Childproofing my technology

Content blocking

The login-walling of most social media websites these days has forcibly prevented me from doomscrolling on them, but I still manage to find ways to waste time on my phone. My two biggest vices are the Youtube rabbit hole and the op-ed rabbit hole (where I start reading a ton of articles and think I'm learning something but it's really just more verbose doomscrolling). I have tried various means to physically stop myself from doing this, because apparently I'm 5 years old.

Foqos - Phone browser blocking

I use Foqos to block the web browser on my phone. It's an iOS app that allows you to selectively block or allow certain apps using a physical object as the trigger. It will take NFC tags, QR codes, and barcodes for this. It's free and open source! For me, it's a superior alternative to strictly digital blocking apps because I can still lift the block to access the browser when I need it, but it adds an annoying element that makes me think twice about whether I really need it.

I set up Foqos to block my browser at all times until I scan the barcode of my gym membership card. When I do this, it will disable the block for 20 minutes, which is enough time to get any legitimate tasks done and even occasionally read an article, but not enough to get stuck in a rabbit hole.

This would be pretty easy to circumvent for someone with more of an internet addiction. I usually am just a compulsive checker, so adding an extra step to the process is enough to make me do something less pointless with my time.

uBlock Origin - Youtube blocking

I've tried blocking Youtube outright, but there are certain times where I do want or need to access it. I've compensated for this by using a uBlock Origin filter list that clears everything off the page except the video, search bar, and description. It also clears out the Youtube homepage. So if someone sends me a video or I need to search for something specific, I can still do that without chaining a bunch of videos together.

Freetube is also a nice Youtube interface, but it's a little buggy since it's still in beta.

Intake moderation

I still like to look at articles and blog posts in moderation, so I use RSS feeds and a manual bookmark manager to restrict myself to a finite amount of them.

RSS reader

I've used Feedly for a while despite the annoying name because it does a good job of scraping feeds from websites that don't have them, but useless AI features and ads have slowly been popping up on it. I've migrated most of my subscriptions to 32bit Cafe FreshRSS server and it's done a decent job at feed-scraping. RSS Lookup helps dig up feeds for websites whose feeds aren't auto-detected or listed anywhere.

I like a phone app with a built-in reader or browser so I don't have to violate my browser block to read stuff. Feedly had a good interface for this but I've been trying NetNewsWire with the aforementioned FreshRSS aggregation.

In theory, I could still abuse the built-in browser to click on more links and read more articles, but it's a lot harder to do that when you don't have tabs. It forces me to finish whatever I'm reading before I decide if I really want to scroll back up to click a link.

Raindrop - Bookmark management

I save articles and videos I want to peruse later on Raindrop. The phone app has a nice built-in reader/video player that strips out distractions/ads/bad web design.