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aadivar

2 karma · joined September 25, 2023

Father / Developer
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aadivar··on Show HN: Brainrot messed up my kid's attention span, so I built a tool to fix it
Ha, we didn't mention K-12 but you read our minds. The YouTube problem I described with my daughter is exactly what every school deals with — block YouTube and you lose Khan Academy, allow it and kids are in Shorts all period. With Kite a sysadmin could say 'only show videos from subscribed channels' and suddenly YouTube becomes a curated learning tool. Will post on r/k12sysadmin — thanks for the nudge.
aadivar··on Show HN: Brainrot messed up my kid's attention span, so I built a tool to fix it
For us this is less about shielding forever and more about restoring friction. VHS-era TV at least had natural boundaries — episodes ended, tapes ran out. Infinite scroll never does. we are basically trying to bring back stopping cues.

re: On the echo chamber point — yeah, that’s something we’re thinking about. The intent is to target mechanics (infinite scroll, counters, autoplay), not viewpoints.

re: browser vendors eating our lunch — totally possible. But there’s also an inherent conflict for engagement-driven platforms to aggressively reduce engagement.

Appreciate your thoughts!

aadivar··on Show HN: See how algorithms manipulate your social/media feeds in real-time
Glad you noticed it. The extension is live on Firefox,. At was broken again on LinkedIn, as they changed the DOM again, we are fixing it and also brainstorming on scaling it. Do give a try! https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/attentionguard/
aadivar··on Show HN: See how algorithms manipulate your social/media feeds in real-time
Hi, this is Dan, the creator of AttentionGuard. Happy to answer any questions here, and looking forward to feedback as well!