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Comment by swimf | Hacker News Reader

I've never admitted this online but screw it.

I've been a drug user for about 2/3 my live. Battled with prescription pills the longest.. managed to kick the habit with meth.

YouTube is as addictive as anything i just mentioned. More so if you're in a group testing future services in return for an "ad free" experience (you know the ones which claim to"improve Google services").

Everything else everyone has said is true. I've managed to leave social media, my friends, most of my family, several jobs, but you know who i can't get rid of? Can't even use a damn mobile phone without agreeing to let it continue. FML it sucks and it's never going to get better for any one given the ineffective laws get made which constantly favor everything about that business model.

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Thanks for that comparison. I have never truly experienced addiction without losing self control for whatever reason. I can start and stop smoking, drugs never took a hold. I feel the pull for sure, but am able to stop.

But I lose several hours a day to YouTube. Ever since Shorts made their way into my life, I start and end most days with an hour of watching bullshit I don't even like. And before I open it I tell myself "don't.. this is that moment" and do it anyway. I usually stop a session due to real life commitments or battery life.

Deleted the app but use browser. I've considered getting a dumb phone. I've never hated something that my body loves so much

I was in the same exact boat as you. If you have uBlock origin, you can add these custom filters to remove shorts: https://ronangelo.com/how-to-hide-shorts-videos-on-youtube/

I have not missed them one bit, nor had any desire to unblock them. Like you, I would mindlessly watch them in between tasks at work, and felt duller and worse for it every time my little binge ended. I also got a dumbphone, which I honestly love.

Good luck to you and kudos for caring about your health!

Thanks. Good tip for desktop, will install. But the main vector for me is my phone. Which dumbphone did you pick up?

You can use ublock origin on firefox mobile, which will let you use those filters.

I ended up grabbing the light phone 2. I really have been enjoying it!

I'm lucky that I've never battled with addiction to hard drugs, but I have struggled for 10 years with cigarettes and all of my adult life with weed and being online. Personally, while weed has had the most detrimental effect on my life (partly by synergizing so well with mind-numbing time-wasters), the hardest one for me to get rid of is 100% my toxic relationship with the Internet.

It's incredible to me that we all have the powerful dopamine dispensers in out pockets; trained on billions of users and well calibrated to our personal pitfalls. I find the mechanisms of addiction and the emotional loop they put you in to be virtually the same between the 3, despite them being so different in how they are "ingested" and affect your brain.

ublock blocks YouTube ads.

One way I manage the addictive problem with YouTube is to heavily use the do not recommend channel feature when I find something garbage or unproductive.

Here in Australia the govt forces YouTube to surface local (read: Murdoch) news channels in the home page despite them all being mostly hated and consistently downvoted by me (no way any recommendation system would continue to recommend me their stuff).

Thankfully, you can "not recommend" those channels and the whole "news" section goes away. You can still search "news" when you want to see it but tbh I hardly ever do unless I hear something is going on that I'm concerned about.

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I'm so amazed by what ChatGPT can do these days.

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