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by mr_00ff00 1154 days ago
Crazy thing I find is how even with apps off, how quickly you will subconsciously type in “Reddit” or something into google.

I haven’t used social media in years, but I remember when I quit it how I would sometimes be on my laptop doing something and almost out of habit hit “Ctrl + T” for a new tab and type the first few letters of Reddit or instagram.

3 comments

HN is still social media. Not as heavy as others on the one hand but It’s also not free from all issues other forms of social media have. I just engaged with you and you might feel compelled to engage back. You might see yourself get downvoted for odd reasons and spend time wondering why or being emotionally effected by it. Rinse, repeat, etc.
The nice thing is the votes/points are much less prominent on this site, to the point I rarely even notice them. It also helps that whatever feature progression system there is... it's not highly advertised, nor are there fancy badges like "ten year club" that attach even more status to pointless internet points.
news.ycombinator.com might as well be /r/hackernews.
You got me there
> Crazy thing I find is how even with apps off, how quickly you will subconsciously type in “Reddit” or something into google.

Oh I'm relieved to hear that I'm not the only one.

Is there a browser plugin that only lets you visit a site once every N hours? I'd prefer this to electroshock punishment.

I am another person that still have problems opening up a tab, and trying to access social media, even though I know it is blocked on my computer.

My solution involves a Pi-hole. You can set a cron job to enable or disable rules.

Other solution I hear people doing is using OpenDNS.

Used to happen to me with some sites, what I did was 1) remove all the history of that domain so typing re<enter> would google "re" instead of autocompleting to reddit.com and 2) adding reddit.com to my ad blocker so I couldn't visit it at all.

Regarding apps, just delete them.

If you keep your phone's browser on private mode, this becomes a lot easier! (Long as you don't have any old bookmarks for that site.)

Combined with DuckDuckGo's !bang notation—since you no longer have autocomplete for visited sites—you can still get to useful places like wikipedia quickly.

Unfortunate side-effect is that by staying logged out everywhere, with no cookies, means you'll see every single "log in with gmail!", "use the app for a better experience" dark pattern popup, unless your adblocker covers annoyances.