Is Ben scrolling TikTok right now? | Hacker News Reader

Is Ben scrolling TikTok right now?

stuckinthescroll.com

17 pointsGavinAnderegg13 comments

> Think of it as a last-ditch effort, a sort of public confessional as therapeutic tool aimed at defusing the intense compulsion I feel every day to endlessly scroll the world’s most popular video app.

I think I found a great solution to the problem. The uninstall button may help

I tried that. Someone keeps reinstalling it.

Hey, I hope this helps you reach your goal. You are doubtless a wonderful person either way. This is the most creative self help, I've ever seen.

I bet that if you start taking a GLP-1 agonist (semaglutide or similar), it’ll break your habit. It patches malfunctioning reward centers in the brain. Something to potentially consider.

https://recursiveadaptation.com/p/the-growing-scientific-cas...

Is it accurate? It currently averages to 4 hours per day, or approximately 25% of waking hours spent scrolling TikTok—even while the creator is consciously trying to cut back. I am sure I don’t want to know the cumulative time I’ve wasted on similar sites, but this strains believability.

(Aside: I’ve never regretted the times I’ve spontaneously deleted my account on sites that sucked way too much of my time. In every case I should have done it years sooner.)

I don't do Tiktok but my personal time tracking says this month I took about 4 hours a day browsing the web (HN, Reddit, news, ...) and watching Youtube videos.

I think the number is (sadly) totally believable, especially if one has a longer commute (by train) or if one scrolls Tiktok while doing other things.

Yes, it's accurate. Sadly. I will say that my TikTok viewing is often multitasked, so that total isn't me only staring at (that) screen. Sometimes I'm watching (or listening to) TikTok and watching another screen too!

This project seems out of place among other author works which are counter-endless [1], I would expect it to not just count hours but for example nuke profile or erase app from phone after 100 hours of scrolling.

[1] https://bengrosser.com/projects/

I need this for Hacker News.

I'm interested in what APIs he used to build this.

Agreed. There seems to be an “Research API” for TikTok that is available[1]. I’d like to find an API to query to track my youtube consumption.

[1] https://developers.tiktok.com/doc/research-api-get-started

I’m guessing just the DNS lookups for TikTok app might be unique enough.

Hey, it's pretty simple. I use a shortcut on my iPhone that gets the contents of different firebase URLs when I open and when I close TikTok. I have a function on firebase that processes those URL visits, setting the values of a status node (isScrolling, platform, and a timestamp) and logging each request. Then each change to the firebase updates any clients loaded from https://stuckinthescroll.com. The time elapsed is counted up on page load from the log entries.

It's turned out to be quite robust so far. The only quirks happen when: 1) I forget to close TikTok before turning off the screen on my phone (which incorrectly leaves a log entry that doesn't get closed until the next entry), and 2) if I go into picture-in-picture mode (which incorrectly--IMO--triggers the app closed shortcut). For now I'm avoiding PiP, so that's not a big deal. As for unclosed log entries, I've gotten good about closing the app before turning off the screen, but there's a few entries in the data from before I trained myself (those are adding a small bit of slop to the total).

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