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Comment by icameron | Hacker News Reader

I decided to use this as a good excuse to delete Reddit. I find myself going to it too often, and scrolling for too long, and afterwards I feel worse about the direction of humanity and down about the world. I’m not getting anything positive from it so for my own mental heath I’m deleting the app.

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I quit reddit a while ago and found it very rewarding. I used to argue with people all the time -- yes under subreddits like r/ProgrammerHumor because I disagree with other people's opinions or because their technical understanding is simply wrong -- anyway, it turned out to be a great decision. I realized that most of the time it is pointless to convince other people of anything (people won't admit you are right or don't have the background to understand it), and I should just simply spend my time elsewhere. Most of the memes on ProgrammerHumor are some form of reposts anyway. I spent time on my hobbies and actually reading/learning/trying out new stuff in programming, and my mental health is in a much better place now.

I quit Reddit half a year ago after 15 years of daily usage. 11/10, would quit again.

Did you go to extensive lengths to block yourself from easily getting there or just will power?

I stopped using reddit about a year ago (shadow banned... no idea why). I deleted everything reddit from my browser history so it wouldn't pop up as a suggestion or auto-complete and that was sufficient.

Not the person you're replying to, but I too left Reddit after being a heavy user for about 7 years.

I just stopped using it. I think that calling it will power sounds too dramatic.

I came to hate the experience so much, I didn't even need willpower.

The dislike started small, and it grew into a hatred, and it kept increasing until it hit a tipping point. I quit Reddit in one day.

I still have a books focused, and a cs/math/programming focused accounts that I use sometimes.

You've gotta remove the default subreddits which are largely dog shit. Seriously, whoever decided that trash like "r/prequelmemes" or even "r/formula1" should qualify to appear on reddit's home page needs to get a new job.

They moved from curated default subreddits to algorithmic some time ago (with some exclusions for NSFW and controversial subreddits). That said, even the curated selection wasn't always good, I think I remember f7u12 making it to the defaults at one point.

Having defaults sucked anyway because any subreddit that ended up on there was almost guaranteed to plummet in quality. IIRC the only subreddit that managed to avoid that (way back when I still used reddit) was /r/science because they had strict moderation to stop it from turning into a mess of image macros and DAE posts.

I think it depends a lot on the subreddits you subscribe to. I mostly use it for engaging in hobbies that I find rewarding and as long as I moderate the time spent it is not wasted. Same as Youtube. If I had to rank, I would say HN is worse in that regard, as you can't even ignore certain topics

Early this year, I added a blocklist for Reddit on my PC and deleted the app. I did it upon the realization that for me:

1. It was a time waste. It was entertaining, but more often than not, it wasn't useful or helpful at all. Classic short-term gratification.

2. Various issues with how it was run started to frustrate me. Advertising appearing as genuine posts, poor moderation / mod abuse. Also seemed to be a conflict algorithm, outrage and irrational ideas were disproportionately popular compared to real life.

The smaller communities on the site were good, I'd like to see them find another place to exist. But yeah, I used to think that self-control and discipline was all that was needed, but creating actual barriers like blocklists etc is actually pretty good.

What’s the best way to block it on mobile?

Not OP but I just straight up deleted the play store and internet apps on my android phone using https://adbappcontrol.com/en/. That way I can't download it or just mindlessly browse to it when I'm bored. I have had this setup for a year now and not had any issues needing info or apps when I am away from my computer.

I just started using this service: https://controld.com/

$20 a year and acts as an ad-blocker too. NextDNS is another one. It's nice you don't need to install anything (other than configuring DNS). Using DNS for ad-blocking also avoids the "we noticed you're using an ad-blocker" popups.

Delete the app

For browser you can use a domain blocker. Firefox mobile has an extension LeechBlock that can do that.

I've blocked twitter and reddit for almost a year now. My mental health and work quality has improved dramatically. The only thing I miss is sports and local news, I wish their was a website that was social media for just those 2 things.

It is a bit striking though that even Reddit provides more agency over user data than Hacker News does.

I created multiple reddit accounts- one for programming and math stuff, one for books only, one for general stuff, etc.

I quit the general one two years ago because of Reddit's dumb monoculture.

I kept visiting math, cs, and book subs. And helped people with high school math concepts, cs book suggestions, etc.

As a person born in a middle-of-nowhere smalltown, Reddit added a lot of value to my life. And I tried to do the same to others. I had a good running.

All good things end.

I am concerned about how it perfectly substitutes Google. Whether I need to search for quirky not-so-famous movies, or I need recommendation for Neuroscience textbooks, I searched Reddit with Google. With subs shutting down and going private, I wonder how longer will this last.

You must’ve been subscribed to some news/current events related subreddits. My subscriptions are all hobbies and specific games that I’m interested in. Reddit is my escape from all the stuff you mentioned. I use Apollo to browse and comment on my phone. I’m really upset about the API changes. I really want to see people come together with a solution to migrate away from Reddit.

Aren’t there any angels out there who would be interested in funding Christian (and/or the developers of other 3rd party Reddit apps) to develop a new back end using the same APIs? Then it would be pretty smooth to move over.

>You must’ve been subscribed to some news/current events related subreddits.

Not necessarily. If you really want to lose hope in humanity go to the advice subreddits.

How so?

I hear ya. I haven't been getting anything positive anymore out of Reddit for several years at least. And now I'm getting tired of witnessing their greedy nonsense. I can't support it. I went cold turkey on Twitter last year, and it definitely looks like it's time I do the same for Reddit.

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