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> Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people’s attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of informa

• baxtr 3y ago
  My newest hack: I have a note on my phone called “Things I should do instead of checking twitter”. I have also hidden the app. So whenever I want to start it up, I have to search for it and now also the note shows up… I usually first check the note and get reminded of all the productive, cool, fun things I could do instead. It works about 50% of the time.
  • dredmorbius 3y ago
    Generate an image from that note and set it as your phone's wallpaper. One I've used myself is based on Harold Lasswell's model of communication: - Who? - Says what? - Through which channel? - To whom? - With what effect? - With what intent? The last line being my addition. I find it useful in assessing many types of media. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasswell%27s_model_of_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasswell%27s_model_of_communic...> An implied further question is "is this worth my time?" Late edit: Lasswell model note.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• polishdude20 3y ago
  Yep, and clearly read the terms and conditions checkbook when you sign up for stuff to make sure it doesn't also include the ability to send marketing emails.
  • nickelcitymario 3y ago
    You actually read those??? They're the length of a phone book. There should be a law mandating that terms and conditions be readable and of a reasonable length.
    • nebula8804 3y ago
      Have ChatGPT read it and summarize it for you. Maybe even ask questions. (I'm sure there are 10 startups spinning up right now to do this)
      • nickelcitymario 3y ago
        That's a really great idea.
    • polishdude20 3y ago
      I mean the check box text which says you accept it + marketing emails.
      • nickelcitymario 3y ago
        Ohhhh I misunderstood. Thanks for clarifying!
• yard2010 3y ago
  Step 2: use uBlock origin, PiHole and vivalidi browser on mobile and don't be a part of this bs world
  • superb_dev 3y ago
    Step 3: sponsor block. It uses crowdsource info to skip in-band advertising on YouTube. (If you’re on safari, I’d also recommend Vinegar. It replaces the YouTube player with a regular HTML5 player, which removes all ads and lets you use PiP)
    • sneak 3y ago
      > and the do-not-feed-the-trolls heuristic, which advises one to not reward malicious actors with attention. Step 4: delete your user accounts on all services run by advertising companies (ie YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Gmail)
      • _benj 3y ago
        Step 5: go to your local library, pick up a book and consume high quality content instead of filtering through tons of garbage for a few gems.
      • absoluteunit1 3y ago
        I second this. Aside from YouTube and gmail; I’ve long since (probably 4+years ago) got rid of social media and couldn’t be happier. My attention span sky rocketed. I noticed I can comfortably sit and read heavy technical books for a while before getting distracted which I couldn’t do before
  • whartung 3y ago
    So, how much effort is it to setup and maintain PiHole? Conceptually it sounds great, but if I set it up properly it's going to impact not just me, but everything in the house, which mean my wife. And Fiddly and "F-with it" stuff just is not attractive. There's enough internet rage when everything is (supposedly) working as it should much less with something like PiHole potentially mucking things up. So, just curious how it is to live with PiHole.
• Helmut10001 3y ago
  On my phone, I have DnD mode always turned on. I have network wide suppression of ads with pfblockerng-devel. I use a separate browser for social networks that I rarely open. These three things already helped a lot.
  • brightlancer 3y ago
    > I use a separate browser for social networks that I rarely open. I do this also, to limit tracking. A side effect is that I have to make a more deliberate action to check social media, and I mostly don't. I've tried to convince folks to create multiple profiles, but most won't accept the minor inconvenience.
    • Helmut10001 3y ago
      Yes, I was suggested this (use multiple profiles), too. But it does not work as effectively: Opening up a different browser requires more attention than just opening up a different colored tab (i.e. profile). I think this is what the article suggest: Observe yourself and be proactive and skeptical when noticing any external incentives that try to trigger certain behavior from you. It is not possible to prevent these things from happening, but you can modify the context to reduce chances of it happening again.
      • brightlancer 3y ago
        > Opening up a different browser requires more attention than just opening up a different colored tab (i.e. profile). In both Firefox and Chromium, I can't open a new profile on a new tab. (This may be a difference in terms.) I create different aliases/ scripts/ desktop icons for each profile, so typing or clicking "Facebook" opens the browser profile for that, while "Reddit" opens a different one, etc. Firefox has "containers" which allow cookie separation on different tabs, but they use the same add-ons/ extensions, so I use that feature less frequently.
        • Helmut10001 3y ago
• JohnMakin 3y ago
  if I did this my life would probably fall apart, gmail notifications are the only thing that gets me to check my email
  • jabroni_salad 3y ago
    What I do is in Fastmail I have a rule that snoozes all messages to around the time I usually take lunch. If I'm expecting a transactional I will just go fish it up when I need it. I also use an app called Buzzkill that temporarily mutes serial noisemakers and spams any text message that contains a politician's name. Finally, I wear an analog watch so I do not check my phone for the time. Pretty much the only live push notifications I get are from direct messages, chats I am @tagged in, and credit card transactions.
  • everdrive 3y ago
    This is a great example of a situation where modifying your own behavior is a superior solution when compared to relying on a technical solution for the situation. Technology solutions can only get us so far. Relying on notifications puts you at the mercy of the platform. Training yourself to check your email every so often is much simpler, and requires no added complexity at all.
    • squeaky-clean 3y ago
      > Relying on notifications puts you at the mercy of the platform. Is this really an issue? You're still relying on the platform to host and serve your actual emails. If you don't trust them to notify you properly, why would you trust them to hold your entire email history? This also means you're going to have moments where you check your emails and it wqs wasted time because there are no new emails since last time you checked.
    • npunt 3y ago
      Agree, to have agency in the digital world requires us having control over our initiative. There's both behavioral and technical ways to do this today: 1. Look only at certain times each day (see habit chaining, e.g. 'look at email after I get lunch') 2. Set a focus mode that allows notifications from email at certain times 3. Allow email notifications only from specific high-importance contacts 4. Just set a timer, calendar event, or or recurring reminder
• Steltek 3y ago
  Thus is solving a different problem entirely and has nothing to do with practicing skeptical/critical reading skills. You're giving advice on ADHD or screen addiction which has little to do with the other.
  • npunt 3y ago
    This article is literally titled "Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence". The first strategy recommended in the abstract is "self-nudging, in which one ignores temptations by removing them from one’s digital environments." You'd be hard pressed to find something more on the nose than disabling push notifications from low quality sources.
    • Karunamon 3y ago
      That's a bomb where a scalpel is called for. On sites like Twitter and YouTube, your notifications are almost entirely a function of who you follow/subscribe to.
      • npunt 3y ago
        Agree disabling entirely is a total cudgel and not a great long term solution, as it sets us up for the equivalent of crash diets or cold turkey substance use followed by almost inevitable relapses. I think the root cause is that our digital environments do not provide adequate tools to manage and audit how we spend our attention. Tech favors 'offense' right now, not 'defense'. The example of social sites and following is one that just about everyone faces. We see someone we like in the moment, we follow, and over time its death by a thousand papercuts. Could be substacks, podcasts, youtubers, whoever. Social sites are not incentivized to help us with this problem as reengagement drives revenue. It's laborious to go back and unsubscribe because it's a one-by-one process and often we want to keep these ideas somewhere in orbit. I think the solution is invest in 'attention defense'. We need something on our side at the OS level that can audit what we're signed up for, let us get a big picture view of these, aggregate and filter them, make suggestions for what to continue to follow and to what degree, all packaged in a way that lets us retain our initiative. I think the enabling technology for this is language models, because they can sufficiently understand the content to compress and parse out the preferable.
• joe__f 3y ago
  I have just relegated a bunch of my apps into deep sleep, thank you. YouTube Music was using 100 times as much battery as Spotify. I use them both, I'd say about 1:3 YouTube M:Spotify
• joncp 3y ago
  Even better: just uninstall the apps and only use the sites via mobile web. The benefits: you'll never see a single notification from apps you don't have, they'll never be able to eat your battery, openings for tracking are much reduced, and the slightly less awesome UI of the web version will somewhat reduce the dopamine hit you get from interacting with them.
  • baz00 3y ago
    I've stopped using the sites as well.