Stop the scroll: Muting everyone on social media can put you back in control | Hacker News Reader

Stop the scroll: Muting everyone on social media can put you back in control

seanbolton.dev

44 pointssbolt40 comments

The first thing I did when I got my first smartphone this year was remove all of the pre-installed social media apps and turn off notifications for anything other than alarms, phone calls and texts.

I can access the web and email, but I usually don't.

It would drive me insane having random interruptions every few minutes from my phone. I don't see how anyone could live that way.

When I do use social media, I use my desktop computer, with a screen big enough for my failing vision, and I can usually scroll the days feed in less than 5 minutes each for email, twitter, fb, discord.

HN on the other hand, is a bit of an obsession.

[Edit - apps were pre-installed]

How could removing the social media apps have been the first thing you did? Would you not have had to install them first before you could have removed them?

Pretty much every android device is subsidized by carriers and sold with Facebook and other apps preinstalled.

IIRC some android devices have facebook pre installed.

OR... delete your social media accounts and stop using it. Especially on the phone. I don't use my phone for anything that would encourage me to scroll over and over.

Aside from the ringer (which is always set to vibrate), I disable notifications for every application. Even e-mail, and yes, WhatsApp/text! If it's important to require my attention in the short-term, they'll call.. and if it's an emergency, they'll leave a voice message - of which I have notifications turned on. Most people won't leave a voice message if it's not that important.

In short, I don't react to my phone. I use it, if I need to look something up- use the map, take a photo, listen to a song. If something requires me to react it, I either silence it (if it's important) or uninstall it.

I want a flip phone (or slider) with a full qwerty keyboard for texting and that has GPS/maps and that's it. Oh and the ability to use it as a hotspot.

It's asking a lot for something that doesn't have a lot.

I don't answer my phone -- if it's important, they'll text! Voicemail I run through and clean out once or twice a year. Leaving voicemails is something folks do just to feel retro anyway.

I'm probably a bit younger than you -- when I do clean out my voicemail, these days, it's usually just spam anyway. Even businesses send me text notifications as appointment reminders. Once in awhile it's my mom, out of an old hard to break habit, but even that hasn't happened in a year or two.

There's rarely good reason I should have to pause my podcasts just because someone wants to communicate.

> There's rarely good reason I should have to pause my podcasts just because someone wants to communicate.

The fact that someone wants to communicate, is sometimes reason enough.

I've often used ignore on various forums/etc to mostly adjust signal-to-noise. I'll still unhide such posts periodically though, since I generally don't have anything personally against such users and sometimes need context.

One site that handles this use case terribly though is Discord, where anyone ignored by design can discover they've been ignored by not being able to add emote reactions to posts of yours and more recently they've added an absurd viewport shake when doing so to make it even more obvious. When I became aware of this I un-ignored most users since I didn't want anyone getting the wrong impression but it'd be nice to have more control over content seen without such social side effects.

This is a fascinating use case. You’re describing something closer to “redact” than mute, it seems, and this seems like a great function to give people control over what they see. Something that doesn’t totally erase someone’s existence from your view, but it does obfuscate it. Like Discord’s “spoiler” tag that requires a click to see, but at the user level.

There isn't much Discord does right. That everyone disappeared from IRC is the only reason I'm even on it, usually, to badger them all back into IRC, or perhaps Matrix.

Why not just set your discord status to DnD?

Rather than it being about wanting to receive fewer notifications (I already manage what type of notifications I see) it's about hiding content from users who, for example, consistently reduce the quality of what I'm looking for in discussions.

It's not that I dislike the users per se (in fact I chat with them like normal at times by toggling the visibility of messages) it just helps focus/curate the experience, especially for some chats which get spammy.

it's important to consider the potential drawbacks of this approach as well. By muting everyone, you may miss out on valuable information and perspectives that you might not have considered otherwise.

What you describe is FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and, as far as I'm concerned, is just another marketing trick.

If someone or something truly was valuable to you, whether in the present or in the future, you wouldn't even consider blocking them. The mere fact you are even considering blocking them means they are of no consequence to you.

The smart man figures out what he can get rid of, not what he can add.

It'd be nice if you could make it so everyone unmutes for 30 minutes each day, then gets muted again, and that 30 minute window can't be extended.

It's probably enough to mute the worst offenders. I found that muting @ElonMusk made Twitter a lot more usable.

You can also mute certain words which is incredibly helpful. eg. Muting “trump” “Elon” “Tesla” “nft” “bitcoin” made my timeline readable again.

I am waiting for the ML-driven browser extension that can block a person's entire existence. Images, references to, articles of, screenshots of tweets, videos of. Like they never even existed. That'd be the dream. And it's actually something I would pay for.

I've thought about this often too. I want to stay connected to current events but there are a few humans who've made their entire purpose in existing to be talked about - the Musks and Trumps of the world.

This is an extreme form of greed, it's just as bad as hoarding wealth or power. They are attention mad, as a equivalent to power mad. Someday I hope I can tell my computer "mute Musk please" and free myself of their greed.

> I am waiting for the ML-driven browser extension that can block a person's entire existence.

I don't know how pretending someone doesn't exist is going to help. Maybe re-evaluate what you're always viewing. I don't usually see references, comments, or anything related to Trump or Musk because I just simply don't use social media.

Stop letting them (whoever you want to block) live in your mind rent-free.

Years ago, I changed my bookmark for Facebook to the Events page [0]. Just that helped a lot, because the page has the notifications / messages jewels, but no feed; so getting to the feed requires waiting for FB to load, being dissatisfied by the jewel state, clicking on the feed, and then waiting for the feed to load.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/events/

That's literally what I did in Facebook, but then it revealed what I already knew: it's completely useless to me.

So I just kept NOT using it as usual!

Simpler way: just turn off notifications. Look at it when you have time and you want to, not because your phone beeps.

Ideally notifications would only be used when your work colleagues or family members are trying to reach you, not for some random person's comment.

I have all notifications turned off except for telegram on my phone. That's quite nice. And there's no vibrate or sounds, my phone is always on silent. I check my email plenty enough. I don't need notifications that I have emails. Not looking at Facebook or Twitter anymore, cutting out Reddit, and only looking at hacker news, also helped a lot.

I did this followed later by uninstalling all social media apps. I use their webpages instead but i log out when i don't want to use it anymore, like closing a door. Really effective. I am off Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. I only open Facebook once in a while to see if my kids parent group have written anything.

I put the phone on mute and vibration off a few years. That's a best way for me to focus on what I am doing.

Mute everyone on social media is a good idea. But I prefer mute anything interruptive, when I want to check social media it still there.

I unfollowed everyone on Facebook and it was very effective at getting me to stop using the platform. Now I just keep it for occasional event invites and to look up old info on people I know. I check it every few months or so.

It is a nice idea. But I don't believe Facebook actually follows through on letting you mute or unfollow people. Their posts will slowly creep back into the main timeline that you see.

It works, you can unfollow everyone and groups. I also use a news feed eradicator on my desktop for chrome.

I found a script to do it a few years ago. My home feed is completely blank unless I add a new connection, then I just need to unfollow them too.

For Facebook I installed the FBPurity.com web browser add-on. I set the feed to chronological and set it to not show things my friends like, share or comment on. Now all I see are things my friends actually post. Some of them never post. It now takes less than a minute to scroll through my friend's posts each day. I also don't have the FB app on my phone, just FB Messenger.

I’m being actively rate limited by HN even though I haven’t posted anything since I walked my pup and made dinner. Dang I’m not posting too fast! You slow down. Thanks!

Edit: this went through after I walked my pup again. We didn’t slow down any. We were really slow to begin with.

Edit 2: I had actually relevant thoughts, but I don’t have them on my pasteboard anymore because HN told me I was posting too fast so I went and walked for awhile with my pup.

If the goal is to mute everyone, then an alternative solution and more effective solution would seem to be sign out/delete the myriad apps.

If you’re really concerned have a friend to set a random password on your accounts, etc

All this assuming that you have reasons that make deleting your account impossible (my wife’s university would organize things in FB for example)

Or try engaging with random people on the fediverse. Seems all of the people who used to write on tumblr and the YouTube comments migrated over there.

A few days there might make you swear off social media forever.

Is the fediverse not social media? Or is it just that right now there's less humblebragging, raging, ragging and attacking?

Maybe it won't emerge. Here, dang and others remind us to play nice. Who does that tooting their own horn?

You sort of missed my point.

It’s where some of the worst most toxic interactions I have ever encountered come from. Take the worst of YouTube and tumbler and then amplify it. Twitter by contrast is a paradise. HN for all its pedantry is at least useful most of the time.

It does not affect me personally. But I could see others being attacked on it then going and doing very stupid things.

A short time on the fediverse if you do something that someone doesn’t like might be enough to ensure you never want to interact there again.

Ah sorry I missed the /s implicit or otherwise (no insult or attack intended)

No worries at all. I probably should have made it more extreme to get the point acros, my bad.

And this is why I like comments here.

Did this years ago. Can’t recommend it enough.

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