Show HN: I made a browser extension that hides distracting feeds
hidefeed.com
hidefeed.com
For the last several months, I've been working on a Chrome/Firefox extension that hides distractions on sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit, and Gmail.
Today's websites are designed to suck us in and keep us engaged by providing a never-ending stream of content. The longer we stay, the more ads we'll see, the more products we'll buy, and the more we'll boost their revenue and engagement metrics. Companies might claim to put their users first, but their business models provide powerful incentivizes to get people hooked.
If you care about spending your time well, you might try avoiding these sites entirely. But that's often difficult in practice because these sites offer genuinely useful services. YouTube is designed to make us spend hours falling down their recommendations rabbit hole, but it's also the best place to learn how to change a tire. How can we get the good parts while avoiding the bad?
The solution I developed mirrors how I manage my weak spot for sweets. I have a tendency to devour snacks nonstop until I feel sick and regret all my life decisions. I originally thought the answer was more self-control, and that I should be able to sit in a room full of chocolate bars and maintain the willpower to ignore them all. But no matter how hard I tried that strategy, I'd eventually succumb to temptation and go right back to binging.
Over the years, I realized that my approach was entirely misguided. And I finally found a solution that worked: I simply stopped buying sweets and bringing them home. My problem completely disappeared once there was nothing to eat. Changing my environment turned out to be much easier and more effective than developing a superhuman level of willpower. The key was not learning to resist temptations, but removing them entirely.
That's the core idea behind Hide Feed: It hides temptations on websites so that you can get things done without distractions. That means being able to respond to messages on Twitter without seeing the feed. Or find a particular email in Gmail without seeing all the unread ones. Or ordering items on Amazon without seeing advertisements for things you don't need.
I designed Hide Feed with your privacy as a top priority. Here's what that means:
- Hide Feed requests access only to the sites you select, not all sites.
- Hide Feed contains zero tracking or analytics code.
- Hide Feed makes money by offering a premium tier, not by selling your data.
- Your browsing history stays in your browser and is never transmitted.
Hide Feed is part of a suite of tools I'm developing to help people spend their time well, and I'd love to hear your feedback! Thanks so much.
DK
P.S. If you'd like to read about the process behind developing Hide Feed, I've been keeping a daily, public journal at https://roadtoramen.com