I'm rebelling against the algorithm | Hacker News Reader

I'm rebelling against the algorithm

varunraghu.com

72 pointsVarun0850 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh yes this is a good one! I've been doing it for years. I've managed to sensitize a few people about it enough to change habits.

The biggest quality-of-life difference is turning off the notifications. Turn em all off by using DoNotDisturb mode 24/7. No notifications ever. Send calls to voicemail, check messages and E-mails on your own schedule, not when other people interrupt you, and use apps purposefully when you want to, not when the apps want you. I've been living this way for at least 10 years now and it's wonderful. Those calls and texts you used to think were urgent really aren't.

Perfect length post, perfect CSS, perfect font family.

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

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

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

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

Unfortunately yes, yes definitely, yes & yes, and yes.

I know it's a grey area but I would not consider SMS social media.

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

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

I've seen this take a few times, and I'm glad it works for you, but when I originally tried it (long before the super aggressive social media algos) I ended up chronically checking to see if new rss stuff was available just as frequently; it was the possibility of missing or discovering some news or interesting article that did it.

Now it's at most just websites, out of sight out of mind unless I'm really bored. Actually relevant or important information doesn't change that frequently, and I'd rather my favorite websites make a deliberate editorial effort to surface worthwhile stories I can check in on maybe once a week. The content drip, self selecting or not, is just too habit forming and not necessary at all.

I've done https://deja.de.hueve.ar/hn for this - it updates every (Argentinian) midnight with HN's frontpage, so I have a fixed amount of stories to read per day, and it stops my compulsion to open HN's homepage without thinking every time I'm bored.

I wanted to do the same for the two local newspapers I read, but I think they have Github Actions blocked so the script can't reach them. And I didn't bother to search for a workaround.

Making things slow again is a good anxiety countermeasure.

I’ve been building my own RSS feeds for sites that don’t have them

Then I can filter them and add actual content to them so I can determine whether the link is worth opening or can I just hit ‘j’ to get to the next one in FreshRSS.

For example my HN feed grabs the link’s open graph preview and embeds it to the feed. It also filters by comment count and score before even adding it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

don't you think any non algo social network eventually becomes an algo one? there will be a feed of some kind that you did not curate..

There will be a chronological feed comprised of one's friends' posts. It doesn't have to be curated.

Edit: Raising VC funding is the main cause of enshittification. We don't plan on doing that. It is not gonna cost us that much to run - there are not many non-techies who are ready to quit dooms-scrolling. Techies go for sites like Mastodon. So it will be a small group of people who would find this useful and that's enough. It is something we have always wanted to build and building and maintaining is fun.

I wish we didn't stuff being "anti-algorithm" under "minimalism". It's just not the same thing. I don't want to go minimalist even if I respect the folks who do.

I wish I could pay for YouTube and other apps and they'd stop cramming their decisions on my feed and instead let _me_ control the experience. At least, let me have reverse-chronological feeds on my home, mute/block channels I don't care about, hide content types and give me more recommendations based on the things I actually like or prefer to consume at that point. I still want to use their apps but almost all of their product leads have decided even paying for something like "Premium" wouldn't entitle a customer to having control over their experience. It's gross.

FreeTube and PipePipe largely solve this problem for me. I just subscribe to people I am interested in and watch their videos. If they link or recommend another creator I have a quick browse and subscribe there too, or not. When I get bored, I unsubscribe. Everything is chronological. It's like the good old days of mailing lists/usenet/blogs/RSS except with video.

The only downside is that it's still centralized behind the scenes so you still get the weird algorithm gimmickry inside the content like people superstitiously saying or not saying certain words in the first few minutes, nonsense like "nothing to add, just commenting for the algorithm", that weird tendency to dopily repeat the same sentences around what I guess would be an ad break if I ever saw ads etc. I try to mitigate this by sending money to specific creators, showing that an alternative income source to YouTube could be possible, but of course that's still funneled through Patreon which is another centralized for-profit service that has a vested interest in getting creators to provide membership tiers and value-adds that chip away at their motivation to put out meaningful content that enriches broader society.

I've come to think that centralization is a bigger problem than "the algorithm". I don't remember having these issues anywhere near as much when people shared their stuff independently. To be fair, though, back then most people were doing it as a hobby outside of their day job.

DFTube (distraction free) is a browser plug-in that kills 99% of algorithm html. ublock origin kills ads. Perfect YouTube experience. So good I’d pay yearly for it.

I do something similar with the built-in functionalities of uBlock/Adguard to hide the annoying bits of YouTube out of my sight. But I’m remarking that this shouldn’t be necessary when one’s already paying YouTube in hopes to get an unshittified experience.

Apologies—I’m actually saying the same thing, too, fudged my wording. Meant to say our shared dream for a barebones YouTube experience is worth a yearly subscription to me. No algorithmic engagement features, no HTML suppression, just a search bar and videos.

How do you not understand that creating and participating in a Reddit focused on digital minimalism moves you overall in the complete opposite direction of digital minimalism?

I didn't create that subreddit BTW. But it is good to have a community

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

I wrote it up here:

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

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

Can you share a link to the extension? Is it available for Firefox / chrome (edge I guess based on your job/profile)

Thank you so nuh

Can you share a link to the extension? Is it available for Firefox / chrome (edge I guess based on your job/profile)

Thank you so much

Unhook extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/unhook-remove-youtu...

That's the one I use now, it has more features than the one I made.

Thank you so much. Have a great day

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

Hope it helps in remembering to call friend and family!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I personally have seen:

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

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

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

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

When you do a small study of 17000 users, it is a humbling experience to discover peoples behaviors are not as unique as most assume.

I wouldn't say they were nudged, but rather just addicted to engagement.

There are a lot more fun people out there, but ones shoveling misery are just really memorable. Have a wonderful day =3

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why not?

Facebook creates shadow profiles for nonparticipating users, where the advertising API is pervasive on the web and android apps.

See Privacy Badger for details... =3

Some organizations use social media as their primary (if not their only) means of communicating with members. My gym, for example, uses Facebook to post day-to-day announcements.

That doesn't mean it's not possible to opt-out. It just means you need to give up something to do it. I'm not on Social Media (unless you consider HN to be), so it is possible.

What could be so important from a gym to warrant day-to-day announcements anyway?

I go to the gym regularly...

This is a class-centric gym, so announcements are about changes in schedule and programming, especially if there's inclement weather.

Just show up and do whatever they’re doing? No need to know in advance.

"Just waste your time traveling to the gym when you could have known in advance that the class was cancelled and made other plans instead."

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

Can you try to look for something from a timer’s angle? Block the website/app after a certain minutes per day or something like that. Otherwise, can you experiment with doing just one thing at a time, even if social, say -- start the timer on your watch for 10-min and do just your Instagram scrolls but when that timer stops, you stop Instagram and do your work or something else.

Here's what worked for me:

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

1.1) Switched all important notifications to email.

2) Uninstalled the web browser from my phone.

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

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

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

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

>Instead of reading the news I just ask an AI (Grok is good at this) to summarize the latest headlines and I can ask any many follow up questions as I’d like.

So just to make sure I'm understanding you - you think it's a good idea to cut yourself off from the outside world and then proceed to get your news solely from an AI that is known to be actively manipulated by its CEO to output disinformation? If I wanted to immerse myself in a false reality, this would probably be the best possible way to do it. If you are seriously doing this, please stop.

Ok, sorry I mentioned wrong AI, replace it with whatever your choice of AI is that has web access and is good at summarizing current events and answering questions about them.

I come up against this argument a lot, that by stopping reading the news I've somehow "cut myself off from the outside world". I still read books, study history, do research on topics that interest me, talk to my friends and family about what's happening in the world. I'm not cutting myself off from the outside world, I'm cutting myself off from simulacrum of the world created by news media and social networks.

Just be careful you're not moving from the news-media created simulacrum to an equally bad AI created simulacrum.

Fair! Is it too much to hope that I can escape all simulacrums?

This is cringe

This reply is cringe

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

- Infinite scrolling

- Use of recommendation algorithms

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com