Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

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> I really believe this social aspect of reachability of people (friends, haters or some people on internet you follow) is crucial. It's not about apps or a screen time, it's about social connection (even ephemeral) that gives this gratification and makes our brains summoning the apps.

This. I've concluded the same, observing my own interaction patterns. I use very little social media (would've ditched Facebook if not for Messenger, and Instagram if not for my wife liking to post "stories"). I do, however, have a huge HN problem. But it's not a consumption problem. I feel a compulsion to comment (like here, now). If I don't do it - e.g. because I can't find anything I feel like responding to - I quickly get tired and it's easy to close all those HN tabs.

I've tried breaks from HN. Each time, I somehow ended up on Reddit. Again, not consuming, but engaging in discussions on various subreddits that tend to be more about conversation than links. The few times I tried to stop myself from that, I quickly ended up on Mastodon, posting "tweet storms" and creating more interesting conversations.

So at least in my case, it's definitely about connection. Pure consumption has its draw, but I can kick that somewhat easily. But those kinds of conversation - which, for reasons I'm not sure of, have no equivalent in meat space - have me in an iron grip.

> I do, however, have a huge HN problem.

So I've noticed — you and pjc50 are on enough threads, with interesting enough comments, that you fit into the same bit of my brain otherwise used for celebrities like Tom Scott and Scott Manly.

(Weirdly, most other high-karma accounts don't get filed like that in my head)

In my case, it's likely because I post a lot of sophisticated sounding nonsense - I'm the biological ancestor of ChatGPT :). That, plus I tend to binge on HN, which makes my comments come in bursts - I either post nothing, or comment in 15 different subthreads across 5 different submissions simultaneously. So when you spot me in one place, you'll probably see me everywhere that day.

Other high-karma accounts likely post in less bursty mode, and only write high-value comments on select topics, so you spot them less.

I recognize your account too, and while I’m way less prolific I can relate to the same conversational draw and compulsion.

I noticed I had it less when working in the office in the Bay Area where it was more possible to engage in these kinds of discussions more frequently in person.

I suspect it’s just hard to get that kind of group together in the world outside of weird circumstances so it’s easier to find it online.

Interesting. I almost never comment on HN, and if I do, it tends to be without a lot of substance, like this one.

The thought of feeling a compulsion to participate in a lot of HN comment threads is very hard for me to imagine. My general reflexive feeling towards commenting is “waste of my time”. Particularly if there’s the risk to end up in some heated argument. Those are the worst.

> Particularly if there’s the risk to end up in some heated argument. Those are the worst.

Yeah; that's why I blocked twitter on my desktop and deleted the app and saved passwords on my phone.

Fortunately, HN doesn't seem to face those with anything like the same frequency, and flagged sub-threads seem to get snipped out of comment history at least by default, so I find here to be a good place for discussion.

You might ask to get limited. My account is limited to a about three comments per hour. If I exceed I’m told to slow down. dang didn’t like one of my posts—not sure why this solution was chosen but it was.

I’ve also set my maxvisit and minaway on my profile. So I can get more things done.

TeMPOraL has extensive experience with trying to limit HN distractions, see in part:

<http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2020-05-25-blocking-distraction...>

But see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125138>

I also recall him specifically asking dang to disable his account, which ended up being accomplished through either the "noprocrast" or "limit" features, though I can't find the comment (it was likely either on HN or the Fediverse).

Somewhat amusingly, I happened to catch his re-appearance on HN within 45 minutes of his resuming commenting, for whatever that has to say about the both of us.

Yup, I asked 'dang to ban me for 2-3 months, to force myself to have a break. 'dang suggested me to instead just put some large number in the 'minaway field and turn on noprocrast, achieving the same thing, and then to e-mail him if I need the setting to be reset.

I did just that, set noprocrast to a large number (IIRC, I copy-pasted MOST-POSITIVE-FIXNUM from a Lisp REPL), which amounted to banning myself for (IIRC) ~3000 years.

I planned the break to last for those 2-3 months. It actually lasted a year. In the process, I've learned a few things about myself:

- Somewhat quickly, I found myself commenting a lot on Reddit; when I tried to limit that, I ended up posting a lot on Mastodon; there were also brief moments spent on some niche discussion boards;

- My procrastination problem did not get better;

- Both Mastodon and some of the subreddits were... OK. They satiated (what I finally realized was) my need for interesting conversations on-line. At the same time, something always felt off. I eventually realized that those communities were a bit short on civility, intellectual curiosity, and related qualities. Switching to them from HN felt like switching from home-cooked meals to living on McDonald's and party food diet.

Which is why, after a year, I mailed 'dang to reset my noprocrast, and came back here - if this type of conversations are to be my drug either way, I could at least stick to a high-quality supply.

The real bonus for me is bouncing ideas off of people who can comment meaningfully on them.

That is becoming harder with time, and there are few sites which satisfy my need. I've taken largely to reading and commenting on my own. A closed discussion (or several) might also be useful.

I've found myself becoming increasingly annoyed at the general noise level on HN (and elsewhere). I'm not sure it's gotten worse here, though it doesn't seem to be improving. (There are exceptions, of course.) There's also far too often a lack of follow-through --- an exchange such as we're having here is quite rare.

I've also been doing some analytics of the HN front page over the past few days (some of that's in some recent HN comments, most is in my Mastodon stream, #HackerNewsAnalytics). I'd scraped every front page from 20 Feb 2007 to present (updated to 28 May 2023, and I can grab additional pages and update data fairly quickly).

Looking at the HN Leaders page, it's interesting to see how wildly different individual members' activity is. Quite a few of the leaders have very few front-page submissions (at least one has none at all), others have many hundreds. I notice you've had few FP submissions (though you do submit a fair number of items). I don't know quite how commenting on others' stories vs. submitting your own changes site dynamics and usage, but it's another element to consider.[1]

Mastodon occasionally clicks for me, though it's mostly with people I've known for a long time, and often across multiple platforms, typically HN & Google+ (you'd be in that group).

Mostly, though, I'm less enchanted by the state of online discussion of late.

________________________________

Notes:

1. For the curious: highest number of front-page (FP) stories from a Leaders profile is 1,183 (795 distinct sites). For 7 profiles there are no FP stories. Mean is 164.09, median is 104.5, standard deviation, 199.988. 10%ile: 3, 25%ile: 11, 75%ile: 217, 90%ile: 493.5. Distinct sites range from 0 (obviously) to 795, mean 102.77, median 53. It's quite a range.

It's quite a range.

I wonder how often dang gets asked to do that, because I just came off the same thing.

When I quit a site, I change the recovery email to a burner, change the password to line noise, and log out. It doesn't stop the pangs, but it does stop me from logging in. I halfheartedly planned to quit HN at 10k karma, but that came and went. One of these days...

The most effective method I've found has been to start using a Google service and wait for it to be sunset.

Other than that: yeah, I've generated and set some very long (40-80+ chars) passwords which I've promptly deleted from my own records on occasion. I don't think I've swapped out email addresses though that's an option. I could see that resulting in an account being hijacked though, depending on how email addresses are handled in the account-recovery flow.

Every place I've used that, email addresses are not publicly visible. To compromise that, they'd need to guess the very long random email address and its very long random password.

I've seen instances where the password recovery workflow indicates the email address to which a reset request has been sent, or other mechanisms by which addresses may be revealed.

That's far less frequent now, and definitely not best practice.

However there may also be bugs and data breaches which reveal such information.

One way to moderate this is to remove them from your phone and just access them from a PC end of day. There is no value from 24/7 instant access to Reddit or HN (or the majority of network connected apps if you think about it), as opposed to browsing for an hour or two at the end of the day if you have some downtime.

I wholeheartedly agree. I wish it would work for me, though.

In fact, I dislike browsing Reddit and HN on my mobile, as even though Reddit Is Fun (for Reddit) and Firefox (for HN) are excellent for consuming, I'm in it for participation, so I'm limited by touch keyboards, which universally suck.

At this point I've pretty much given up. During my HN-satiated moments, I can't devise a plan that my HN-deprived self won't overcome. Case in point: the last thing I ever posted on my blog, three years and five days ago, was about setting up a HN block at a router level. I was so happy with my trick that I had to share it with the world. Guess how long that trick worked? Less than a week after publishing the blog post.

Just a quick tip - but I understand it's possibly not ideal.

You have a lot of karma, and I've noticed that the karma counter going up feels somewhat addictive. The existence of a "persona" (it's possible you think of your identity here as slightly different from your daily identity) that is only supported by your commenting also might encourage commenting.

I'd propose to nuke your account by changing the password to gibberish (or asking a significant other to put a weird password and keep it written somewhere if you reaaaally want to keep access to your account) and to use HN anonymously. Just give it a try - if it's really an issue for you this has helped me with other things.

Excellent tip. A lighter form, that I use personally for Reddit, is to not sign in persistently. I always use a "private" browser window when I log in, so the cookie isn't saved, and the next time I want to log in I have to go dig the (unmemorizable) password out of my password manager again and go through the whole flow. For me it creates just enough friction.

Can you imagine a form of online social interaction that would lead to more fruitful results?

I recently replaced my reddit/hackernews morning habit with reading poetry and a website I really like.

I identified the driving emotion, novelty-seeking. It drives almost all of my social media use. So I thought of visiting websites where content is posted daily (and pretty much only daily) but highly curated. To my surprise it worked instantly with no friction. So much so that it took me days to realize I hadn't checked hn in a while.

Like you, responding and engaging with comments was what engaged me most with reddit, and at the same time it caused the most negative and wasteful emotions. But it wasn't really about the social aspect, it was all about that orange envelope. In that case, simply logging out helped a ton.

I think plans of rigorous prohibition don't work because they're one single point of failure. Instead, addiction like behaviors are best tackled on multiple fronts: some introspection, some amount of self control/will power, some blocks/hurdles, a more positive replacement. And overseeing all those, a mindfulness practice where you can identify when your emotions arise, both that pull you to your habit (nip those in the bud) and those that drive you away from it ("I should get up", do it right away).

This is my solution for Reddit and HN - which are my "problem" sites as well.

Like just now reading this thread anonymously on my phone and then at a later time, after some more contemplation, going to my computer and writing this comment. That break does three things. First, I get to think about why I am commenting. Second, if I decide that I do still want to comment, I've had some "offline" time to think about it. Third, by the time I am back on my computer I may have just forgot about it, or find that someone had already made the same comment as I had intended.

Only about 1/5 of the time will I comment on something that - after reading on my phone - I had felt compelled to comment on.

Reddit I never look at on my phone. I came late to Reddit - maybe a year ago. But I'm now a Reddit junky and probably spend an hour a day on it. Reddit does make it easier to avoid using on one's phone. For one, they aggressively push their app and I don't install apps. Second, they don't let you look at any content they deem "sensitive" without logging in. The result is that I will only use Reddit on my computer and that for me greatly limits my time spend there as I don't view my computer as an entertainment device.

I've largely taken to the "multiple devices, only one with a sign-on" approach.

I'll read HN / linked articles from my e-ink tablet, which has Internet but for which I've severely restricted any authenticated services.

If I want to comment, I've got to 1) remember and 2) go to a Real Computer.

(Having a full keyboard available is another game-changer. Soft keyboards / touch input on a mobile device not only hugely increases my typo rate but my ability to think and compose, it's brain damage.)

My daily phone time is down by about 70% and the solution for me ended up being simply to start putting the phone out of sight and out of reach when I don't need it, with notifications turned off. In a drawer or in a bag or something.

Seems too simple to conquer this monstrous addiction, but it did. The desire to surf Reddit or HN or whatever else just dissipated over time because the thing was no longer around to distract me. If it rings I'll still generally hear it, dig it out and pick it up. I use it to browse if I'm eating alone or using the toilet 'cause I don't know what else to do with that time. (Maybe I should do nothing, or read a book, like we all did before the phonedemic.) That's about it.

The vast majority of stuff you do on the phone is better done on a PC anyway, like I write better quality messages to people now because I'm doing it on a real keyboard.

I still paw at my pocket sometimes out of habit like a trained rat. Gross. What a horrible era of history the phonedemic was, I'm glad it's coming to an end for me.

I made the move from Facebook > Reddit > HackerNews for similar reasons.

I've been looking for the next step.

Is it

> magazines?

> books?

> phone calls?

> irl networking?

It’s all of these, yes, but I still open HN every time I get some down time. While it feels very useful to me, I feel that I would be better served with a more condensed version of what I’m after here.

I think I’m proposing a mailing list?

It's ironic that whilst the Great Benefit of the Internet was supposed to be the elimination of gatekeepers ... I'm finding that the gatekeeping provided by traditional publishing is actually quite useful.

Much of what I read is books or magazine articles. Much of that published well before the Internet age.

I've been attempting to track most-salient items as well through what I call "BOTI", or best of the interval, a sort of round-robin file (think 43-folders, described in David Allen's Getting Things Done), where I keep track of the n best items I've encountered in the previous interval (day, week, month, year, etc.). The key is that the list is limited by both time period covered and slots on the list, and it rolls over when completed or filled.

My success in implementing that has been less than stellar, though I'm finding that making the system more flexible means I use it more consistently, even if it's far from the ideal description.

Another useful feature I've discovered is the Einkbro browser's "Save to EPub" feature. This can save not only an individual article to a file, but multiple articles to a file. I'm finding that my "BOTI-Jan-2023" is actually more of a "BOTI-2023" (or at least "BOTI-2023H1"), but it's becoming an impressive document.

It's also making clear just how much online content I'm attempting to read, as it's running (depending on formatting) about 400--500 pages of text. Which makes my lack of actually keeping up with my appetite somewhat less dispiriting.

(Though I'm still Far Too Easily Distracted by Teh Hawt New Shinay....)

Other discussions/descriptions of BOTI: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>

As I mentioned in another comment, I took that next step. The replacement for me was articles from a website whose content I really appreciate, and reading a daily poem.

The problem with, for example books is that they might not fulfill that craving for something novel. The book is already there, and I already have a daily reading habit, it doesn't interfere with my brain going "I wonder what's new in X site".

At the end of the day it comes to quality before quantity. More curated content can lead to you engaging more fully with it, which means you pull away satisfied after a shorter amount of time.

The next step could be language learning via Duolingo (which is also highly addictive) or browsing memes on 9gag.

Maybe getting a small phone like the iPhone Mini is a solution, because while it does phone things (music playing, photos) great, the small screen discourages social media and web surfing. Add a book case to the phone so you only see the screen when you decide to see it. This may remove the need to constantly look at the phone.

Depending on what else is going on in my life, I’ll consume HN just once a week via

https://hackernewsletter.com/

A Usenet gateway to HN with a daily pull of the feed like we used to have in the 90s. It’s probably nostalgia speaking, but…

Reading the comments here (and the short article) /exactly/ reminded me of usenet and bitnet[feeds]. I am glad I kicked that habit in the late '80s/early '90s, it made it simple to avoid later social media.

(I still miss them, but not Eternal September)

Figured it out. I'm craving more Discord.

> I do, however, have a huge HN problem.

You and me both. But, if I'm to have a serious addiction problem, I suppose I can live with this one.

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