> to locally remove some sites via an /etc/hosts entry
+1 for this. It helped me a lot to reduce usage. I can now go for weeks without checking news sites, and I must say my mental health has been much better for it. The need for information consumption is still there, but I started reading books and papers, not blogs and news articles.
To get the /etc/hosts block going on your machine, follow these steps:
1. run: `sudo vim /etc/hosts` and press `i` to enter insert mode
2. add a line with `127.0.0.1 domain.com` for each website you want to block, e.g
127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com
127.0.0.1 hckrnews.com
127.0.0.1 twitter.com
127.0.0.1 www.bbc.com
127.0.0.1 bbc.com