[mieubrisse]

I had an epiphany that faulting myself, and my self-control, is exactly what these sites want you to do. "Oh, it's just your bad self-discipline"

No, this is full-on war for control of your mind. And the adversary spends millions to hire teams of the world's best psychologists and engineers to deploy technology that never sleeps with the sole purpose of grabbing and keeping your attention.

Once I realized this, I started treating doomscrolling and Youtube rabbit holes not as personal insufficiencies, but as systemic failures in my psychological defense system. I started installing my own tech to keep me safe, and I am much, much happier.

Predictably, companies like Google try to disable the defenses (e.g. with Manifest v3, which was a garbage excuse to disable many defensive extensions). And so the war goes.

[brailsafe]

In a very loosely analogous way, this reminds me of how I think about car-centric cities. They've built themselves up to make it very difficult to practically participate in society without one, often going so far in that direction that it's so unpleasant and inefficient you're fairly likely to make a mistake at some point and be fined for something. The city then bleeds money maintaining the infrastructure and needs constant construction, so signs are intentionally obscured or speed limits set extremely low despite the roads being wide, and cops are hidden around the corner ready to ticket you. This creates a cycle of heightening anxiety and stress while driving, and discouraging you from going anywhere, making it feel safer to just be isolated in your far-flung house, and thank god you have endless streaming content at your fingertips to make that even more palatable.

Addictive media content, particularly short-form casino-style recommended content sucks time away from you in a way that's deeply meaningless. You have no time for friends or real social stimulation and you sit in bed continuing to scroll because it's easy, and you repeat the cycle until all you're doing is that and being sad and lonely, which makes you want to see people more or have a hobby, but that takes a modicum of effort and you have your phone right there.

[amatecha]

There's a correlation between psychologically-manipulative apps and car-centrism: the endless desire for profit -- hyper-domination by capitalism. If the primary motivating factor behind society's actions were "for the greater good", such things would never have become even remotely acceptable. Instead we allow everything, everywhere, to be driven by the desire for greater wealth (usually on the part of a handful of executives, specifically). The more you question "is this motivated by profit" about anything in society or everyday life that is harmful to you, you'll start to notice that the answer is almost always "yes".

[jader201]

I won’t argue with the fact that these systems are designed to defeat your ability to control your habits.

But it is possible, without having to install tech to defeat these systems for you.

I think, as with most bad habits, the easiest way to defeat them is to never start them to begin with.

If you haven’t ever smoked, don’t start. If you haven’t ever gotten hooked on Shorts/Reels, don’t start.

I watch YouTube quite often, but only long form content. I even watch some content that takes me multiple nights to finish (e.g. a 5-hour stream of a great board game). I think the only time I’ve watched a Short was accidentally, or if someone shared one with me (fewer than a handful of times).

It also helps if your friends/family don’t do those things too (e.g. so they don’t keep sharing them with you).

But 100% agree that ideally, platforms would give us control over the types of content that show up.

The best I can do on YouTube is to subscribe to channels that don’t do Shorts, and only use Subscriptions as my feed. This has been quite effective.

I don’t even use Instagram (and definitely not TikTok).

My biggest vices are HN and Board Game Geek, but I feel that’s relatively tame (but I could still have healthier habits even with those).

[sjw987]

Self controlling your screen use and media consumption is entirely within your remit.

Companies have no power to force you to use their products/services, and despite the millions they spend trying to hook you, you always have the option to simply stop using their product/service, delete their app and/or stop visiting their website.

You don't have systemic failures in your psychological defense system. We are adaptable creatures.

Using technology to protect us from more technology works right up until the prior technology fails, the latter technology adapts, or you lower your guard and fall back into old routines. Like many things in life, such as eating healthily, exercising regularly, managing finances and relationships well, you need to assess the situation you're in, note the advantages and disadvantages it gives you, assess a plan for action to use it for the good parts only, and stick to it.

[rkomorn]

I think personal accountability is good and all but I don't think we should ignore the endless efforts made by corporations to optimize every single interaction you have with them to maximize the value you provide them.

I don't think we should have a society that demands constant personal accountability in order to not get suckered by marketing, SEO, algorithmic feed optimization, etc.

[bowsamic]

> not as personal insufficiencies, but as systemic failures in my psychological defense system

I was with you until here but this seems like a restatement of the same thing. No it isn’t a failure of you, it’s simply an attack of overwhelming force

[Terr_]

> I had an epiphany that faulting myself, and my self-control, is exactly what these sites want you to do.

Yeah, this kind of realization can be surprisingly empowering, because it takes something that seemed like unavoidable natural law and reveals it as an adversarial relationship.

To offer a boring but lower-tech version: Shopping centers which are deliberately designed to make people enter/exit through stores, and the companies that pay to rent that space in particular. So there's nothing awkward about tracking in some water on a rainy day, the company chose that tradeoff.

[mieubrisse]

Yes, exactly! We generally treat spaces with the benefit of the doubt, which I think is smart for mental health. A conference center which doesn't have the bathrooms close to where you'd expect probably is just badly designed rather than actively trying to mess with you. But this breaks down for certain spaces: shopping malls, airports, etc.

[SoftTalker]

I’ll be the contrarian and say that while I find the constant pushing of Shorts in YouTube to be annoying, I don’t have any trouble not watching them. I select “show me fewer shorts “ which helps some and I skip over the rest.