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I get the feeling that all these "digital detox" apps, if they aim to scale and make more money, will do so by "whitelisting" certain popular apps by making acc

I get the feeling that all these "digital detox" apps, if they aim to scale and make more money, will do so by "whitelisting" certain popular apps by making access to them relatively easier, bottlenecking the competitors. Let's say it's the future, 10% of phone users have some version of this on their phone. Snapchat pays them 10 million to reduce the penalty for using Snapchat auto-suggest Instagram on the block list.

anteloper 3y ago
that's an interesting one - it's one of the reasons we've opted for consumer subscription as a business model. we want our interests to be firmly aligned with our users best intentions for themselves. they pay us to spend less of their life doing things they ultimately don't are about. we make money by helping them spend less of their life doing things they ultimately don't care about. as long as that's true, I think it would be pretty easy to say no when snapchat comes along asking for a service-specific friction reduction. our real hope is actually that tools like clearspace tip the balance of power to individuals. if snapchat or IG are taking a real hit, they'll finally be incentivized to minimize “regrettable time” spent on their apps. that's probably an easier task than doing a backdoor deal with a company who makes its money but protecting its users from regrettable screen time.