered that chrome extension StayFree (used to be called StayFocused or something) released and app for android, that can block sites on android too. Now, I just added links to all the short video pages of all major social networks, and it does work! Amazing! I don't know how you're doing it but there are no Shorts in YouTube now! Great idea. Does it work as a VPN? I always run into the problems with those: 1. You can only run one VPN at a time
2. My banking apps detect when there's a VPN active and won't run My friend needs this so bad, he has a Reels addiction so bad it makes me uninstall Instagram. I wish there was a feature to block being sent Reels. You are doing God’s work with this app. Installed and im amazed at how many tines ive habitually tried to use youtube shorts already after 2 hours. Awesome app, been looking for something like this for a while. Thank you! Does it block shorts even if i access youtube through in-app browsers on other apps like Telegram? At the moment, it works only for the YouTube native app, but I'm considering extending the functionality to web browsers. If this works as you say in iOS you would be my new hero! Joined the wait list, would be happy to be part of any test you like to run. Awesome! Feel free to email me at scrollguard [at] breakthescroll.com and I’ll add you when I have a beta ready. This is an amazing idea. I found that most productivity apps are overkill. Anyway to test? Is there an alternate web client for iOS that's only videos from channels you've subscribed to? Control Panel for YouTube lets you hide Home, Shorts, Related videos, plus anything you don't want to see in Subscriptions (including videos you've already watched), plus you can disable autoplay of random videos, block ads and more, in YouTube itself. I just uninstall the app on ios, and dns filtering, but with ublock on ios you can block it too. Being using it for a while and really helps not scroll so much, happy to see this in the top 1 of HN In my opinion tech is not the solution to issues of self-discipline. Your solution is for everyone in the world to foster a degree of self-discipline they've never shown any inclination for in the past? That doesn't sound like a scalable solution. These apps are so pervasive and their use adopted at such a young age (with a large degree of social pressure) it seems like legislation is the only way to curb these dark patterns. Like other commentators have said these are extremely well resourced companies looking for ways to exploit human psychology at scale. It's in a walled garden, compiled app so it's you have very limited ability to modify what you're shown. End-users of apps need to be given more power over what they can be shown and if that kills companies then to me that's an acceptable tradeoff. Unfortunately, we're well past that era. Certain tech is so "good", we need to actively fight it and, sadly, the only solution is more tech. Not related, see also media and nutrition. I don't agree. More tech will always have snickets we can bypass our best self-imposed gaols. The mitigations that work well for me are purely encouraging endogenous dopamine production. Hiking (or anything outdoors). Sleep improvement through regular rituals (no phone in bed). And, indeed, nutrition. Basically, the old adage of eat well, sleep well, get some exercise. That's how you get your groove back. As an avid hiker and weight-trainer, I couldn't agree more. Limiting exposure to these algorithmically curated (ultra-processed) stimuli is the best general advice. It's just that, sadly, the economic drivers (atm) for social media, food, news, and (most) traditional media are at odds with creating products for healthy consumption. In the interim, we can counter that exposure when requisite interaction is mandated with tech (ad-blocking, nutrition information, etc.). I do have hope that many of these economic drivers are starting to wane and there's still a chance of avoiding "Idiocracy" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy ) as a documentary. I want this for YouTube. it works for youtube shorts, and can be enabled for any app where you scroll since it detects if you are scrolling (linkedin, tiktok, reddit, etc) Love it. Do you have a way of supporting you? Thanks a lot! You can upgrade to the Pro version in the app, it’s a one-time payment for lifetime access to some extra features. If you have something else in mind, feel free to email me! Removing the apps was the biggest solve for me. I still maintain some social accounts, but not having the native app reduces time spent considerably. I am addicted to YouTube Shorts. It would be fine if it wasn't the first thing you see when you open YouTube. But often, I will open the app and then completely forget what long-form video I wanted to search for because the Shorts got me. It is insidious. The youtube app even asked me once - in some sort of survey - if I enjoyed seeing Shorts first thing and I said no. Nothing changed. If you use uBlock, adding this for LinkedIn can be great: www.linkedin.com##main[aria-label="Main Feed"] .scaffold-finite-scroll__content Removes all content, while still allowing you to post content (write-only media, innit?), and send and get messages etc. If only there was an app that can prevent me from doomscrolling hackernews and tech/programming subreddits, I would already be a 10xer. With ScrollGuard, besides the AntiReels feature, there is the "AntiScroll mode" where you can set scrolling limits on any app. So technically, it would work for HN and any subreddit as well. Better suggestion: block these sites entirely. Reddit and YouTube are wastes of time if you are just 'checking in'. Use YouTube-DL to download videos from specific creators and watch independently. I haven't figured out how to view the actually useful subreddits without having access to the frontpage feeds. Feeds are one of the worst things to be invented in the Internet age. I can't imagine how far behind we are because they've caught otherwise smart people in this insane dopamine trap. I keep Instagram to keep in touch with friends abroad. I keep Facebook because certain communities and events only happen there. For some of us, it is plain better to only block short form video. Both of those things could be solved by just talking to people, and talking to people does not require you to use addiction machines. I keep in touch with my friends abroad by emailing them when I think about them, and I get long form responses on what they are up to, not whatever is the public image filtered stuff that they may or may not be posting somewhere. Everyone has their own strategy. Why is it so difficult for half the people replying in this Show HN to accept that some people still want to use social media as social media and not just throw all of it out? > Reddit and YouTube are wastes of time if you are just 'checking in'. I disagree, YouTube has plenty of creative and interesting content if one has enough will to fight the nonsense that the algorithm shovels at you. Same goes for reddit actually, and reddit is pretty trivial to filter. Subscribe only to the communities that you find worth it and don't open /r/popular etc. > I haven't figured out how to view the actually useful subreddits without having access to the frontpage feeds. Maybe I don’t understand what you mean but I follow about 3 subreddits and I just go directly to them in a browser. I don’t use their app. Yes, that is really the problem. The landing page is just a smorgasbord of things to rile you up, distract you, draw you in, etc. I've tried filtering it, I've tried unsubscribing to all subreddits save for a few, nothing worked. Part of it is likely my own personality (I get bored and go on for "just a minute") but also, Reddit is designed, like all social media, to keep you engaged. Your method is best. I actually designed a minimalist Reddit client that did exactly that, you had no homepage, it was just a search box where you typed in the subreddit name and it took you right to a minimalist interface (no big images, no names, black and white interface, no voting, etc). I've been meaning to revive it but haven't got around to it. The nice thing for me was that I made the URL structure identical to reddit so it was as easy as swapping "reddit.com" to "reddit.qnzl.co" in a URL and it just worked. I don't find short videos addicting because I feel like I'm not getting enough context and information from short videos. I like long form videos. Glad that I don’t use social media and never created any FB, instagram, etc. accounts. Interesting how a lot of people have no self control. More power to you, but I don't understand the psychology of this kind of thing. If I have enough willpower to block a feature why not just use that will power to shut off the app after a while? I understand you're saying it's addictive, but if I were addicted to something then I'm going to be inclined to just remove the blocker. Anyway, this isn't a critique of your work, just my personal perspective. Been using YouTube recommendation blockers for a while. Personally I’ve never gone, “oh man I could go for some binge watching!” as much as something piques my interest and I get drawn down video after video of nothing. So removing any sort of advert for a video means it never even crosses my mind to turn off the blocker. I couldn’t believe how pervasive their recommendations are. We’ve got a little one and he recently developed a plane obsession so I try and watch a few YouTube videos of float planes or biplanes before bed when he’s restless and demanding ‘vrrooom’. You literally can’t use shorts to do it (which they make nearly
Impossible to avoid by putting them at the top of the search results and then interspersing them with the normal videos) because after 3 or 4 plane videos they start playing some maga bro science diet video or some AI voiceover video game trash. I can’t believe how little moral responsibility the employees and management at these companies feel. you can turn off your watch history and YouTube becomes a lot better No that definitely makes it worse IMO. The insight into what people really trend on YouTube is one I do not want to see. I've always figured that this type of thing is best used to stop you from getting addicted, not to stop an already-formed addiction. Or on the flip-side, when you've mostly overcome an addiction but need a helping hand to prevent relapse. I kicked the addiciton a few years back. However there are still things on facebook worth looking at, and there is no easy way to find those without also getting all the addicting things I don't want. I want to see my friend's life. However some of them don't have a life and instead are constantly sharing the "you won't believe what [other political side] just did" garbage. this is like putting a wall in front of, or just beyond the edge of, the slippery slope. the need to make an intentional choice or pause before doing the "getting stuck scrolling" behavior is an opportunity for you to catch yourself and see if that's what you really want. the platform is designed to capitalize on your slip ups in willpower. you can have great impulse control, but can you have it tirelessly, around the clock? this thing is lurking until you slip, as long as you're on it. attention capture is the goal. I guess my willpower just manifests itself in a different manner. If I lack the impulse control to prevent myself from opening up an app, it seems odd to me to start blocking particular features in the app to manage that impulse. you mean as opposed to going cold turkey? That makes sense! I personally have wondered about something like this for just FB Groups - I want to read my neighborhood buy nothing page, but I don't want a curated attention-grabbing experience in the full app. So I'd love like, an RSS reader for just group posts that let me direct open a post in the app if I wanted to respond. Like the chips by the checkout in the grocery store, the "path" you have to take into the app requires you to put on horse blinders if you want to complete what you came in for without getting "engaged". It's very tiring if you're at all susceptible to distraction. The best way I can explain it's that sometimes I had willpower, but I lacked the awareness needed to actually use it. For example, when I was studying, I used to automatically take a break and open Instagram and start watching Reels, it was just a reflex. Now, I have a barrier that makes me aware of what I'm doing, so from this "awareness", is easier to to enforce willpower I personally don't watch short form content, but I do use services that provide it (among other things). They push the short form content really, really hard and for me it's not a willpower issue, it's an "I don't ever want to see this feature again because I'll never use it" issue.
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www.instagram.com##article:has-text(Suggested for you):style(visibility: hidden !important; height: 300px !important; overflow: hidden !important)
www.instagram.com##article:has-text(Because you liked a post):style(visibility: hidden !important; height: 300px !important; overflow: hidden !important)
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www.instagram.com##article:has( > div > div > span:has-text(Suggested for you)):style(opacity: 0% !important;)
www.instagram.com##div:has(> span > div > a[href="/explore/"])
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! YouTube
! Remove blue box
www.youtube.com###clarify-box
! Remove shorts
www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:has(#rich-shelf-header:has-text(Shorts))
www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope:has(h2.ytd-reel-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has-text(Shorts))
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